Interior cities plunge in Maclean’s best Canadian cities ranking

The Southern Interior’s major cities have all plunged in Maclean's annual ranking of the best places to live in Canada, by MoneySense writer Claire Brownell.

West Kelowna dropped 155 places but still came in 220th out of 413 cities measured while Kelowna is down 150 spots, from 100th to 250th place.

Vernon is down 149 place to 370th overall while Penticton is down 48 to 383rd on the full rankings. Kamloops dropped 112 places to 237th overall.

Macleans acknowledges right off the top that a number of “tweaks and adjustments" to the methodology for this year’s rankings, including data on median wait times for medical procedures plus penalties for cities that grow faster than the norm means this year’s list can’t be directly compared to 2017.

Southern Interior cities aren’t alone in dropping down the annual popularity list as most B.C. cities have also slid down the rankings.

Fort Saint John was the top ranked B.C. city coming in 15th overall, just ahead of Toronto and edging out Whistler (20th) and easily besting others local contenders, mostly clustered in the Lower Mainland.

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