Photo: JFVoll · CC BY-SA 4.0No one born in Balfour has made the famous people list yet
386 towns across Ontario can name a famous person born there. The longest list of any town in Ontario belongs to Toronto, with 4,724. After Toronto, the next longest list in Ontario is Ottawa’s, with 1,194.
Who’s listed here
Someone is listed here when Wikidata places their birth inside Balfour’s neighbourhood outline and their English or French Wikipedia article agrees. Wikidata has yet to record a birth in Balfour for anyone with an English or French Wikipedia article.
Questions about famous people from Balfour
Who counts as from Balfour?
Anyone Wikidata records as born at a place inside Balfour’s neighbourhood outline (the census tracts it is drawn from), hospitals and districts within it included, whose English or French Wikipedia article confirms it. People who only lived here, adult performers and people known mainly for crimes are left out. In a city split into neighbourhoods (Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa and the others), someone recorded as born only “in the city” stays on the city’s own page; a neighbourhood lists only births recorded in it.
Why is someone missing?
The likeliest reasons: a birthplace recorded only as a province or as Canada, a hamlet or rural area with no page of its own, or an article that gives another place or none. Fixing Wikidata or Wikipedia brings them onto the list at the next refresh, as long as the two then agree.
Birthplaces, descriptions, years, occupations and the count of Wikipedia and sister-site articles come from Wikidata (CC0). Each birthplace is checked against the person’s English Wikipedia article, or the French one where English says nothing or has no article; the articles are linked, never quoted. Wikidata’s Statistics Canada code, the place’s name or its point inside the 2021 census outline puts a birth in a town, and a birth given only as a split city stays on that city’s page. Fields are read from the description and occupations, and the list runs by number of articles. “The usual town” is everyone listed across Canadian towns.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).