Dawson Creek, British Columbia
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British Columbia · Civic arena

Dawson Creek

Dawson Creek drinking water hardness is 215 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.

Civic arena · hometown HUD

Dawson Creek

Census_agglomeration18k pop
33XP
#342

#342 of 343

33% City Score XP

Surface
City Score XP

6/8 pillars on the board

33%#342

Decade trail

Dawson Creek packs 6 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.

Dawson Creek drinking water

Regional estimate from nearest municipal sample

Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.

Hardness
215 mg/L
very hard
pH
7.8
Lead
0.7 μg/L

Full Dawson Creek water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Campbell River · vs Port AlberniHardness guide

Watershed to tap · system map

How Dawson Creek's water works

Source, treatment, and distribution for Dawson Creek from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.

Local numbers for Dawson Creek

Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.

How Dawson Creek scores

Dawson Creek sits at City Score rank #342 with a standing of 33%, from 6 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.

Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #190 of 327 at 95 Bq/m³ survey mean. Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.

On the latest OpenStats pass, Dawson Creek carries a City Score standing of 33% (rank #342 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 15 points below the British Columbia peer average across 58 ranked cities. Within British Columbia, Dawson Creek ranks #58 of 58 on City Score.

The strongest signal in the current chart is seismic hazard (standing 62%, rank #212 of 343, raw score 0.039). The weakest observed pillar is police-reported crime severity (standing 5%, rank #5 of 102, 215.2 CSI). Crime severity uses the Statistics Canada police-service CSI mapped to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, municipal (table 35100063), not a regional proxy.

Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 215 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Dawson Creek. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.

#342
Arena rank (of 343)
33%
City Score
6
Pillars observed

Arena loadout

Topic XP bars

Arena rank #342 of 343

City Score

6/8 pillars · main XP bar

33%#342
Drinking water

Pillar avg · hardness #88

14%
Building permits

No placement

—
Internet

Rank #310

10%
Radon

Rank #190

58%
Hazards

Rank #212

62%
Property tax

No placement

—

Dawson Creek pillar standing

Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.

TaxPermitsNetRadonWaterHazardsGrowthCrime

Source: OpenStats composite / study editions

City Score standing trend

Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).

Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Source: OpenStats composite timeseries

Achievements

Surface water supply

Hometown notes

City profile

Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.

Dawson Creek in brief

Dawson Creek introduces itself two ways at once. Tourism hangs a Mile 0 sign on the Alaska Highway story, while City Hall recruitment talks about Start Something in DC. Both frames fit a place that sits at a Peace Region crossroads: Highway 97 running south toward Prince George and north as the Alaska Highway, Highway 49 pointing at the Alberta Peace, and Highway 2 tying the town toward Grande Prairie. Locals and visitor copy still reach for Capital of the Peace when they mean this highway hub, not a postcard slogan pasted on any northern town.

Work here still reads like a South Peace mix. Municipal pages name agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, wood products, and a growing renewable-energy lane beside education and health care. Northern Lights College keeps trades and academic traffic on campus, and the Dawson Creek & District Hospital rebuild shows up in the same civic investment list as Kin Park sport courts and flood planning. When the calendar turns loud, it is the Dawson Creek Exhibition & Stampede, Mile Zero Market, and nights at the Ovintiv Events Centre, with Bear Mountain Ski Hill for the colder months.

The longer memory sits in the Peace River region and Treaty 8 territory the city acknowledges as home to Cree, Dane-Zaa, Saulteau, Sikanni, and Slavey First Nations, with Métis families gathering here too. Downtown keeps a Historic Walking Tour for anyone who wants the railway-and-highway chapters without a museum lecture. Energetic City and Alaska Highway News still treat Dawson Creek as South Peace news country. If someone says DC, Mile 0, and Kin Park in the same breath, they are already speaking local.

Drawn from Tourism Dawson Creek, City of Dawson Creek, City of Dawson Creek, City of Dawson Creek.

City Score over time

City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.

0%25%50%75%100%2016201720182019202020212022202320242025
OpenStats City Score

Rankings for Dawson Creek

Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.

Connectivity · OpenStats

OpenStats Broadband Download Speeds

OpenStats

Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#310
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 93.7

Composite · OpenStats

OpenStats City Score

OpenStats

Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016-2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0-1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); mill rates and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#342
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.331

Safety · OpenStats

OpenStats Crime Severity Index

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index at police-service grain (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01 for British Columbia). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Cities without a police-service match are not listed; the safety pillar scores at median standing on City Score. Hometown pages name the police service and reference year.

CSI from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, municipal (2025, Table 35-10-0063-01).

10 editions · 2016–2025

#5
Latest · 2025 · of 102
Score 215.18

Water · OpenStats

OpenStats Drinking Water Hardness

OpenStats

Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#88
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 215

Health · OpenStats

OpenStats Highest Indoor Radon

OpenStats

Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#190
Latest · 2025 · of 327
Score 94.5

Growth · OpenStats

OpenStats Population Growth

OpenStats

Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#291
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score -0.00014665982254161473

Hazards · OpenStats

OpenStats Seismic Hazard (PGA)

OpenStats

Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.

10 editions · 2016–2025

#212
Latest · 2025 · of 343
Score 0.039

Livability

Maclean's Best Communities

Maclean's

Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).

Single edition · 2021

#383
Published · 2021 · of 415

Only one published edition places Dawson Creek in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.

Original source · Full edition

Worth knowing in Dawson Creek

Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.

  • Tourism sells a Mile 0 adventure on the Alaska Highway, while City Hall recruitment shortens the hometown to DC.

    Tourism Dawson Creek

  • Getting-here copy calls Dawson Creek the Capital of the Peace for sitting at Highways 97, 49, and 2.

    Tourism Dawson Creek

  • Community-profile recreation jumps from Bear Mountain Ski Hill to concerts at the Ovintiv Events Centre.

    City of Dawson Creek

  • Start Something in DC lists agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, and renewables beside Northern Lights College and hospital investment.

    City of Dawson Creek

Places to see

Ovintiv Events Centre

The big-room stop when a show or tournament lands in town, named right in the city's community profile.

Kin Park

City park tied to new multi-use sport courts in civic infrastructure talk, close to the Kin Arena sports-floor scene.

Historic Walking Tour

Tourism's downtown walk for railway, highway, and storefront chapters without needing a guided bus.

Mile Zero Market

Named market date on the summer calendar, sitting beside stampede and ranch-rodeo listings.

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