Momently ingests actual content, not just metrics, from every publication on our platform. That means we can analyze every article, extracting topics, sentiment, brands, people, locations, and more. We did exactly that across close to 1 million articles from dozens of Canadian publications in 2025.
Here is what the data says about what Canadians actually read, care about, and engage with.
The #1 topic depends entirely on who you ask
In community newspapers across B.C. and Alberta, sports coverage is roughly 3x larger than politics. Over 50,000 articles covered professional and team sports. Hockey is culture, not just a pastime.
In suburban local news (Greater Toronto Area), crime and traffic are the #1 and #2 topics by a wide margin. The top 10 most-read articles were all about retail closures, product recalls, and store changes. GTA readers want to know what is opening, closing, or changing near them.
In tech media, entrepreneurship is still the biggest topic, nearly double AI coverage. But AI is growing fast and already sits at #3, up from virtually nothing two years ago.
The brands Canadians read about most
The most-mentioned brand varies dramatically by publication type:
- Tech media: Shopify leads, followed by Google, Apple, Amazon, and Wealthsimple. The Canadian tech ecosystem clusters around a small number of anchor companies.
- Suburban local news: Shoppers Drug Mart, Air Canada, LCBO, President's Choice, and Beer Store top the list. These are the brands of daily suburban life.
- Community papers: Tesla leads by a wide margin, followed by Hudson's Bay, Apple, Nvidia, and Ford. Tesla's dominance is driven by EV coverage across B.C. and Alberta. The Hudson's Bay closure was the biggest retail story of the year.
Same country. Three completely different brand universes.
Trump dominates. Carney surges. McDavid is the only non-politician in the top 10.
Across community papers, the most-mentioned person in Canadian media in 2025 is Donald Trump, with over 20,000 mentions. This is almost entirely tariff and trade coverage. Mark Carney surged after becoming Prime Minister. Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, and Elon Musk round out the top five.
Connor McDavid is the only non-politician in the top 10. In Alberta community papers, Oilers coverage functions as a cultural institution.
Canadian content is overwhelmingly positive. Except local news.
We analyzed the sentiment across hundreds of thousands of articles:
- National and lifestyle publications: over 60% positive sentiment
- Community newspapers: majority neutral, about a quarter positive
- Suburban local news: over 60% neutral, only about one in five positive
The gap is structural. National and lifestyle media covers events, food, travel, and entertainment. Local news covers crime, traffic, recalls, and closures. Neither is better, but for advertisers the distinction matters: your ad runs next to very different content depending on where you buy.
What Toronto cares about vs. the rest of Canada
Toronto readers are obsessed with real estate, which consistently has the highest engagement per article of any topic. Food and dining is the largest category by total readership. Travel content gets dramatically more attention in Toronto than nationally, which suggests Toronto readers disproportionately want to leave.
GTA suburbs (Mississauga, Brampton, Hamilton) care about crime, transit, and what Costco is changing. Vancouver and B.C. care about housing, environment, and Tesla. Alberta cares about hockey, provincial politics, and energy.
How we did this
Every article on the Momently platform is ingested in full, not just the headline or the URL. We extract 30+ structured dimensions from the content itself: topic, subtopic, sentiment, tone, brands, people, organizations, locations, products, and more. These dimensions are queryable in dashboards and reports, and available via API.
This analysis is a byproduct of what the platform does every day for publishers and agencies managing content across multiple properties. The same dimensions that power this blog post also power search, trending, related articles, and editorial dashboards for our clients.