Ontario · Civic arena
St. Catharines drinking water hardness is 182 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#126 of 343
53% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
St. Catharines packs 7 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full St. Catharines water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Amherstburg · vs Saugeen ShoresHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for St. Catharines from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for St. Catharines.
St. Catharines sits at City Score rank #126 with a standing of 53%, from 7 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Rising 11 places versus 2022 (#137 → #126).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #290 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #127 of 343 at 182 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #127 of 343 (10.98 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #126 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #156
Rank #290
Rank #6
Rank #127
No placement
Rank #127
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for St. Catharines.
Port Dalhousie beach with harbour and lighthouse views, carousel, playground, and Waterfront Trail access. It is the most postcard corner
Peninsula neighbourhood between Martindale Pond and Lake Ontario, with carousel and Inner Range Lighthouse on the attraction list.
Port Dalhousie grew with the Welland canals and Great Lakes shipping, with a commercial core on Lakeport Road, Lock Street, and Hogan's
Where St. Catharines sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
St. Catharines calls itself the Garden City, and the nickname still fits how people give directions. Port Dalhousie sits on the peninsula between Martindale Pond and Lake Ontario, with Lakeside Park Beach looking out to the harbour and lighthouse, the carousel turning for kids, and the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail underfoot. Sunset Beach stretches a long sandy run farther east, while quieter Jones Beach ties into the Welland Canals Trail. Tourism tags the place #LoveSTC and keeps downtown patio crawls and Niagara wine-country edges on the same weekend map.
Canal geography is not a museum afterthought. The St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre at Lock 3 pairs exhibits with ship viewing, and walking tours still trace early canal routes through Port Dalhousie streets like Lakeport Road and Lock Street. Western Hill, west of Twelve Mile Creek, gets its own museum nights for industries and neighbourhood haunts. The Meridian Centre and Niagara IceDogs community ticket programs keep arena talk in the municipal feed beside Fairview Mall shopping notes.
Weather can rewrite the week. City alerts in summer 2026 led with flooding response, a state of emergency, and Niagara Region partners on waste and recovery after heavy storms. That file sits beside beach strategy work on parking, litter, and crowd management at Lakeside and Sunset. On OpenStats City Score for 2026, St. Catharines sits at rank 35 of 125. Locals still introduce the hometown as Garden City first, then Port Dalhousie, then Lock 3.
Drawn from City of St. Catharines - Beaches, Port Dalhousie Heritage District, St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, Visit St. Catharines, City of St. Catharines.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by estimated best advertised download (Mbps). Anchored to the current ISED National Broadband Data vintage, then backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber-arrival and 50/10 availability paths so relative ranks can change over the decade. Not a claim of audited historical hex maps for every year.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Construction · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by calendar-year building permit value. Direct rows sum Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0292-01. Cities without a direct reading use population × provincial per-capita permit intensity (estimated), so every seed city has a year-varying construction signal.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats
Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016–2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0–1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Growth and CSI use StatCan annual tables; permits, mill rates, and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Safety · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index (Table 35-10-0026-01). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Values are CMA where a metro match exists, otherwise provincial CSI. Hometown pages label the grain.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Growth · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Property tax · OpenStats
OpenStats
Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate. Rank 1 is the highest rate. Published municipal years are used when available; gaps are interpolated or follow the provincial median path so the tax pillar moves year to year for every city.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Average rent for purpose-built 2-bedroom apartments (all tenants) from CMHC Rental Market Survey. Rank 1 = lowest average rent among covered CMAs.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places St. Catharines in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Housing
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Purpose-built rental apartment vacancy rate from CMHC Rental Market Survey (October). Rank 1 = highest vacancy (most available rental stock among covered CMAs).
2 editions · 2024–2025
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
The city maintains three public Lake Ontario beaches: Lakeside Park Beach, Sunset Beach, and Jones Beach.
Port Dalhousie grew with the Welland canals and Great Lakes shipping, with a commercial core on Lakeport Road, Lock Street, and Hogan's Alley.
Museum programs invite visitors to Lock 3 for exhibits and ship viewing at the Welland Canals Centre.
Tourism branding leans on #LoveSTC for hometown photos and weekend itineraries.
Port Dalhousie beach with harbour and lighthouse views, carousel, playground, and Waterfront Trail access. It is the most postcard corner of the city's shoreline.
Lock 3 museum for canal stories, Open Late summer hours, and walking tours into Port Dalhousie and Western Hill. Ships still pass while exhibits explain the older routes.
Peninsula neighbourhood between Martindale Pond and Lake Ontario, with carousel and Inner Range Lighthouse on the attraction list. Canal-era streetscapes still set the tone.
When St. Catharines moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
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