Kingston ranked most gender diverse city in Ontario

Kingston has officially been ranked the most gender diverse city in Ontario, according to the 2021 Census. It made the list for having the largest proportion of transgender and non-binary people in Ontario and has the fifth most gender diverse urban centre in Canada.

The 2021 Census also revealed that approximately one out of every 300 people in Canada aged 15 and older were either transgender or non-binary.

Canada has officially become the first country to collect and disseminate data on gender diversity from a national census.

“We are celebrating the visibility this brings - but this also underlines the need for support for transgender and non-binary faculty, staff, and students. I’m excited to be poised to work on these projects and advocate on behalf of Queen’s,” says Elliot Chapple, Director of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization.

According to the data, 0.52 per cent of the urban centre of Kingston identifies as transgender or non-binary. Of this population, 0.14 per cent of the population identifies as a transgender male, 0.13 per cent identifies as transgender women and 0.25 per cent identify as non-binary.

Generally, Statistics Canada noted that non-binary and transgender tend to be younger on average than cisgender people. In fact, close to two-thirds (62.0 per cent) of the 100,815 individuals who identified as transgender or non-binary were younger than 35.

The census also found that living in the downtown core was more popular for non-binary people than for transgender and cisgender people. Nearly one in six non-binary people aged 15 and older in Canada (15.5 per cent) were living in the downtown of one of the country’s 41 census metropolitan areas.

For more information see all the data on the Census Canada webpage.