The year-end reviews just keep coming — and on Instagram, the hottest things for Canadians this year were hip-hopper Drake and the city he has lovingly dubbed “The 6ix.”
Much like on Twitter, Canadian Instagram users just can’t get enough of Drake. The “Hotline Bling” singer has amassed 30.4 million Canadian followers, nearly double the next-most followed account, and his posts including selfies, Raptors merch and candid brunch shots routinely earn about half a million likes. Coming in second with Canadians at 16.1 million followers is teenage singer Shawn Mendes (who got his start doing loop covers on Vine), with musicians The Weeknd (7.6 million followers) and Avril Lavigne (4.2 million followers) coming in third and fourth.
Rounding out the top-five was YouTuber and beauty guru Farah Dhukai (4.1 million followers).
Although Justin Bieber deleted his own Instagram account earlier this year, that hasn’t stopped his father, Jeremy Bieber, from rising to Instafame. The elder Beiber was ranked as the ninth-most popular Canadian on the platform, with 1.9 million followers.
Drake and Mendes were also among the most-liked celebrity posts of the year (with Drake’s kiss with fellow singer Rihanna under the CN Tower coming out on top at more than 1.5 million likes).
As for the most-posted Canadian hashtags, once again #Toronto (the number-one most posted tag) beat out #Canada (in the number-three spot). Between the two sat the hashtag #love, with #Vancouver and the general-interest hashtag #instagood rounding out the top-five.
Toronto and the GTA was also among the top most geo-tagged locations of the year in Canada — Niagara Falls took the number-one spot, with the Rogers Centre, Air Canada Centre, Toronto Pearson International Airport and Canada’s Wonderland taking spots one through five. The Port of Old Montreal, the CN Tower, Vancouver International Airport, Molson Amphitheatre and Whistler Blackcomb filled out the top 10.
Globally, millennial users on Instagram (those defined as 18 to 34) were most enamoured with the hashtags #swag, #goals, #meme, #dope and #aesthetic.
The year has also been big for Instagram itself. The Facebook-owned platform reported massive growth this year, sharing in June that its average monthly user base (500 million) had more-than doubled in size since 2014. In the summer, Instagram also launched its Stories feature, allowing it to compete more directly with rival app Snapchat.
All data was recorded as of Wednesday, Nov. 30.
