Thirteen Canadian Cities from Fredericton to St. Albert, East to West

The capital of New Brunswick sits on the Saint John River, which flows west to east and bisects the city. Its page counts a metropolitan population of about 125,000, making it the third-largest city in the province after Moncton and Saint John.

An enclave inside Montreal, this Quebec city of 34,504 people at the 2021 census is mostly English-speaking, with 69.1 percent of residents identifying as Jewish. It merged with Montreal in 2002 and was re-established as independent in 2006 after a vote to demerge.

Here the Niagara River forms part of the Canada-United States border, and the city faces its twin city of Niagara Falls, New York across the water. It had 94,415 residents at the 2021 census and lies in the Regional Municipality of Niagara.

Loyalists settled here in the 1780s, and the Welland Canal, built between 1824 and 1833, made it a commercial hub. It was also a terminus of the Underground Railroad, where the abolitionist Harriet Tubman lived, and it had 136,803 residents at the 2021 census.

At the west end of Lake Ontario, Burlington borders Hamilton, Milton and Oakville. It was founded in 1874, was granted city status in 1974, and had 186,948 people in 2021, the twenty-eighth most populous municipality in Canada.

Mississauga was formed from three former villages and two townships before it was incorporated as a city in 1974. It is home to Toronto Pearson International Airport, and its 2021 census population of 717,961 makes it the seventh most populous municipality in Canada.

The regional seat of the Regional Municipality of Peel is the ninth most populous municipality in Canada. Its page names it the third most populous city in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, behind Toronto and Mississauga.

Immediately north of Toronto, Vaughan saw its population rise 80.2 percent between 1996 and 2006 as farmland gave way to suburbs. It had 323,103 residents at the 2021 census and is the fifth largest city in the Greater Toronto Area.

Richmond Hill became a city in 2019 after being a town since 1957, and it sits between Markham and Vaughan. It is home to the David Dunlap Observatory telescope, the largest in Canada, and had 202,022 residents in 2021.

Kitchener was known as Berlin until a 1916 referendum changed its name. About 100 kilometers west of Toronto, it is the administrative center of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo and is often paired with neighboring Waterloo as the twin cities Kitchener-Waterloo.

A single-tier municipality in southwestern Ontario, Chatham-Kent was created in 1998 when twenty-one smaller communities and townships, including the former City of Chatham, were consolidated. It remains largely rural, with seven main population centers including Wallaceburg, Tilbury and Dresden.

Brandon was established in 1881 when the Canadian Pacific Railway selected the site on the Assiniboine River, and it was incorporated as a city in 1882. It is Manitoba's second-largest city, 197 kilometers west of Winnipeg, with 51,313 people in 2021.

Settled as a Métis community, St. Albert received town status in 1904 and was reached by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1906. Edmonton's expansion in the 1980s placed it directly beside the larger city, and it is now the second largest city in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region.