A few
tasteful snaps

Hewer of wood, namer of streets after trees

I was playing around with Where the Streets Have Your Name and became curious about the frequency of street names in Canada.

Using some open data sources, I was able to pull together a list of the most-common street names in Canada (long and tedious bit about the methodology appears below the table).

Oddly, “Second” is the most frequent street name in towns, villages and cities across the country. This seems counterintuitive until you realize that “First Street” is usually the main drag in a town and prone to renaming, often for a local hero or something bland imposed by provincial authorities.

Thus, what should be called First Street in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, is now Mitchell Street. Instead of First Street in Denzil, Saskatchewan, there is Highway 676.

The remaining numbered streets follow Benford’s Law, so there are fewer Fifths than Fourths and Ninths than Eighths.

The top of the list also includes the blancmange Main and Park, of course, but a unique Canadian quirk is Railway so high on the list. This is due to the number of towns that sprung up along the Canadian Pacific Railway line, particularly on the Prairies.

Victoria is also a nice reference to our former Queen, in keeping with the era in which many of Canada’s smaller towns acquired proper street names.

And then there are the trees: Maple (and des Erables), Pine (des Pins), Birch, Spruce, Cedar, Willow, Poplar. Monty Python fans will be disappointed that “The Larch” does not make the top 200. There’s only 87 Larch streets.

Rank	Street	Number
1	Second	1891
2	First	1833
3	Third	1540
4	Fourth	1237
5	Main	972
6	Fifth	875
7	Sixth	858
8	Park	781
9	Seventh	738
10	Railway	714
11	Maple	710
12	Pine	535
13	Church	523
14	Birch	516
15	Victoria	513
16	Eighth	506
17	Spruce	499
18	King	498
19	Cedar	489
20	Ninth	465
21	Willow	444
22	Tenth	443
23	Poplar	437
24	River	422
25	Sunset	420
26	Elm	408
27	Centre	403
28	Queen	382
29	Mill	373
30	Oak	366
31	Lakeview	337
32	George	321
33	James	319
34	de l’Eglise	316
35	Smith	311
36	Albert	307
37	des Erables	299
38	William	293
39	Martin	285
40	North	284
41	Campbell	278
42	Elizabeth	276
43	John	276
44	Riverside	276
45	Wilson	272
46	Aspen	271
47	Principale	263
48	Charles	254
49	Lake	253
50	des Pins	251
51	Scott	251
52	Wellington	251
53	Nelson	249
54	du Parc	248
55	Taylor	247
56	Ross	246
57	Beach	245
58	Forest	245
59	Hillcrest	243
60	Bayview	241
61	50th	240
62	Evergreen	240
63	49th	238
64	Saint-Joseph	238
65	Thompson	238
66	Water	238
67	Hillside	237
68	Bellevue	235
69	West	235
70	Fraser	233
71	Cameron	232
72	48th	231
73	Douglas	231
74	51st	226
75	des Cedres	226
76	52nd	224
77	Riverview	222
78	Hill	220
79	Centennial	219
80	Eleventh	217
81	16th	216
82	Thomas	214
83	des Bouleaux	212
84	Highland	212
85	Ash	208
86	Station	208
87	Roy	205
88	Richard	204
89	Robert	202
90	53rd	199
91	MacDonald	199
92	Hamilton	195
93	Murray	195
94	Robinson	195
95	Johnson	193
96	Alexander	192
97	du Moulin	192
98	Lakeshore	191
99	Saint-Pierre	190
100	Anderson	189
101	Arthur	188
102	Elgin	188
103	Gordon	187
104	Heritage	187
105	47th	186
106	Mary	186
107	Churchill	184
108	East	184
109	South	184
110	Miller	183
111	Edward	182
112	Princess	182
113	Woodland	182
114	Champlain	181
115	Stewart	181
116	York	181
117	Balsam	180
118	Industrial	179
119	Meadow	179
120	5th	178
121	Young	178
122	Brown	177
123	Juniper	177
124	Laurier	177
125	Front	176
126	Twelfth	175
127	Stanley	174
128	School	173
129	du Lac	172
130	Kennedy	172
131	55th	171
132	Rose	171
133	de la Montagne	170
134	Hemlock	170
135	Saint-Louis	170
136	Graham	169
137	de la Rivi?re	167
138	Green	166
139	Henry	166
140	Bay	165
141	Walker	165
142	Airport	164
143	Eagle	164
144	Ridge	162
145	Mountain	160
146	Alder	158
147	Baker	157
148	Bell	157
149	Chestnut	157
150	Orchard	157
151	David	155
152	Russell	155
153	Sunrise	153
154	Gagnon	152
155	Union	152
156	Davis	151
157	Parkview	151
158	Clark	150
159	Grant	150
160	Kelly	150
161	45	149
162	46	149
163	Sherwood	149
164	Dufferin	148
165	Valley	148
166	Garden	147
167	54	146
168	McDonald	146
169	Greenwood	145
170	13	144
171	15	144
172	Cherry	144
173	Lorne	143
174	Mitchell	143
175	Moore	143
176	Ontario	143
177	Saint-Jean	143
178	Wallace	143
179	Bernard	142
180	Cartier	142
181	Fairview	142
182	Tamarack	142
183	Lakeside	141
184	Beaver	140
185	du Ruisseau	140
186	Morin	140
187	Bridge	139
188	Raymond	139
189	Prince	138
190	Broadway	137
191	Walnut	136
192	High	135
193	Jackson	135
194	Pleasant	135
195	Cemetery	134
196	des Saules	134
197	Jones	134
198	Royal	134
199	20	132
200	Cardinal	132

Methodology: I thought pulling together this list would be a relatively simple task, but it was surprisingly complex. I couldn’t find any open-data sources with a full list of street names across the entire country. The best I could do was an enormous map file (an .shp) called the National Roads Network.
I imported this 250 MB file into ArcMap, a GIS program and found that while it includes what appears to be every street in the country, it doesn’t identify the community in which it is located. Worse, many streets list in the file are broken down into multiple segements, so Bank Street in Ottawa is listed multiple times and difficult to distinguish from Bank Place in Kamloops.

In order to sort this list, I needed to assign each street to its nearest town, village or city. Here, ArcMap was indispensable. I used a “spatial join” to calculate the distance of several million street segments to the nearest community. Even on a fast computer, this took a while.

Once each street segment was assigned its closest community, I exported the records to MySQL and used a GROUP BY to cluster the streets by community, then count the number of unique records you see listed above.

The approach in not perfect. Ideally, I would have had shapefiles with polygons for the boundaries of every community in the country. That’s not available for free, yet.

So, the number counts are probably not perfect, but close enough for fun. * Note: For the sake of simplicity, French and English versions of numbered streets were counted together, so that Second, 2nd, and 2e are grouped.