Sunniest Cities in Canada

Prairie cities lead the list of Canadian cities with the most sunshine. Calgary is the sunniest of Canada's large cities, with an average of 2405 hours of bright sun a year, spread over 333 days.

Calgary is located close to Canada's sunniest spot, Manyberries, in the southeast corner of Alberta. The hamlet averages 2567 hours of sun a year, accounting for 55 percent of its daylight.

The tables here rank Canada's largest cities for the most hours, days and percentage of sunshine they usually get a year, based on weather data collected from 1971 to 2000. The major cities included in these rankings are the 26 Canadian metropolitan areas that had over 150,000 people in the 2006 census by Statistics Canada.

Most Hours of Sunshine

Calgary is the only major city in Canada averaging over 2400 hours of sun a year. Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon come close behind Calgary, all typically topping 2300 hours of sunshine annually.

Outside of the Prairie provinces, the sunniest of cities are scattered in southern Ontario, and on the south coast of British Columbia. These round out the top ten major cities for sunshine across Canada.

Among Canada's smaller cities, the sun shines even more in Medicine Hat AB (2513 hours annually), Estevan SK (2435 hours), and Swift Current SK (2407 hours).

Average number of hours of bright sunshine a year in major Canadian cities.

City	Hours
Calgary, Alberta	2405
Winnipeg, Manitoba	2372
Regina, Saskatchewan	2338
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan	2329
Edmonton, Alberta	2299
Victoria, British Columbia	2193
Hamilton, Ontario	2088
Ottawa, Ontario	2061
Barrie, Ontario	2055
Toronto, Ontario	2038

Most Sunny Days

Calgary tops the list of Canadian cities for total days in a year when the sun is bright enough to be measured. Even Canada's sunniest place, Manyberries, averages 332 days of bright sun, compared with Calgary's 333 days. Another bright spot, Medicine Hat, comes in behind at 330 days.

Average number of days annually with some bright sunshine.

City	Days
Calgary, Alberta	333
Edmonton, Alberta	321
Regina, Saskatchewan	321
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan	320
Winnipeg, Manitoba	318
Victoria, British Columbia	317
Windsor, Ontario	307
Kelowna, British Columbia	306
Montréal, Quebec	304
Barrie, Ontario	303
Ottawa, Ontario	303
Toronto, Ontario	303

Cities With Highest Percentage of Sun

For the sunniest Canadian cities, the sun beams down during at least half of daylight hours. Again, Calgary enjoys the top place among the country's cities for rankings of the proportion of daylight hours that the sun shines.

Percentage of daylight hours that are sunny

City	% sunshine
Calgary, Alberta	53
Winnipeg, Manitoba	51
Regina, Saskatchewan	50
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan	50
Edmonton, Alberta	49
Victoria, British Columbia	46
Hamilton, Ontario	45
Ottawa, Ontario	45
Montréal, Quebec	44
Toronto, Ontario	44