Updated: Tue Jun. 20 2006 11:22:00 PM

CTV.ca News Staff

Toronto has always had a reputation of being nice, and now a global survey proves it.

A Reader's Digest evaluation testing politeness and courteousness conducted in 35 countries worldwide ranked Toronto as the third most polite.

Hogtown finished behind Zurich, Switzerland, while New York City topped the list of friendliest cities in the world. The only other Canadian city, Montreal, finished in 21st place.

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The monthly publication tested residents by sending undercover reporters around the world to test three specific types of politeness. They included:

• whether people would hold open a door for them; 
• whether store clerks thanked them after a sale; and
• whether anyone would help if they dropped a folder of papers on a busy street.

New York passed the tests 80 per cent of the time; Zurich scored a 77; and Toronto finished with 70. Montreal scored 50 per cent.

Mumbai, India, finished last with a score of 32 upon completion of the 2,160 "real-life" situations.

The region where the least amount of courtesy shown, according to the survey, was Asia, where eight of nine cities finished in the bottom 11.

Test subjects were asked why they acted the way they did after the experiment. Most said they were polite because that was the way they were raised.

Those in New York said their city has become friendlier since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In Toronto, 11 out of 20 helped when the Reader's Digest reporter dropped his or her paperwork, the lowest score of the three experiments.

However, those who failed the test were in their 60s and older.

"I knew I should have helped, but I'm too old to bend down," explained 79-year-old Sergio Balmant after ignoring a researcher in need.

Other seniors said they didn't want to get involved in someone else's personal documents.

In the overall global survey, those older than 40 fared much worse than their younger counterparts.

In Toronto, women were slightly more courteous than men, and both groups were significantly more polite towards their own sex. Some men said they worried about patronizing modern, independent women.

"I'm originally from Romania," said Valentin Punga, a 30-something Montrealer. "Over there I wouldn't hesitate to help pick up the papers. Here it is different. Once, I tried to help a woman who had dropped something, and she told me she was perfectly capable of doing it herself."

Conversely, men in New York were more willing to help women in the document drops, and all men held open the door for female reporters.

The Toronto reporters -- one of whom was born here -- weren't surprised their city ranked so high.

"I've always found people here to be very polite and courteous," said reporter Ian Harvey, who emigrated from England in 1972. "This is a fast-paced city, we're all busy, but it's the norm for people to take the time to help out."

London and Paris placed in the middle of the pack with scores of 57, while Milan and Sydney, Australia finished 24th with scores of 47.

In Europe, Moscow ranked the least polite city.

When a woman failed to hold a door open for one reporter she replied, "I'm not a doorman -- it's not my job to hold open doors. If someone gets hurt, they should be quicker on their feet."