Northeastern Ontario grew by 8,647 people in the last 5 years, according to census

The latest census numbers show that after decades of a slow and steady decline, northeastern Ontario grew in the last five years.

The national count from 2021 shows the region's population at 557,096, an increase of 8,647 over the 2016 census.

This follows a dip of 2,600 in the population between 2011 and 2016.

Some of the biggest increases were in Greater Sudbury, where there are 4,473 more residents and the Parry Sound district that it's population jump by more than 4,000.

Among the 680 new people living on Manitoulin Island are Candice Irwin and Arthur Ross.

The Toronto couple came to the island for a vacation in the summer of 2020 and moved up six weeks later.

Although, Irwin said her husband made her experience a full northern Ontario winter before they bought a permanent home in Little Current in the spring of 2021.

"We just instantly fell in love, I think is the only clear way of saying it," said the 31-year-old professional dancer, who grew up on the west coast. 

"It was the closest feeling I get to the feeling I have when I stand near an ocean."

Irwin said they keep meeting other newcomers to Manitoulin who also left Toronto and other big cities behind. 

"I think COVID has given people a chance to pause and kind of evaluate if that really works for them," she said. 

"But I also have a feeling that there will be some people that stay and some people that realize it isn't the right fit for them and continue onward to the next spot."

Tired of Toronto condo life, Holland Marshall and his wife started looking in 2020 for a city where they could afford a detached home, that also had a regional teaching hospital. 

"That narrows it down to only five or six cities in Ontario," said the 74-year-old retiree.

They bought a house in Sudbury for about half of what they got for their North York condo and Marshall now documents his new life in a blog on Substack and on a Twitter feed called "Moved to Sudbury", now a city of 166,004 people.

But he doesn't expect many will follow them north. 

"I don't think there's a mass migration," said Marshall.

North Bay has about 1,109 more citizens than it did five years ago, when the census reported that it had lost 2,089 people since 2011.

That gloomy figure prompted long-time Mayor Al McDonald to run on a "growth" platform in the 2018 election, which he said has been successful luring new investment to the city and saw 2021 set records for new construction.

"And now we're attracting new businesses that would have never considered North Bay or northern Ontario in the past," he said.

"Now, the phones are ringing. People want to move here."

McDonald said North Bay's population of 52,662 also includes people who moved from smaller towns in northern Ontario, especially those with shaky internet service that are a much longer drive to Toronto or Ottawa.

Several small towns saw their population grow in the last five years, including 630 more in Elliot Lake and increases of a couple hundred in West Nipissing, Callander, East Ferris, French River and other bedroom communities near the region's larger cities.

But many communities in the northeast have shrunk since 2016, including a dip of 643 in Timmins, 235 in Kapuskasing, a drop of 200 in Wawa, 276 in Hearst and 119 in Iroquois Falls.

The census shows Temiskaming Shores lost 280 people, but Mayor Carman Kidd isn't buying it.

 "Not putting a whole lot weight on the previous census, because I know we've had a real boom in the housing prices and people moving from southern Ontario," he said.

Kidd said in almost a year since the census was taken, Temiskaming Shores has seen many "houses purchased sight unseen" and he expects their population is actually higher than the listed 9,634.

In Kirkland Lake, Mayor Pat Kiely has also seen many newcomers moving in for cheaper housing and finds it a "little bit mind-boggling" that their population has dropped by 231 in the last five years. 

"It's a bit disappointing and a bit surprising, because we see a lot of new people coming to town, obviously some people are exiting town," said the mayor of the town of 7,750. 

Sault Ste. Marie saw it's population shrink by 1,317 in the last five years and by about 3,000 in the past decade.

Rory Ring, the CEO of the local chamber of commerce, said businesses looking at moving to the Sault or expanding existing operations are well aware of the population declines. 

"Businesses are really, really aware of the challenges that are going to faced if we continue to see this decline in our population, combined with the aging of our population," he said.

"Pre-pandemic those conversations were happening already and they have been amplified over the last two years. So the conversations really have almost become survival mode as opposed to growing mode."

Ring said Sault Ste. Marie is making an effort to grow past it's current 72,051 and as part of the Future SSM project, is aiming to increase it's population by 10,000 by the time of the 2031 census.