Ontario · Civic arena
Owen Sound drinking water hardness is 209 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#138 of 343
52% City Score XP
6/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Owen Sound 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.
Rivalries on deck
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.
Full Owen Sound water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Thorold · vs OshawaHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Owen Sound from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Sports
66 GP · 110 pts · Compare CHL cities
Owen Sound sits at City Score rank #138 with a standing of 52%, 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. Rising 83 places versus 2022 (#221 → #138).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #95 of 327 at 115 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #8 of 57 (17.26 mill rate). 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, Owen Sound carries a City Score standing of 52% (rank #138 of 343) with 6 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 0 points below the Ontario peer average across 123 ranked cities. Within Ontario, Owen Sound ranks #68 of 123 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is population growth (standing 87%, rank #46 of 343, +2.6% annual growth). The weakest observed pillar is property tax (standing 14%, rank #8 of 57).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 209 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Owen Sound. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #138 of 343
6/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #96
No placement
Rank #175
Rank #95
Rank #279
Rank #8
Owen Sound pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
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
Published residential mill-rate context for Owen Sound.
Municipal gallery named on the City home page and About list. It anchors the cultural roster beside the library and waterfront heritage
Downtown riverside district for shops, dining, and arts. City pages point here when they mean the historic core rather than the east-side
Municipal About copy brands Owen Sound the Scenic City and places it under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on Georgian Bay.
Where Owen Sound sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Owen Sound calls itself the Scenic City with a straight face, and the map backs the branding. The town sits in a valley under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on the southern shore of Georgian Bay, at the foot of the Bruce Peninsula. Harbour and bay do the framing; the Bruce Trail ribbons the escarpment edge and ties waterfalls into a walking circuit. Inglis Falls and Harrison Park are the named outdoors stops people actually give directions to. Kelso Beach at Nawash Park is the swim check every summer, the place Grey Bruce Public Health posts when bacteria levels push a beach advisory onto the City home page.
Downtown life clusters in the River District, the riverside strip of shops, dining, and arts that City pages treat as the core economy. Cultural addresses stack quickly: Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Billy Bishop Home & Museum, the Carnegie library building, Grey Roots nearby, and the Farmers' Market. Festival season brings Summerfolk Music & Crafts Festival, the Salmon Spectacular fishing derby, and winter's Festival of Northern Lights. Sun Times sports pages keep score for the Owen Sound Attack on the ice and the North Stars on the lacrosse floor, local teams that need no introduction once you have lived a winter here.
Getting in or out without a car often means GOST, the Guelph Owen Sound Transportation link the City keeps renewing in service notices. On the OpenStats City Score for 2025, Owen Sound sits at rank 116 of 343. Rankings aside, the hometown read is Escarpment above, Georgian Bay ahead, and a River District you walk when you mean downtown.
Drawn from City of Owen Sound, City of Owen Sound About, Owen Sound Tourism, Owen Sound Sun Times.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
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.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Owen Sound without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.
Connectivity · OpenStats
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
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Canadian Hockey League (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) member cities ranked by regular-season points percentage. One CHL team maps to each OpenStats hometown slug; standings snapshot is curated from public league tables.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Owen Sound in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Composite · OpenStats
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
Water · OpenStats
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
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
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
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Hometowns with a mapped junior hockey franchise ranked by local sports depth: league tier (CHL member leagues = 1.0, MHL = 0.65) multiplied by regular-season points percentage. Surfaces cities with both a franchise and a strong standings year; not a City Score pillar input.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Owen Sound in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Growth · OpenStats
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
Property tax · OpenStats
OpenStats
Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate (education levies are shown on property-tax pages but not added here). Rank 1 is the highest rate. Atlas seed and published municipal rows anchor the panel; off-panel tax years (e.g. 2026) carry across 2016–2025; remaining gaps follow provincial paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Hazards · OpenStats
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
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Municipal About copy brands Owen Sound the Scenic City and places it under Niagara Escarpment cliffs on Georgian Bay.
The Bruce Trail forms a ribbon around the city along the escarpment, linking falls and conservation ground.
Kelso Beach at Nawash Park is the named swim spot that carries Grey Bruce Public Health advisories on the City home page.
GOST is the Guelph Owen Sound Transportation service the City announces when intercity bus links continue.
Major city park on the municipal attractions list and a tourism staple. Streams, trails, and green space sit close enough to town that residents treat it as an everyday outdoors address.
Downtown riverside district for shops, dining, and arts. City pages point here when they mean the historic core rather than the east-side malls.
Municipal gallery named on the City home page and About list. It anchors the cultural roster beside the library and waterfront heritage stops.
Named natural attraction on the City About page, one of the escarpment stops hikers pair with Bruce Trail stretches. It is the waterfall locals give visitors before the brochure language starts.
When Owen Sound moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
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