Ontario, BC and the Yukon bucked the trend of Canadians who would rather shirk
marriage vows in favor of unrecognized legal unions like common-law
partnership.
In Ontario, marriages rose three per cent in 2003 according to numbers released
by Statistics Canada on Wednesday, while BC unions rose 3.5 per cent over the
previous year.
Yukon marriage incidence rose a whopping 10.5 per cent - when total marriages
for 2003 tallied in at 158.
An influential factor new to marriage rates in 2003 is the addition of same sex
marriages to BC and Ontario totals.
While BC reports 774 of the 21,981 marriages in 2003 were same-sex couples,
Ontario did not collect data on gender in the province.
So effectively BC opposite-sex marriage rates stayed exactly the same as the
previous year.
On a whole, the marriage rate has fallen leading up to 2003 after a plateau in
2000 with a number of so-called 'millennium weddings', bringing Canada's rate
to 4.7 per 1000 people.
Same-sex legislation introduced in 2003 for BC and Ontario could easily account
for the rises in both provinces.
Perhaps in spite of it all, proving the marriage vow is 'sacred' for many
Canadians, was the fact that more than 75 per cent of marriages in Canada were
performed in a religious ceremony.
