The number one thing Canadians searched on Google this year was the baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays. The team was on a dramatic winning streak that captured the attention of Canadians and eventually, people from outside the country too. The Pan Am games held in Toronto this year were also in the top ten searches by Canadians.
Google performed its 15th annual Year in Search and found that that the second most searched topic was Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party who was running for prime minister and won in October. Not only was his name in the top ten searched, but so was that of his father Pierre, who was a past prime minister, and his mother Margaret.
Canadians ‘engaged in their democracy’
Next most popular search was the election itself. It was a longer than usual campaign and people availed themselves of tools to find out how to vote and who their candidates were.
“I think that suggests that Canadians were engaged in their democracy, anxious to exercise their franchise,” says Aaron Brindle, a trends expert with Google Canada. “And we saw that reflected on voting day on October 19th with a strong voter turnout—numbers that we hadn’t seen since 1993.”
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‘We’re all global citizens’
The Paris shooting and the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo were also in the top ten searches of 2015. At first people searched for facts and context, but Brindle says that evolved.
“What’s interesting is we saw search interests continue as people went online to show solidarity through social media. ‘Je suis Charlie’ was trending for weeks following the Charlie Hebdo attacks. I think that speaks to the fact that when it comes to our online community, we’re all kind of global citizens.”
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