City At Night

In Canada, the granting of city status is handled by the individual provinces and territories. Therefore, city status definitions and criteria vary widely across the country. In British Columbia and Saskatchewan, towns can become cities after they reach a population of 5,000 people, but the threshold is 10,000 in Alberta, New Brunswick, and Ontario. In Manitoba, an urban municipality may not be named as a city unless its population meets or exceeds 7,500 people.
Although it has numerous cities in the traditional sense of the term, Ontario also sometimes confers city status on primarily rural areas whose municipalities have been merged into a former county government. Nova Scotia has abolished the title of city altogether, with all local government taking place at the regional municipality level.
In Quebec, there is no legal distinction between a city and a town, as both have the legal status of ville. The province formerly differentiated between ville (town) and cité (city), but no longer does so.