The register
6 published · ongoingWhat Ontario named its children
A century of birth registrations, searchable by name. Every VIMY in 1917, every LINDA in 1947, and the question of what Ontario's most common boys' name actually is once you count the spellings.
Who wore the crown
Every year since 1917, one name has topped the register for each sex. The whole line of succession, reign by reign — and how much smaller the crown has become.
What Ontario wanted
Every name carries a wish — strength, faith, beauty, and the rest. Nine meanings, each traced across a century of the register to see what parents were actually asking for.
The field
Every name that ever reached one in a thousand Ontario births, drawn as a single faint line across the century. Fourteen hundred lives, one page — move across it to surface any strand.
One continent, two registers
Ontario and the United States share a language, a media, and a century — do they name their children the same way? Two measures side by side: how fast the fashion turns over, and how tightly the top names hold.
Where the money goes
Start with a tired argument — spend the foreign-aid money on hospitals instead — and use it to learn something bigger: how to actually read the federal budget. Which lines crack open into their real parts, which stay sealed under 'other,' and why that seam is the whole story.