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People who don’t live here might claim that Ottawa is cold and boring, but new data suggest the city has its own reasons to smile.

In a study released by Statistics Canada, Ottawa ranked in the top 10 happiest out of 33 metropolitan areas across the country.

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The survey asked 340,000 people across the country to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of one to 10. On average, Ottawaans rated their life satisfaction at 8.1.

This was high enough to rank Ottawa 10th overall — the highest out of any metropolitan area with a population over one million.

John Helliwel, a life satisfaction researcher at University of British Columbia, said Tuesday that “it’s harder in big, fast cities to provide the kinds of social contact to support a happy life.”

Ottawa provides the economic benefits of living in a city, but its pace isn’t quite as rushed as some of Canada’s other metropolitan areas.

“In smaller communities, people have a chance to make the people they meet in the streets their friends rather than just people they’re going past,” said Helliwell.