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What did Quebecers Google in 2019?

Who would have thought that a Toronto sports team — a basketball team, no less —  would be the year's top trending Google search by Quebecers?

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Who would have thought that a Toronto sports team — a basketball team, no less —  would be the year’s top trending Google search by Quebecers?

But there they were, the Raptors — at the top of the list. Hydro-Québec power failures and school closings trended second and third, which was no surprise.

The fire at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral in April was one of the top trending searches for 2019 in Quebec — and it was one of the Top 10 global trending searches, along with three cricket events.

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The goal of creating and making these lists public, which Google has done every year since at least 2010, is to look at what we’re most interested in and curious about, said Luiza Staniec of Google Canada’s communications and public affairs department in a Tuesday interview.

What defines the year’s top trending searches is that they generated a spike in traffic during a sustained period in 2019, she explained. “We’re looking at spikes: something that got more hits this year than last.”

Results for Google’s Year in Search, as it was dubbed, were made public on Wednesday.

There was some overlap between the top trending searches for Quebec and for Canada: The Raptors and their thrilling journey to the National Basketball Association championship in June made it onto both lists, as did Canadian election results — there was, after all a federal election on Oct. 21. Also there was Canadian professional tennis player Bianca Andreescu, who had a banner year — winning three tournaments, including the U.S. Open, to become the highest ranked female Canadian tennis player of all time.

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Top trending television shows in Quebec were Game of Thrones, the Quebec French-language reality show Occupation Double South Africa, the historical drama miniseries Chernobyl and Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. All but Occupation Double were also top trending shows for Canada.

Top trending recipes were oddly generic, both for Quebec and Canada: In Quebec they were lasagna, apple crumble and French toast, with guacamole and hummus fourth and fifth. Lasagna and guacamole were among the top trending recipes for Canada; beef Stroganoff was at the top of the list and Brussels sprouts second.

The compiling methodology for the top trending searches filters out duplicate entries, adult content — aka porn — and spam. So although searches for adult keywords “are pretty constant and unquestionably popular, they don’t define or drastically increase in trending interest for any one year,” Staniec said.

Top trending Canadians for 2019 included Andreescu, federal politicians Jagmeet Singh, Andrew Scheer and Jody Wilson-Raybould, broadcaster Don Cherry, fired in November from Sportsnet following a diatribe about immigrants on his Coach’s Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada.

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Top trending Quebec personalities for 2019 came more from the entertainment and journalism worlds: singers Julie Masse, Safia Nolin, Nathalie Simard and Hubert Lenoir and actors Ingrid Falaise and Domonique Michel. Three of the top trending Quebec personalities died this year: singer-songwriter Nicole Martin, journalist Pierre Nadeau and sports journalist Jean Pagé, who died Tuesday of prostate cancer.

The Raptors topped Google’s 10 trending Canadian moments of the decade, with Andreescu coming in at No. 2. The deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash in Saskatchewan on April 6, 2018 brought the country together in tragedy.

“It united us all,” Staniec said. “Tragedy and sport unite us.”

Music, as well, had a place among those moments, as Canadians watched the final concert of Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie following his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer — a concert broadcast and streamed live on Aug. 20, 2016 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on television, radio and the internet.

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