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All the modern conveniences
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Most Canadian households are well equipped with time-saving appliances and high-tech gadgetry to benefit from today’s telecommunications networks. For example, just 40% of households owned a computer in 1997, whereas 72% did in 2005. As a result, the proportion of households using the Internet shot up from 17% to 64%.
Though the familiar appliances—refrigerator, electric range, colour TV, automatic washer and dryer, land line telephone—seem like they have been fixtures in Canadian homes for decades, these conveniences were not so common before the 1950s. In the years since then, Canadians’ expectations of the necessities of life have risen substantially.
Television was one of the first appliances to rapidly become a household fixture. In 1954, 20% of households had a TV set; in 1960, 80% had one. The automatic washer was present in just 20% of households in 1964. It was not until 37 years later, in 2001, that 80% of households had an automatic washer. Microwave ovens were more quickly adopted. In 1979, barely 5% of households had microwaves—by 1997, the share had risen to 88%. And that proportion continued to expand during the 2000s, so that 94% of households had a microwave in 2005.
DVD players have become the most rapidly adopted new technology since television in the 1950s. They were first reported by 20% of households in 2001; by 2005, 77% of households owned a DVD player.
The popularity and convenience of cell phones are undeniable—22% of households had one in 1997 and that shot to 64% by 2005. This figure is higher than the percentage of households owning a dishwasher, which stood at 57% in 2005.
