"Violent crime is pretty bad in Halifax, worse than you might expect," said Maclean's editor Claire Brownell

A new analysis of crime numbers from Maclean's Magazine puts Halifax square in the middle of a ranking of Canada's safest cities.

Halifax is 120th overall in Maclean's "Most Dangerous Places" annual ranking, which was released on Monday morning. That has Halifax as a safer place to live than Calgary and Vancouver, but more dangerous than Ottawa and Toronto.

The report finds crime is on the way down in Halifax, and is in the safer half of communities on the ranking, but there are some concerning numbers.

"Violent crime is pretty bad in Halifax, worse than you might expect," said Maclean's editor Claire Brownell.

Brownell said the violent crime problem is driven by crimes including homicide. Halifax has the 53rd highest homicide in the country with eight murders in 2017.

All the data comes from Statistics Canada.

"We take a look at a whole bunch of different crime measures," Brownell said. "We look at the Crime Severity Index, which is a measure overall that Statistics Canada uses to measure not just the number of crimes, but how severe they are."

There are 237 communities included in the ranking. Maclean's found the safest place in Canada to be Rothesay and Quispamsis, New Brunswick.