It
has been reported that the Canada 1921 census is now available
free of charge on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
website.*****
Several years ago, LAC
signed a contentious contract with Ancestry whereby in
exchange for Ancestry taking the time to digitise and
transcribe the Canada 1921 census (or more specifically, the
microfilm of the census), Ancestry had the exclusive rights to
put the census records on their subscription website for a
period of four years starting in August 2013. Now four years
later, LAC has put the records on its own
website.
*****
With some exceptions,
national censuses in Canada are done every ten years. The
Canada 1921 census was the sixth national census and it
follows the one taken in 1911. One big advantage of the 1921
census is that it asks questions about the birthplace of both
parents.
*****
The 1921 census was taken
on 1 June 1921. At that time, Canada had a total population
count of 8,788,483 people, or about 25% of the country’s
current population.
*****
One thing to note with
this collection is that the original records from the 1921
census were destroyed when the records were transferred to
microfilm back in 1955. The quality of these microfilm images
varies enormously, and the odd image is (unfortunately)
unreadable.
*****
These records can be
searched by first name, last name, age, province and keyword.
If you cannot find your ancestors by searching by name (this
problem has been encountered), you might want to consider
scanning the images by location if you happen to know where
your ancestors lived. Alternatively, try searching for your
ancestors by alternative name spellings (the Ancestry
translation was not always the best). Please click here
to visit the LAC website for more details or here
to make a search.
This
is an adapted version of an article that appeared in the
Genealogy in Time magazine in November
2017.