METRO VANCOUVER — Mark Omamalin, a 46-year-old migrant from the Philippines, has just visited Value Village at Kingsway and Linden Avenue in Burnaby. The giant second-hand store is in an area known as Edmonds, on the Burnaby-New Westminster border. Edmonds is arguably the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Metro Vancouver, perhaps in Canada and the world. The sidewalks of the modest neighbourhood, which is ringed with truck rental outlets and muffler shops, are dotted with women wearing black chadors, long, loose garments that cover the whole body from hair to foot, yet with the face exposed. While the clothing of the ethnically diverse males tends to be Western, some black women wear colourful Caribbean head-ties and South Asian women in saris sit at bus stops. Omamalin and his wife, whom an Alberta hotel chain originally sponsored to migrate to Canada to work as cleaners, appreciate this modest neighbourhood of East Burnaby, including Value Village, because it’s relatively affordable for their tight budget. It’s also “in the middle of everything” in Metro Vancouver. The mostly treeless neighbourhood of roughly 5,000 people — it includes St. Thomas More Collegiate and the Edmonds Neighbourhood Resource Centre (which serves refugees) — came out with the highest score on The Vancouver Sun’s “diversity index.” Created by Sun data journalist Chad Skelton, the Metro Vancouver diversity index measures Statistics Canada neighbourhoods (technically known as “census tracts”) for “the chances that any two people, chosen at random, will be of a different ethnic background.” The data compiled by Skelton into interactive online maps show this neighbourhood — between Canada Way and Kingsway, Edmonds and 10th Avenue — achieves a score of 83 per cent on The Sun’s diversity index. That’s the highest ethnic-diversity ranking in all of Metro Vancouver. It would be hard for any neighbourhood in the world to top it. The population of this neighbourhood is 25 per cent white, 19 per cent Filipino, 17 per cent ethnic Chinese, 15 per cent South Asian (mostly Indian, Punjabi and Pakistani), eight per cent black (mostly African), seven per cent West Asian (mostly Afghan and Iranian) and three per cent South-East Asian (mostly Vietnamese and Malaysian).



If you're on a mobile device, please

If you're on a mobile device, please click here to see the chart. “Even with people of all these races, there are no problems,” insists Omamalin, who attends a nearby evangelical Christian church serving mostly Filipinos. The three adjacent Burnaby neighbourhoods are almost as super-diverse as this one; scoring from 77 to 81 per cent on the index. Metro Vancouver as a whole comes in at 65 per cent on the diversity index. That’s far higher than almost any other city in Canada (and perhaps the world), except Toronto. Another Metro Vancouver neighbourhood that ranks extremely high for diversity is in Central Burnaby (scoring an average of 76 per cent on the diversity index). Beyond the borders of Burnaby, the central Vancouver neighbourhood east of Fraser Street, including Kensington Cedar-Cottage, comes in with an average of about 77 per cent on the diversity index.

In north Surrey, parts of Guildford and Fleetwood also average about 76 per cent on the index. So does Coquitlam’s Westwood Plateau. Generally speaking, the most ethnically super-mixed neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver tend to be middle to low-income, with some exceptions. Almost all of the super-diverse neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver are also in ridings held federally and provincially by the New Democratic Party. “We believe it’s the most diverse riding in all of Canada,” says Burnaby-New Westminster MP Peter Julian, who has held this riding of old and new houses and plain three-storey apartment buildings for the NDP since 2004. “There are a hundred languages spoken in the riding, which stretches from Deer Lake to the Fraser River. We’re looking to see if it might be the most ethnically diverse riding on the entire planet.” This super-mixed Edmonds neighbourhood on the Burnaby-New Westminster riding is not glamorous. But there is an easygoing feel to the car-filled streets, which almost entirely lack boulevard trees. Along with older houses, there are many boxy ones from the 1960s known as “Vancouver Specials,” as well as more recent similar-looking knock-off homes and a range of low-income rental apartments, many of which house refugees. Vancouver-raised political scientist Eric Kaufmann, of the University of London-Birkbeck, has found that many mixed ethnicity neighbourhoods in Britain and Canada are that way because the migrants who tend to fill them often cannot afford to live among people of their own ethnicity. “Choosing to live by co-ethnics is a luxury. It’s nice, but if you mostly just need a roof over your head, you’ll probably gravitate to a low-income area,” said Kaufmann, who specializes in migration and demographics. Daniel Hiebert, a University of B.C. geographer, says the low- to middle-income nature of the Edmonds neighbourhood, and many of Metro Vancouver’s super-diverse neighbourhoods, reflects a consistent pattern across the country. Comparing neighbourhoods by income levels, unemployment, welfare rates and home ownership, Hiebert has found that enclaves in which a single ethno-cultural group predominates tend to do better economically than enclaves in places in which no single ethic group prevails, such as Burnaby. Hiebert did not mention some of Metro Vancouver’s more mono-ethnic neighbourhoods. But regions of Richmond and South Vancouver, which are largely Chinese, and large parts of the North Shore, Kitsilano and Surrey-White Rock, which are predominantly white, tend to be middle- to upper-middle class. In a recent report for Canada’s Institute for Research on Public Policy, Hiebert discusses how residents of enclaves in which one group dominates still have the positive things associated with cross-cultural diversity. Yet they also have the extra benefit of “bonding capital.” That’s a technical term for the social advantages associated with being in proximity with people who are ethno-culturally familiar. As Hiebert says, that includes “the employment opportunities that may arise in what sociologists have called ‘ethnic economies.’” Psychological studies, including by Zachary and Jennifer Neal, have also suggested residents of diverse neighbourhoods such as Edmonds often don’t have the sense of community that can be created by bonding with other members of one’s ethnic group.