Censuses of Canada: Help

This page provides a list of services relating to the various censuses of Canada that are available. Some of these services are provided by this web site and others by other free web sites.

While services that permit viewing census data are available to all visitors, there are additional services that permit you to contribute to the expansion of free census searches. All of the census searches that are implemented on this web-site can be contributed to by any registered user.

There are individual database tables for each of the 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911 censuses of Canada, which record all or almost all of the the values recorded in the individual enumeration forms of each of the censuses. For the post-confederation (1867) censuses that is schedule 1.

To support the application there are three additional tables:

• The District table contains information about the districts into which each census was divided. For the pre-confederation (1867) censuses a District is the same as a County. Indeed the 1851 census was delayed until 1852 precisely because in 1851 the counties were in the process of being organized as a result of the constitutional changes introduced as a result of the Durham Report. However for the post-confederation censuses the enumeration districts are based upon the electoral districts (called ridings in Canada).
• The Sub-District table contains information about each of the enumeration sub-districts into which the Districts were divided. Generally a Sub-District corresponds to a township, town, large village, or city ward. If the population of a Sub-District was such as to require being divided in order to keep the enumerator's workload down, then the Sub-District was divided into Divisions. Each division has a separate row in this table.
• The Page table contains information about each individual page in the individual enumeration schedule of every census. This table is therefore conceptually extremely large. However it is not populated for a given division until the first page in that division is transcribed. Each entry in the page table tracks information including how many individuals are recorded on the page, and the URL of the image of the original page, if that image is available on the web from a free source (usually the Library and Archives of Canada web site).