I've done my own digging on free canadian dating sites for over 50 and come up short. For later-life daters, canadian popular lands differently: the platform hides read receipts on the free tier, and you only notice once you have spent a few evenings on it. Same story on canadian sites: how well it works on a weak connection outweighs the length of the feature list, based on a fairly small sample.
The popular sites angle is worse, because the practical move is to screenshot the pricing page in case it changes. Nothing about canadian changes the fact that the reply rate is the number worth watching, not whatever the landing page promises.
With canadian, the deciding factor is how much sits behind the paywall, having tried a handful of these. The short version on free canadian dating sites for over 50 is that the platform quietly widens your distance setting, so it pays to read the newest reviews rather than the top-rated ones. Numbers on canadian popular appreciated if you kept any.