Google’s year in search is back for Canada for another year, and the results are … interesting.
“In a year that has tested everything around the world, ‘why’ has been asked more than ever,” says Google’s promotional video, showing the word “why I’m so tired.” Alas, just in the feelings.
There were a lot of obvious results that came out of this year’s results with ‘Pandemic’ as the most sought after definition, while Canadians were looking for ‘How to apply for EI’ in the instruction category and wanted to know what ‘Coronavirus’ is the most. This is not at all surprising, but we noticed a few things in some categories that protruded.
Are Canadians more basketball fans than hockey?
Of all the searches Canadians performed during 2020 in English and French, we followed Kobe Bryant’s death on January 26 so much that it was the third most wanted thing in English Canada and the third most wanted death in the past year, bringing in Canadian Alex Trebek. Admittedly, Bryant’s death has shocked people around the world, but we’re looking at how much Canadians as a whole are affected by basketball.
Google sets aside an entire section in its Year in search of hockey on a regular basis, so even though Jay Bouwmeester of the Vancouver Canucks was the second most wanted athlete in 2020, it looks like the 2019 championship win by the Toronto Raptors still feels like it was the fifth most searched thing on Google.
As good neighbors, we seem to have spent time checking out the Los Angeles Lakers; they were in second place among our top five most wanted NBA teams.
And if you’re thinking “that might be okay, Canada invented basketball! I saw the heritage record!” then consider this: dr. James Naismith left Canada for Springfield, Massachusetts the same year he invented the sport. It’s a trio of disappointments.
The U.S. election actually defeated the coronavirus
Of course, we were glued to our TV screens and news during the American elections for 72 hours in a row – who isn’t? The weirder news is that the U.S. election actually beat Coronavirus as the most sought-after thing in English Canada all year long. Québec and French Canadians stayed a little longer on the subject, as the U.S. election was only their third most sought-after topic in 2020.
This may come as no surprise to some, but newly elected President Joe Biden and his colleague (and high school graduate at Montreal Westmount High School) Kamala Harris were number two and three in the top 10 most wanted people.
Unfortunately, we were no longer interested in the politicians of our country, or – we don’t know – the team of researchers Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci? You know, the people behind the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine that helped us end this year with a more bitter than sweet note?
Surprise: Canada thinks of systemic discrimination and diversity
What was more shocking (or worrying, depending on who you ask), English-speaking Canadians began to look hard in the mirror showing interest in topics around diversity and racism. Systemic racism, queer, and BIPOC were Canada’s second, seventh, and ninth most sought-after definitions.
“Why was George Floyd stopped” was our second most frequently asked question “why” in English in Canada, as 19th and Blackout entered our vocabulary on Tuesday as the fifth and seventh “what” questions.
As a movement, Black Lives Matter has had a global impact, but we hope it will continue for a long time to come as Canada reconciles with its BIPOC treatment.
Sour dough was not the most modern in 2020; the cookies were
In the first months of locking up the Canadian country, the internet was ignited by stories of sourdough bread. The thing is that in the end it is not the most sought after recipe for English speakers in the country. Anglophone and English-googling allophones were more concerned with “light cookies,” “buttermilk” (they get a little more complicated there, okay, okay), and recipes for “pumpkin zucchini” before the sourdough began to creep.
However, making sourdough was the seventh most sought after issue in 2020, and Quebec dealt only with that bread: more precisely, the recipe for bread by chef Ricardo Larrivée (No. 1), pizza dough (No. 4) and bread without rise. # 7). Fun fact: The 10 most sought after recipe in Quebec was “octopus”.
We did a small job well to be occupied at home
You would think that a country that has been mostly snowy for half a year would be used to indoor isolation, but no one could fully predict the weight of the 2020 lockdown across the country. When we looked at what entertained Canada, we became creative with the preparation.
After understandable application instructions for EI and CERB, Canadians wanted to make their own hand sanitizer and masks at home, plus a little whipped coffee and sourdough on the side.
Québec had the most interesting approach to this year’s instructions as he asked for the fourth time when to plant vegetables and – we don’t invent that – asking how to grow a pineapple (No. 8 in the most sought after instructions).
Meanwhile, Tiger King and Queen’s Gambit were the most sought-after TV shows across Canada, but that’s no surprise.
See the complete results here.
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