Comparing Tiny with the Rest of Ontario
By John Grant
The age distribution of Tiny’s permanent residents is significantly older than that of the rest of Simcoe County or the province as a whole.
AGE DISTRIBUTION, 2001
The latest Census also shows that Tiny’s population grew only 4.6% between 1996 and 2001, much less than the province as a whole (6.1%) or the rest of Simcoe County (14.6%). (Of course, Simcoe’s growth is largely due to the influx to the Barrie area.)
Tiny’s population is also significantly less ethnically diverse than the province as a whole. Of Tiny’s 2001 population of 9,015, only 100 (1.1%) represented a “visible minority,” compared to the 19.1% for Ontario as a whole. Just 1195 Tiny residents in 2001 were immigrants to Canada, and of these only 15 had immigrated in the last ten years; contrast this with Ontario as a whole, where 26.8% of the population are immigrants and over a million immigrated between 1991 and 2001. The religious diversity of Tiny is low as well; 4050 (44.9%) reported themselves as Catholics, 3475 (38.5%) as Protestant, 1295 had no religious affiliation and only 45 were of non-Christian faiths. For Ontario as a whole, 34.6% were Catholic, 34.9% Protestant, 16.3% had no affiliation and 9.1% reported non-Christian faiths.
The next Census will be taken in 2006. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, if anything, the population is skewing even further toward older age groups as cottager retirees turn into permanent residents. At present, the size of this trend remains unclear.
The educational level of Tiny’s permanent residents is very similar to that of Ontarians as a whole, with the exception that more have trades or Community College training and fewer have university degrees.
PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION AGED 20-64 WITH VARIOUS LEVELS OF EDUCATION
In 2001, Tiny’s unemployment rate was the same as that of the province as a whole (6.1%), but the rate for males at 8.0% was much higher than that for the province (5.8%), while the rate for females (3.6%) was much lower than that of the province (6.5%).
Owned dwellings outnumber rented dwellings in Tiny by almost 10 to 1; for the province as a whole the ratio is just over 2 to 1. Median household income in Tiny was $ 48,932 in 2001, compared to a provincial average of $ 53,626.
Census-based information on population, education, religion, family, household, earnings and income data is easily retrieved from Statistics Canada’s website (www.statcan.ca) for any Canadian municipality. (Click on the “Census” tab and enter the name of the municipality in which you are interested).