Mapping Ottawa’s seniors

Ottawa Citizen city hall reporter Neco Cockburn had a really interesting piece last week about the greying of Ottawa’s population.

The number of seniors is expected to double in Ottawa by 2022 as baby boomers age.

I’ve been playing around with Google Fusion Tables recently (inspired by Chad Skelton’s mapping of census data in Vancouver) and thought it might be fun to see where the old folks are in Ottawa.

Above is a map showing the concentrations of people age 65 and over.  It shows an area around Rothwell Heights has the highest concentration of seniors.

I also mapped young people aged 14 and younger. I was struck by the density of young people around Lees Avenue, just off the Queensway.

That area has traditionally been one with a substantial number of new immigrants in the low-rent Lees apartments.


I’m really impressed by how easy it is to create complex maps using Fusion Tables.

It isn’t nearly as powerful as ArcGIS software, which I still use to work with the underlying shape files. Fusion Tables is also a bit clunky with manipulating data, so MySQL and Excel remain my preferred tools.

But once the data is ready to publish, this is a great way to go.

One thought on “Mapping Ottawa’s seniors

  1. I can’t help but smile at the fact that Beechwood Cemetery has a high number of seniors, too.

    Interesting work, Mr. McGregor.

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