CHICAGO (CBS) – The City of Toronto was doing a little chest thumping Wednesday morning at the expense of Chicago, after surpassing the Windy City as the fourth largest city in North America.

WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports Toronto, a city often considered to be very similar to Chicago, boasted it has overtaken Chicago in population.

Already Canada’s largest city, Toronto’s population has grown to 2.79 million. That would make it North America’s fourth largest city after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago’s population was approximately 2.71 million people in 2011, just behind Toronto, dropping it to fifth on the list of largest North American cities.

Except for a brief rise in the 1990s, Chicago’s population has been steadily shrinking since the 1950s, according to Census data. Approximately 200,000 people left the city from 2000 to 2010.

Chicago’s population peaked at 3.62 million in 1950, when it was the nation’s second largest city.

According to the latest census, Chicago’s population in 2010 was at the lowest level in 100 years, when the population was 2,185,283.