Part of Notes from the Road, our city-by-city series.
The short answer: Craigslist’s Canadian sites have had no Personals section since 2018, and Kijiji has none either. No single site replaced them. Personal ads in Canada now live on Reddit’s city r4r boards, such as r/r4rtoronto, on classified-style sites such as Doublelist and SeekingList, in Locanto’s personals section, and in text-first apps including AseeksB. On October 9, 2026, we read the newest Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton ads on three of them.
Canada is the first country outside the US on this trip where the personals boards feel as busy as the ones at home. People here still type “personals” into Google about 12,100 times a month, and “toronto r4r” about 1,300 (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026).
It is also a country of long distances and short ones. Toronto to Vancouver is about five hours by plane, Calgary to Edmonton three hours up Highway 2, and inside each city a bridge, a river valley, or the 401 at rush hour decides what “nearby” means. A written ad handles that well. It says which city, which side of it, and how far you will go.
The sites that replaced Craigslist Personals in the US serve Canada too, alongside the Reddit boards. Here is how each works, from our checks on October 9, 2026:
For each city below, we read the 20 newest ads on Doublelist and Locanto, and SeekingList’s recent ads for that city, on October 9, 2026, and counted the escort ads. Passing this test doesn’t make an ad genuine: an ad can look ordinary and still try to move you to another app once you reply. AseeksB ads can’t be read without an account, so they weren’t counted. How we check.
AseeksB publishes this page and is included in it. For how each site handles the eight traits that defined Craigslist Personals, see our full comparison.
Toronto is two places that share a name: the 416, the city itself, and the 905, the suburbs around it, from Mississauga to Markham to Oakville. Inside the 416 it gets finer again. Leslieville, the Annex, Liberty Village, North York, and Scarborough are each a TTC ride from the next, some of them a long one.
The local board already knows this. Its titles carry a hashtag for where you are, #downtown, #midtown, #GTA, so the first thing a reader learns is whether you are a streetcar or a highway away.
What we found. On Doublelist, 4 of the 20 newest Toronto ads were escort ads, all posted as women. On Locanto, 7 were, all posted as women: every women’s ad in the 20. Two more were listings promoting Locanto’s own dating service. SeekingList had only 12 Toronto ads, the oldest six months old, and the 2 posted as women were escort ads.
Reddit. r/r4rtoronto, created in 2012, had about 100,600 followers, and Reddit showed about 21,000 weekly visitors and 3,400 weekly contributions. It is marked as adult and is open to friendships and dates as well as casual posts. Titles follow a set format, your age, an R4R tag, a hashtag for your area, and a title, like “30M4F #GTA - seeking FWB,” with “online only” added for online-only posts. Posts need at least 230 characters, accounts must be at least 7 days old, and you can post once every 3 days.
Personal details and social media handles aren’t allowed in posts or in Reddit bios, and nude photos aren’t allowed. Money and gifts are banned, though the ordinary costs of meeting, such as dinner, rides, and hotels, are fine, and anyone with a history of sex work or selling content is banned, even if their post doesn’t advertise it. Posts about high-risk kink have to spell out how safety and consent are handled. If you don’t meet a poster’s stated requirements, the rules say not to message them. Verification is optional: three photos of yourself holding a crumpled sheet of paper with your username and the date. The moderators also pin a monthly megathread for chat, and a reminder to check that your Reddit chat and profile settings are on, since they can switch off without your noticing.
Kijiji and Craigslist. Kijiji has no personals section. Its Toronto Missed Connections category had 8 listings, and only 2 were missed connections; the page around them was full of ads. Long Lost Relationships had 10 listings, all selling something. Craigslist Toronto’s missed connections section, under Community, had 13 posts over the past three months, all apparently genuine.
Beyond the apps. Single in the City, a speed-dating company running since 2002, holds age-banded nights in Toronto and its suburbs, including speed dating for professionals aged 28 to 39 in Toronto on October 28, 2026, according to its website.
Vancouver is small on the map and long on bridges. The North Shore, Burnaby, Richmond, and Surrey are all “Vancouver” to someone, and the water between them decides more first dates than the distance does. A good ad here says which side of which bridge you are on, and whether you will cross it.
What we found. On Doublelist, 2 of the 20 newest Vancouver ads were escort ads. On Locanto, 7 were, all posted as women: every women’s ad in the 20. One man’s ad gave a phone number. SeekingList had just 4 Vancouver ads from the past two months, all from men, and all looked like ordinary personal ads.
Reddit. r/vancouverr4r, created in 2012, covers Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver area. It had about 41,300 followers, and Reddit showed about 11,000 weekly visitors and 1,000 weekly contributions. Titles need your age and an R4R tag, like “28 [M4F],” and low-effort posts are removed. Accounts must be at least 48 hours old with some karma, and you can post once a day. Solicitation is banned, including “sugar” arrangements, cam work and “content partners,” and so are phone numbers, email addresses, and usernames for other apps. The board is 18+ but not explicit, so suggestive posts must be tagged NSFW. Sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia aren’t tolerated, and anyone the moderators suspect of collecting pictures has to verify.
Beyond the apps. Vancouver Social Events, a Meetup group with about 5,600 members in October 2026, runs speed dating; its next nights were for ages 32 to 47 at Fionn MacCool’s on Main Street on October 22, 2026, and for ages 40 and up in Burnaby on October 24.
Calgary searches for personals more than its size suggests: “calgary personals” gets about 590 searches a month, against about 320 for “toronto personals” (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). What it doesn’t have is a busy Reddit board, so the classified sites and the apps carry more of the load here.
What we found. None of Doublelist’s 20 newest Calgary ads was an escort ad. On Locanto, 10 were, all posted as women: every women’s ad in the 20, some of them copies of ads in other cities. Two more were listings promoting Locanto’s own dating service, and another advertised escort listings. SeekingList had no Calgary ads.
Reddit. r/r4rCalgary, with about 2,000 followers, had no new posts in two years when we looked. r/CalgaryDating, with about 3,500 followers, had about 734 weekly visitors and 14 weekly contributions on Reddit’s count, and no posted rules.
Beyond the apps. Flare Events, a Canadian speed-dating company, holds several Calgary nights a month, including lesbian speed dating for ages 27 to 43 at Village Brewery on November 5, 2026, according to its website.
Edmonton is built around its river valley, with downtown on the north side, Whyte Avenue on the south, and the bridges in between. Its r4r board is busy, and growing in searches: “edmonton r4r” more than tripled over the past year (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026).
What we found. On Doublelist, 2 of the 20 newest Edmonton ads were escort ads. On Locanto, 7 were, all posted as women: every women’s ad in the 20, some of them copies of ads in other cities, and one listing’s photo was hidden behind a “Reveal photo” button. SeekingList had 2 Edmonton ads, one of them four months old; the one posted as a woman was an escort ad.
Reddit. r/EdmontonR4R, created in 2019, had about 40,700 followers, and Reddit showed about 7,900 weekly visitors and 955 weekly contributions. It is for people within 35 km of Edmonton; posts from farther out are pointed to r/AlbertaSwingers. You can post 2 ads every 7 days, contact details aren’t allowed, and neither is any solicitation, whether money, drugs, or OnlyFans and Fansly links. Cannabis and alcohol are fine to mention; other drugs aren’t. The board runs automated tools that catch ban evasion, bots, and repeat posting.
Beyond the apps. Flare Events also runs Edmonton nights, such as speed dating for ages 25 to 32 at The Bell in Scona Brewery on October 13, 2026. For more ways to meet people, with or without an app, see our guide to alternatives to dating apps.
Montreal, Ottawa, and Winnipeg weren’t part of this check, but people there are searching too: “montreal r4r” gets about 390 searches a month, up 84% on last year, and “winnipeg personals” about 320 (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). Search Reddit for your city’s r4r board, and check the classified sites above for a page for your city. Flare Events also runs speed dating in Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, and Winnipeg. AseeksB works anywhere in Canada, with the distance shown on every post.
Craigslist has had no Personals section in Canada since 2018, and searches for it have mostly faded: “craigslist toronto personals” gets about 50 searches a month, down 92% on last year (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). Its missed connections sections are still there, and Toronto’s had 13 genuine-looking posts over the past three months. Kijiji has no personals section, and its Missed Connections category was mostly listings selling something. Which site comes closest to Craigslist depends on what you used it for: reading ads without signing up, replying without a match, or staying anonymous. Our Craigslist alternatives comparison lets you pick those traits and shows which sites still have them. If you came looking for Doublelist or Locanto in Canada, the numbers above are what we found; for more, see sites like Doublelist and sites like Locanto.
Canada’s personal ads are older than Kijiji. In December 1886 a Toronto paper, the Anglo-American Matrimonial Journal, printed this:
“A real good girl wanted at once for matrimonial purposes, by a steady man, in the North-West Territory. Never mind looks, so long as the heart is in the right place. Marriage to come off in about 30 days.”
The Anglo-American Matrimonial Journal, Toronto, December 1886. Read the adThe North-West Territories then took in most of what are now Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Journal sorted its ads by class and priced them by the word, a cent for the lower class and three for the upper, and replies went to numbered boxes at its Toronto office. The same issue carried a milkman in love with a hired girl on Jarvis Street, Carrie B., 19, who would rather be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave, and a woman in London ready to come out to Canada and marry a farmer. The archive has ten ads from the issue. More in our history of personal ads and The Personals Archive.
AseeksB is American-built and most of its members are still in the US, so in Canada treat it as an early, honest way to post what you are after and see who is around, not a crowded local listing. It is free to download and post, and every post shows how far away it was posted.
One honest difference: AseeksB ads can only be read inside the app after signing up, unlike Reddit’s boards and most of the classified sites above. That is the trade for choosing exactly who sees each post, and first messages stay in the app, where you can report someone even after they unmatch.
Text-first personal ads for Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and the rest of Canada, in your own words, with distance and other controls in Supporter.
No single site did. Craigslist’s Canadian sites have had no Personals section since 2018, and Kijiji has none either. People in Canada now post on Reddit’s city r4r boards, such as r/r4rtoronto, r/vancouverr4r, and r/EdmontonR4R, on classified-style sites such as Doublelist and SeekingList, in Locanto’s personals section, and in text-first apps such as AseeksB. They differ mainly in who can read your ad and how replies reach you.
Yes, r/r4rtoronto, which had about 100,600 followers in October 2026, with about 21,000 weekly visitors on Reddit’s count. Titles follow a set format, your age, an R4R tag, a hashtag for your area, and a title, such as “30M4F #GTA - seeking FWB.” Posts need at least 230 characters, accounts must be at least 7 days old unless verified, and you can post once every 3 days. Sex workers and content sellers are banned.
No. Kijiji has no personals section. In Toronto, its Missed Connections category had 8 listings on October 9, 2026, and only 2 were missed connections; its Long Lost Relationships category had 10, all selling something. Craigslist Toronto’s missed connections section had 13 posts from the past three months, all apparently genuine.
Yes, it has pages for Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton. Anyone can see ad titles, but reading a full ad needs an account. When we read the 20 newest ads in each city on October 9, 2026, 4 were escort ads in Toronto, 2 in Vancouver, none in Calgary, and 2 in Edmonton.
Yes, though most of its members are still in the US. AseeksB is a free personal ads app for iOS and Android. You choose who sees each post by gender and age range, every post shows how far away it was posted, and Supporters can also set a maximum distance. A free account keeps one active post, and someone can send one message per post until you reply.