Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

This ranking of Canada's Most Dangerous Places will help you know which places to avoid

Planning a move, vacation, or night out? You might want to consult the just-released 2019 rankings of Canada's Most Dangerous Places.

Planning a move, vacation, or night out? You might want to consult the just-released 2019 rankings of Canada's Most Dangerous Places.

Crime scene/Shutterstock

Published by Maclean's, the interactive lists are based on the Crime Severity Index (CSI), a Statistics Canada measure of all police-reported crime, which takes into consideration both the volume and seriousness of offences. The 2017 data, the most current available, was released July 23, 2018.

With options of looking at several kinds of crime (homicide, cocaine trafficking, or fraud, for example) or simply taking a look at the scope of things for all crime, violent crime, or five-year changes in the CSI for a given city, the list is a very black-and-white collection of data about a couple hundred places in the nation.

  • Previously: ‘Canada’s Most Dangerous Places’ highlights the best place to get assaulted in B.C.

You can isolate the data to just rank the 58 largest municipalities in B.C., and let's just say you might want to rethink hanging out in Williams Lake. All joking aside, Williams Lake does top the B.C. lists for all crime, violent crime, homicide, sexual assault, and cocaine trafficking.

Langley lands in the number one spot for robbery, fraud, and "other" drug trafficking, while cannabis trafficking is hot in Nelson.

Overall in B.C., Vancouver ranks 17th for all crime, 19th for assault, and 18th for our five-year change in CSI.

For all of Canada, North Battleford, Sask. is in the number one spot on the all crime list, followed by Thompson, Manitoba--a town whose past and recent struggles are touched on in the current season of CBC's riveting "Someone Knows Something" podcast focusing on the murder of Kerrie Brown.

You can read more about Maclean's methodology, and also spend some time looking for familiar places in B.C. or elsewhere in Canada as you toggle through the interactive ranking tool.