Census Sub-District Table Help

Each district of a census of Canada is divided into sub-districts. Generally a sub-district corresponds to a township, town, large village, or a ward in a city.

For censuses prior to 1911 if the workload of collecting the census data was anticipated to exceed the capacity of a single enumerator, then the sub-district was divided into divisions. In the 1911 census multiple sub-districts were created instead.

All of the information that the application requires to know about a sub-district (or division) is collected in the Sub-District Table. This includes:

• The 6 character identifier of the census. This consists of the 2 character country code, 'CA' for Canada, and the 4 digit enumeration year.
• The numeric identifier of the district of which the sub-district is a part.
• The identifier of the sub-district within the district. For some censuses (1851, 1861, 1906, 1911) this is a number. For others it is an alphabetic code.
• The division number if the sub-district is divided into divisions. There is a separate record in this table for each division.
• The name of the sub-district.
• The number of pages in the population (enumeration of the living) schedule.
• The first page number in the division. In most cases this is 1. However in the 1851 and 1861 censuses the pages were not consistently numbered by the enumerators, and the pages were subsequently numbered sequentially through the entire sub-district when the original documents were microfilmed (and the originals destroyed!).
• The page increment within the division. In a few cases when the 1851 and 1861 census pages were numbered, during the microfilming process, the technician incremented the page number twice for each leaf of the schedule of the living because information about the individuals was recorded on both the recto and the verson of each leaf. In this case the application has to know that only the odd page numbers are used to identify the page[s] containing information on an individual.
• The total number of individuals in the division. This is used by the web pages that track the progress of the transcription.
• Library & Archives of Canada (LAC) microfilm reel identifier.
• Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) Family History Library (FHL) microfilm reel number.
• The "Image Base", and "Relative Frame" fields identify the crucial numeric values that are used to compute the Uniform Record Locator (URL) of the image of the first page of the population schedule. The exact meaning of these two fields depends upon the census.
• The number of images for this division on the web site.

The "Update SubDist Table" application requires that you uniquely identify the district containing the sub-district (and division) for which you wish to correct information. Once you have made that selection the application displays the portion of the table including all of the sub-districts (and divisions) in the selected division.

To identify the district you identify the enumeration year, and district. The pre-Confederation censuses were administered separately in each of the colonies, and when the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (predecessor of Statistics Canada) organized the records for those censuses, it assigned separate sets of district numbers for each of the colonies. So for the pre-Confederation censuses you must also specify the colony (province) in which the district is located. For the post-Confederation censuses specifying the province is optional, although it limits the set of districts displayed.

Once you have selected the district, click on the Request Form button. The application displays the information on all of the sub-districts and divisions in the requested district in a tabular form that can be updated like a spreadsheet.