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Home: Genealogy: Canada: Censuses:
This form permits you to specify the characteristics of individuals that you are looking for in All Censuses of Canada.
Once you have made all of your desired selections, click on the "Query" button centered at the top of the form.
Province
You can restrict the response by province. Select one of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, as well as the North-West Territories. If you wish to limit the search to a specific province the choice is made using the selection list.
Count
The Count field permits specifying how many records are to be displayed at at a time. The default is 20 records.
Given Names
This field is used to specify text which is matched against the given names of individuals in the database. This search is done as a case-insensitive pattern match, not a simple comparison.
Specifying simple text, comprising letters and spaces, matches against any names containing that text. "John" or "john" or "JOHN" will match "Johnathan" and "William John" as well as the simple "John".
The text may be a regular expression. There are too many options to enumerate here, but a few examples include:
Surname
This field is used to specify text to look for in the surname of individuals. If the value contains only letters and spaces then only names that match exactly (except for case) are found. Otherwise this uses the same pattern matching as described for Given Names. For example to match surnames starting with "McL..." and ending with ".n", such as "McLean", "McLain", "McLennan", or "McLellan" you could specify "^McL.*n$".
The meaning of this field changes if the Soundex option is selected.
Soundex
The Soundex code has been used for decades to attempt to match names that sound similar. For example it is used by police forces to perform a rough match for the names of drivers. It is a problematic tool, as it is based upon the phonetics of British surnames. If you select this option along with a complete surname, not a pattern match, in the Surname field, then the search is made for surnames that "sound like" the given surname. For example specifying Soundex together with "McLean" will match all of the surnames in the pattern match example under "Surname", but many other names as well, such "McCallum", "McAllan", "McClain", and "McWilliams".
Sex
Select this option if you only want to look for male or female individuals.
Marital Status
Select this option if you wish to restrict the search based upon the marital status of the individuals.
Occupation
This option is used to search for individuals based upon their listed occupations. This is again a pattern match. For example searching for "Labo[u]{0,1}rer" will match any occupation that contains either "Laborer" or "Labourer", including "Farm Labourer" and "R'y Laborer".
Birth Place
This option is used to search for individuals based upon where they were born. This is a pattern match. For example searching for "Canada" will also match "Canada East", "Canada West", "Lower Canada", and "Upper Canada".
Religion
This option is used to search for individuals based upon their religious affiliation. This is a pattern match. For example searching for "Meth" will match any religion containing that string, including "Wesleyan Methodist", "C. Meth.", "New Connexion Methodist", and "Methodist Episcopal".
Address
This option is used to search for individuals based upon their address. This is a pattern match. For example searching for "Dundas St" will match any address containing that string, including "137 Dundas St", "cor of Queen St & Dundas St" and "Dundas Station".
Origin
The Origin field is used to search for individuals with a particular ethnic origin. Note that by the instructions to the enumerators the term "Canadian" only applied to Canadiens-françaises, and the term "American" was not to be used, regardless of how many generations the individual's family had been living in America.
Birth Year & Range
The Birth Year and Range fields are used to search for individuals based upon their approximate birth year calculated from their age at the time of the census in spring All.