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July-August 2005 1911 Census Records
Some 7.2 million men, women and children were enumerated on June 1, 1911. The release of the 1911 census records will provide a fascinating glimpse of these Canadians at a critical time in our history--a window on how they lived and worked, where they came from, their religions, and the languages they spoke. This is an exciting time for genealogists, family historians, students, and any Canadian who wishes to gain a better understanding of who we are and where we came from. In the decade between 1901 and 1911, over 1.8 million men, women and children arrived on our shores from every corner of the globe to begin a new life in Canada and to lay the foundations of the multicultural society we have today. For the vast majority of these new arrivals, the information in the 1911 Census is the only documentation we have. These records--totalling 135 reels of microfilm--provide peoples' names, their occupations, their year of birth, but more importantly, these records tell their stories. By making these records available, through a unique partnership with Statistics Canada, we are allowing Canadians to explore their own past, and in so doing, to explore the history of our country. We are a nation that values historical research and inquiry, and these records are fundamental to a society trying to understand its own history. By preserving these records, we acknowledge their profound importance as a testament to our past; by making them accessible online, we underscore our commitment to making Canada's heritage available to the vast majority of Canadians. Canada has a longstanding history of making historical census and other records available to the public. Over the past decade alone, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has placed a considerable number of databases and digitized documents online, offering researchers of all kinds the chance to document an individual, a family, or a whole community. These include the national census records for 1901; the census of the prairie provinces, 1906; Home Children, 1869-1930; South African War service records, 1899-1902; and the Canadian Expeditionary Force attestation papers from 1914-1918. At LAC, researchers can also find information online about books and newspapers, historical resources that, when combined with census records, provide a much broader picture of how an individual may have lived--indeed, how a whole community may have lived. Census returns are of primary interest to family historians and genealogists because they are fundamental to the kind of research they undertake, and they can be supplemented by further research into a wide variety of resources held by LAC, as well as provincial, municipal, and other libraries and archives. Academic and professional historians, social scientists and students also benefit from the availability of these records. Census information is also extremely important for any serious biographical work. The census records were made available on July 21, and can be viewed online at www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/1911/index-e.html. I would like to thank my colleagues at Statistics Canada for helping us provide this unique opportunity to view our past. It is truly a historic moment. |
