Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Community Profile - Ft. McMurray

Question

Fort McMurray, Alberta has a population of approximately 41,000 people yet it does not show up in the 2001 or 2006 Community Profiles as a "stand alone" community rather it indicates that it is part of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo. Is this because the municipality has almost no other population except for that of Fort McMurray?

Answer

Community Profiles will always direct you to an incorporated municipality; there is a note to this effect in the Help/FAQ section:

"The data are available only for municipalities or their equivalent counties and metropolitan areas. Data are not available for 'unincorporated' places."

This includes some very well known places which are now parts of larger municipalities. If Wood Buffalo is the legal name for the place then that is what you will find in the census tables even though Fort McMurray may be better known. The way around this is to identify the dissemination areas that make up the part you are interested in and use the DA profiles for data.

1 comment:

  1. I usually do not leave many comments, however i did some searching
    and wound up here Data Interest Group for Reference Services (DIGRS) ? Blog Archive ? Community Profile - Ft.
    McMurray. And I actually do have a few questions for you if it's allright. Is it simply me or does it give the impression like some of the responses come across like they are left by brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are posting on other online social sites, I'd like to follow everything new you have to post.
    Could you list of the complete urls of all your communal pages like your
    linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?

    ReplyDelete

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