Vacation homes as social indicators: Observations from Canadian census data

Analysis of answers to a question on ownership of vacation homes asked during Census Canada 1971 confirms findings from earlier analyses that were based on data drawn from drastically different sources and may be summarized thus: although social and economic status is a powerful determinant in ownership of vacation homes everywhere, in Canada the best single predictor is location. Citizens in urban places of Eastern Canada, irrespective of the size of urban place, which has no effect one way or another, have a much higher propensity to own vacation homes than those in the West. In the Province of Ontario, for which the most detailed historical record exists, census data confirm the continued existence of distributional patterns established in earlier studies: the people with the greatest likelihood of owning vacation homes have their primary residences on the Pre‐Cambrian Shield in the midst of Ontario's most highly valued recreational landscape, whereas those living on the frontier with the United States at either end of Lake Erie are least likely to own vacation homes. The reason for the very narrow range within which a great complex of towns and cities in southwestern Ontario distribute themselves, with four to six percent of the population in each owning vacation homes, remains a mystery.

Keywords:

• vacation homes
• second homes
• secondary residences
• vacation cottages
• geography of recreation
• social indicators
• decennial census