The majority of Rosslanders over the age of 15 are married or living common law, according to Statistics Canada.
The organization released results from the 2016 census regarding families, household and marital status on Wednesday, Aug. 2, and of the 3,040 people in Rossland who are over 15, 64.5 per cent are married or living common law.
Of those, 1,495 or 76.3 per cent are married, while 465 or 23.7 per cent are living common law.
Of those who are unmarried or not living common law, 705 or 65.3 per cent have never been married, 85 or 7.9 per cent are separated, 175 or 16.2 per cent are divorced, and 115 or 10.6 per cent are widowed.
It’s also worth noting that 210 Rossland residents are between the ages of 15 and 19, and the marital data isn’t broken down by age.
The majority of private households in Rossland are occupied by what Statistics Canada dubs one-census-family households.
A census family is made up of either a married or common-law couple who may or may not have children living with them, or a lone parent of any marital status who has at least one child living with them.
“Children may be children by birth, marriage, common-law union or adoption regardless of their age or marital status as long as they live in the dwelling and do not have their own married spouse, common-law partner or child living in the dwelling,” according to Stats Canada’s definition.
In total, 1,085 or 68.2 per cent of Rossland households are occupied by one census family — 495 or 45.6 per cent of which don’t have children and 585 or 53.9 per cent of which do.
(You may notice that the math here doesn’t quite add up. Asked for an explanation, Statistics Canada informed us that, “The differences you are noticing in the numbers are all due to random rounding. As mentioned in the Guide to the Census of Population (see Chapter 11, last section on Data Suppression), ‘all counts in census tabulations undergo random rounding, a process that transforms all raw counts into randomly rounded counts. This reduces the possibility of identifying individuals in the tabulations.’”)
Only 10 or 0.6 per cent of households in Rossland are occupied by multiple-census families. This could include multigenerational families sharing the same household.
The average size of a census family in Rossland is 2.8 people and the majority of Rossland census families — 570 out of 1,100 or 51.8 per cent — are two-person families.
The other 500 or 31.4 per cent of private Rossland households are occupied by non-census families. This includes 440 one-person households and 55 households with two or more people — which could include roommates or siblings living together.
In total, 610 people in Rossland are not in census families, according to Statistics Canada, though this could still include people who are living with family, as in the sibling example above or in the case where one grandparent is living with their child’s family. In that case the grandparent wouldn’t be included in a census family. On the other hand, if a grandparent is raising their grandchild, and the child’s parent is not present, the two are counted as a census family.
Most people in Rossland speak English
Stats Canada also released data on languages.
For the majority of people in Rossland, their first official language spoken is English — 3,600 or 96.5 per cent — while for 125 or 3.4 per cent its French. Five Rosslanders reported both English and French as their first official language spoken and five reported that neither official language was their first official language spoken.
Most people in Rossland only reported one mother tongue — 3,700 or 99.2 per cent — and of those 91.1 per cent speak English as their mother tongue, 3.4 per cent French and 5.5 per cent reported languages other than Canada’s two official languages, including Cebuano, Ilocano, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, German, Bengali, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, sign language, Cantonese, Burmese and Finnish.
Thirty people, or 0.8 per cent of Rosslanders, reported more than one mother tongue, and of those a third reported English and French and half reported English and a “non-official language.”
Most people in Rossland also reported only speaking one language at home — 3,695 or 99.1 per cent — and of those 96.3 per cent speak English, 2.o per cent speak French and 1.5 speak other languages, including Tigrigna, Slovak, Afrikaans, Dutch, German, Spanish, Cantonese and Burmese.
Thirty-five people in Rossland reported speaking more than one language at home and of those 25 said they spoke English and an unofficial language, and five said they spoke English, French and an unofficial language.