The CMYK Christmas Cultural Snapshot of Canada in 2006

To summarize the last post, for those who don't feel like plowing through 24 inches of blog column, the basic idea is that the reality of our Canadian cultural landscape does not appear as usually portrayed.

It might be difficult to "prove" just exactly what the Canadian mainstream or art establishment view of art is in this country, however there is no doubt that this view is skewed hugely towards Toronto and, to a lesser extent, Montreal, which also has a second language establishment skewing exclusively towards it.

Just going by the general feeling portrayed out there in the national media, the relative scale of cultural influence in Canada goes something like this: Toronto 60%, Montreal 20%, Vancouver 10%, and all the rest 10%. The francophone breakdown would be something like: Montreal 60%, rest of Quebec 20%, Toronto 10%, and all the rest 10%.

Hard to prove in any concrete way, but in my opinion these figures are even more ridiculously skewed than I've shown. And maybe we will get around to quantifying this in the future.

For now, though, I would like to propose an alternative model, the Canadian Map of Yellow pages listings in Kultcha (CMYK).

The CMYK model is based on a simple count of Yellow Pages listings in 41 cities across the country, in culture-related categories or key words. I used the following categories: art galleries, theatre live, dance, framing, art supplies, art school, studios and museums.

TALK ABOUT ADDING APPLES AND ORANGES!

Once the number of listings is tabulated, you can do whatever you want with them.

For example, you can marvel at the fact that Victoria has 60% of the number of art galleries that Montreal has, and nearly half the art supplies listings that Toronto has, but just a smidgen of the population of either metropolis.

Or, you can explore the ratios of different listings among different cities. Like, Toronto has three to one art galleries to 'theatre live' listings, whereas Montreal has two to one, or St. John's has almost one to one art galleries to dance listings, but almost negligible live theatre, but Laval has four times the number of dance listings as art galleries and more live theatre than art galleries as well.

Or, you can just go ahead and add up all the numbers and see what you get adding apples and oranges.

The total scores come out like this: Toronto 2841, Vancouver 2441, Montreal 2339, Calgary 2122, Edmonton 2063, Ottawa 1471, Winnipeg 1324, Victoria 1027, Quebec City 898, Halifax 860,
London 711, Hamilton 673, Kitchener-Waterloo 637, Saskatoon 563, Longueuil 560, Regina 520, Windsor 507, Kelowna 497, St John's 472, Red Deer 413, Guelph 409, Laval 377, Charlottetown 366, Moncton 362, Nanaimo 319, Lethbridge and Prince George (tie) 287, Niagara Falls 285, Thunder Bay 276, St. John 270, Kamloops 267, Brandon 249, Banff and Saguenay (tie) 219, Whistler 207, Medicine Hat 169, Fort McMurray 162, Moose Jaw 147, Swift Current 120, Baie St. Paul 92, Mont Tremblant 76.

Ultimately, an egalitarian view of Canadian culture is produced. Toronto gets 10% of the importance, Vancouver 9%, Montreal 9%, Calgary 8%, Edmonton 7% and so on.

So we see that Toronto is maybe 6 times more important than Longueuil or Regina, not 10,000 times more important as one would surmise by viewing things from the national media or 'art establishment' perspective.

The numbers are flawed in many ways. Foremost, you would have a lot of difficulty to sort out each category to ensure that all listings were actually what they appear. For example, there is one nationally advertising dance costume supplier advertising in all cities in (eastern?) Canada. Or, 'framing' sometimes includes a few house, door/window or eyeglass framers. Also, many operations advertise in numerous cities, so a Toronto listing might also appear in Guelph, Hamilton, etc. Another factor is the fragmentation of cities. Calgary, Edmonton and other cities are perhaps over-represented because they include the full suburbs and hinterland right out to the open prairie. Vancouver, meanwhile, is technically only a city of +/- 500,000 people surrounded by very large suburbs, so it's unclear exactly how this affects the listings but I'm going on the premise that the listings for Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey etc. are mostly included in the searches made for Vancouver. In the case of Montreal, I've chosen to include Laval and Longueuil separately, whereas I have not done this with the Toronto region (the only similar municipality there I'm aware of is Mississauga and I'm pretty sure it was merged with TO so if I'm leaving out any substantial non-merged Torontonian mega-burbs I apologize for that).

Another main consideration (among numerous yet unmentioned!) is how the categories should be weighted. A simple one-for-one strategy like I've used is arguably OK. Still, the 'studios' category accounts for about 38% of all the total cultural listings considered, whereas the 'museums' category accounts for only 4% of the individual listings. The number of studios is large, but it must be remembered that it includes photographers, digital artists, recording studios, film studios, etc. It is a great catch-all for reflecting cultural activity. So, I just decided to go with one-to-one to see what would happen.

One final 'weakness' (or filter) to mention here: presumably, there is a cost involved in getting a listing in the Yellow Pages. On one hand, this factor tends to legitimize the listings - on the other hand, it certainly excludes a good number of potentially legitimate listings.

What I like about this "CMYK" snapshot is the purely random, raw information it conveys, uninflected by someone's opinion of what is prestigious or important and what is not.

I will publish the complete findings in the near future.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!