Manitoba · Civic arena
Brandon drinking water hardness is 150 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#131 of 343
53% City Score XP
5/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Brandon packs 5 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full Brandon water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Morden · vs SteinbachHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Brandon from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
Sports
66 GP · 83 pts · Compare CHL cities
Brandon sits at City Score rank #131 with a standing of 53%, from 5 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. The chart below shows how that standing moves year to year.
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #9 of 327 at 203 Bq/m³ survey mean. Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
In the 2025 City Score edition, Brandon carries a City Score standing of 53% (rank #131 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 1 points above the Manitoba peer average across 13 ranked cities. Within Manitoba, Brandon ranks #8 of 13 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is seismic hazard (standing 92%, rank #316 of 343, raw score 0.017). The weakest observed pillar is indoor radon (standing 3%, rank #9 of 327).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 150 mg/L as CaCO₃ for Brandon. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #131 of 343
5/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #196
No placement
Rank #177
Rank #9
Rank #316
No placement
Brandon pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
Source: OpenStats composite / study editions
City Score standing trend
Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).
Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Source: OpenStats composite timeseries
Achievements
· Internet
Canada and Manitoba announced September 8 that Valley Fiber will connect more than 10,000 northern and rural homes. Thompson posts broadband rank #317 at 90.1 Mbps; construction pillar is unplaced without a 0292 CMA/CA map.
Published residential mill-rate context for Brandon.
Trail and nature hub listed among the city's Assiniboine corridor regional assets, a practical starting point for riverbank walks.
Recreation and events campus that hosts Manitoba Ag Days and the big indoor crowds Brandon cannot fit elsewhere.
Wheat City is not just nostalgia; the municipal golf course still carries the name in city recreation planning.
Where Brandon sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
Brandon sits on the Assiniboine River and still answers to Wheat City when locals talk about home. City Plan language calls it the urban centre of Westman, the southwestern Manitoba region that looks here for hospital care, college classes, and weekend events. The Assiniboine River corridor is the outdoor spine: protected parks and trails where people fish, walk, and gather, with Brandon Riverbank Inc. and Bee City Brandon helping keep the banks useful and green. Flood recovery notices are part of the municipal calendar after high water, so river talk here is practical, not postcard.
Recreation clusters around a few named places. The Keystone Centre hosts big shows and Manitoba Ag Days. Brandon Community Sportsplex covers ice, pool, and track bookings. Riverbank Discovery Centre anchors trail days along the corridor, and Wheat City Golf Course carries the nickname onto fairways. Assiniboine Community College spreads across Victoria Avenue East and North Hill campuses, while BU shorthand turns up whenever campus news hits the Brandon Sun. Brandon Regional Health Centre remains the Westman medical address people mean when they say they are driving into town for appointments.
Summer softens the industrial edges: Music in the Park, Kinsmen Pool days, and trail loops that feel a long way from the Trans-Canada rush. Assiniboine Gardens marks one of the floodplain planning names locals recognize from city maps. What sticks is the mix of river corridor, Keystone weekends, and a Westman desk that still says Wheat City without needing a brochure.
Drawn from City of Brandon, City of Brandon, City of Brandon, Brandon Sun.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to Brandon without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Canadian Hockey League (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) member cities ranked by regular-season points percentage. One CHL team maps to each OpenStats hometown slug; standings snapshot is curated from public league tables.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Brandon in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats
Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016-2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0-1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); mill rates and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Sports · OpenStats
OpenStats
Hometowns with a mapped junior hockey franchise ranked by local sports depth: league tier (CHL member leagues = 1.0, MHL = 0.65) multiplied by regular-season points percentage. Surfaces cities with both a franchise and a strong standings year; not a City Score pillar input.
Single edition · 2025
Only one published edition places Brandon in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Growth · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Hazards · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Livability
The Globe and Mail
2023 data partnership with Environics Analytics ranking 439 Canadian communities on ten livability categories.
Single edition · 2023
Only one published edition places Brandon in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Wheat City is not just nostalgia; the municipal golf course still carries the name in city recreation planning.
City Plan frames Brandon as the economic heart of Westman, a regional service centre for southwestern Manitoba.
The Assiniboine River corridor is described on municipal pages as the heart of local outdoor spaces for walks, fishing, and gatherings.
Manitoba Ag Days sets up at the Keystone Centre, pulling farm traffic into the middle of the city calendar.
Protected municipal parks and trails along the river, where Westman weekends mean fishing rods, path walks, and family cookouts more than scenic overlooks.
Recreation and events campus that hosts Manitoba Ag Days and the big indoor crowds Brandon cannot fit elsewhere.
Trail and nature hub listed among the city's Assiniboine corridor regional assets, a practical starting point for riverbank walks.
Ice, pool, and track bookings under one roof when prairie weather pushes recreation indoors.
When Brandon moves in a ranking, posts new permit figures, or lands in a study, get a short note. A few sends a year, only when something changes.
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