Want to know what makes a great place to live? Ask Susan Bird. Over the past 20 years she and her husband Darren have hopscotched across Canada, going wherever Darren's engineering career has taken them. Along the way, they've raised two kids and seen first-hand what's right — or wrong — about life in several towns and cities.

Start with Burtts Corner, a small town outside of Fredericton. Susan grew up there. It was a great place to be a kid. Safe, quiet. No need to lock your doors at night. In 1989, when she was 22, Susan married Darren, a local boy, and they moved down the road to Fredericton. They could have happily spent the rest of their lives there, but only six months after their wedding Darren landed a job building ships in Saint John, N.B. That's where the Birds' son, Josh, was born in 1991 and, two years later, their daughter, Rachael.

Life was good until 1996 when work at the shipyard began to dry up. Darren went looking for another place to apply his engineering skills and found it on the other side of the country, at an engineering firm in Calgary. “We were sad to leave the Maritimes, because it's where we grew up,” says Susan. But Calgary turned out to be “awesome.” The schools were top-notch, it was easy to find a doctor and everyone “was so laid back and friendly.” Even the long winters were surprisingly livable thanks to the warm chinook winds that would periodically pour down from the mountains and over the city. Darren and Susan settled happily into the Calgary suburb of Airdrie. They might have stayed there for good — but then, four years ago, Darren's company offered him a job in Ottawa. The Birds have been living in the nation's capital ever since.

Susan scoffs at the notion that places are all pretty much alike. While franchise stores and television shows may be much the same anywhere, the Birds have become experts at recognizing the sometimes big, sometimes subtle, differences that give cities their distinct personalities.

Susan can tick off the high or low points of every place she's lived. Saint John offered sweeping ocean views, but its air was a foggy, polluted soup. Calgary boasted fresh air, but its house prices were ridiculous, even in the outlying subdivisions where yards the size of postage stamps contradicted the Birds' image of Alberta as the wide-open West. As for Ottawa, Susan loves its long, hot summers (in Calgary, she remembers, it once snowed in July). She is less thrilled with Ontario taxes, which are much higher than in Alberta.

As Susan will tell you, a lot of factors go into making a city a great place to live. And that's precisely what our fourth annual ranking of Canada's Best Places to Live sets out to measure. We've painstakingly compiled vital stats on 154 communities from coast to coast. Our goal is to help you find the best places to put down roots, the best places to have a good time and the best places to retire. No matter how you define paradise, we've got the numbers that can help you find the city that will suit you best.

The list

We believe this year's version of Canada's Best Places to Live is our most comprehensive research project yet. While we've kept all the indicators of community quality used in previous editions, we've added more data on crime rates and medical services. We've also turned our attention to measuring the impact of culture and recreation. Finally we've compared how much more in sales and income tax you'll pay from one province to the next. (Hint: the further west you go, the more you save.)

Our approach to ranking communities is unique in two ways. First, we don't rely on subjective judgments. Most rankings of best places rely upon touristy impressions of historic downtowns and spectacular beaches. We think that approach is flawed because a visitor's impressions can be skewed by personal preference or by a single experience, good or bad. In contrast, our grading system looks only at features that have broad appeal and that can be reliably measured with hard numbers.

Second, we focus on the factors most likely to affect your long-term happiness. While we've got nothing against charming downtowns and nice beaches, we prefer to concentrate on more practical matters: your chances of landing a good job, affording a nice home, and getting high-quality medical care. Much of what we measure is invisible to the tourist's eye — which is why some of our top communities might come as a surprise to you.

To arrive at our rankings, we rate each community on 24 indicators. We pride ourselves on being tough markers. No city comes close to earning full points and even our very top cities don't get much beyond 70 points out of a maximum of 105. Here's how we dole out our marks:

Chance of flurries

We start by looking at daily temperatures. Places that enjoy fewer days below zero earn more points than ones that resemble a meat freezer most of the year.