By David F. Rooney
If you turned on the TV or read a big city daily newspaper anytime in the last few days you’d almost believe that Canadian society had turned topsy-turvey.
“Boomerang kids mean empty nests not quite so empty: Census,” said one headline in the Toronto Globe & Mail while a headline in the Calgary Herald trumpeted that “Canada’s families shifting from marriage to common-law, same-sex couples increasing.”
There were plenty more like that in the big newspapers and networks.
However, traditionalism remains a constant here in Revelstoke, even though the 2011 Census shows that we are changing, too.
Our total population within the city boundaries in 2011 was 7,139, down from 2006 when that year’s census showed we had 7,230 urban residents. The 2001 census said we then had 7,500 residents.
Last year’s census showed there were 2,045 families in Revelstoke. Of those, 1,350 were traditional married families. There were 430 common-law couples and 265 single-parent families, 190 of them headed by women and 75 by men.
In terms of the city’s 3,080 private households, 695 consisted of married or common-law couples with children 24 years of age or under, while 1,030 had no children. There were 245 lone-parent households, 875 single-person households and 225 other types of households, defined in 2011 as “two or more people who share a private household, but who do not consitute a census family.”
The 2006 census showed we had a total population within the city boundaries of 7,230 — down from 7,500 in 2001. It identified a total of 2,075 families in our city. Of those, 1,425 were traditional married couples while 370 were common-law couples and there were 280 single-parent families, 240 of them headed by women. The average number of people in all families was 2.8, while traditional married families were composed of 2.9 people and there were 2.7 people in the common-law families. There were 2.5 people in single-parent families.
In terms of households in 2006, the census showed there were 3,100. 810 of those contained children, while 980 had no kids. In fact, 920 households consisted of single people and 395 were classed as “other household types,” which the census defined as including “multiple-family households, lone-parent family households and non-family households other than one-person households.”
The median income for all families was $64,562. Married families brought home $72,448, common-law couples $55,252 and the median income level for single-parent families $39,714. Those single-parent households headed by women earned only $37,993 while those headed by men had a median income of $40,047
Click here to read the latest census figures.
