General census guide

The questions asked on the census varied from year to year. The completeness of the records varies, so some information might be missing. By law, the census returns are transferred to LAC and opened for public use after 92 years.

On this page

• Before you start
• Places to look
• Search tips
  • General
  • Dashes and other symbols
  • Who - Searching by name
  • Where — Searching by place
  • Searching by district, sub-district or division
  • Terminology and abbreviations
• Access the records
• Related links

Before you start

Gather information such as:

• name(s)
• approximate year of birth
• country of birth
• approximate year of arrival
• place of residence in Canada

Places to look

Search tips

General

• Start your search with a minimal amount of information (e.g., name) and then use the filters to narrow down the results. Sometimes if you put too much information, you will get limited or no results.
• Census records relating to Indigenous peoples are sometimes kept in other archival collections, most notably RG 10. For more information, see the First Nations, Inuit, or Métis genealogy help pages.

Databases are created by indexers who look at the census returns and try to interpret the information on each page. Mistakes can happen because of:

• poor handwriting in the original documents
• The standard use of cursive, which can be difficult to read
• poor quality of the digitized microfilm
• pages that are hard to read because of faded ink or very dark ink
• letters that look similar can cause confusion for indexers, such as u and n, o and a, L and S, etc.
• in some old handwriting styles, a double “s” resembled the letters fs or p
• confusion over how names were presented on a page, for example, a first name might be entered incorrectly in a database as the last name and vice versa

Census records relating to Indigenous peoples are sometimes kept in other archival collections, most notably RG 10.

Dashes and other symbols

In some years, these were used:

• Items to be counted as one were indicated by either a downward stroke “|” or the figure "1."
• Items to be counted as zero were indicated by a dash “-“ or the space was left blank.
• A dash was written when NO was the answer or there was nothing to be recorded.
• The number “1” was written when YES was the answer.
• Quotation marks “ ” or the word “ditto” were used when the information in one line it the same as the line before.

Who - Searching by name

Search for a person using only a first or last name in combination with other search fields. When you are searching by name, keep the following in mind:

• Try the * wildcard, for example Fran* for Frank, Francis, François, Franz, Francisco. The wildcard can be used at the beginning, end or in the middle of a name.
• Some people went by their middle name or used a nickname, such as Lizzie for Elizabeth or Nellie for Helen.
• Some first names were recorded only by the initial or an abbreviation, such as T. or Thos. instead of Thomas. Sometimes only a title was used, such as Mrs., Mr., Dr., Rev., Widow.
• Some women were recorded by their husband’s name, for example, Mrs. Joe Chang. In Quebec, women were often recorded by maiden name instead of their married name.
• Spelling variations of names are common in old records. Also, many names were written phonetically, as they sounded to the person recording them. For example, Thibault, Thibeau and Tibo are just three of many variations of that name.
• Last names appear different ways depending on how they were recorded and how they were indexed. Example: McDonald, MacDonald, M’Donald, Mc Donald, Donald Mc
• Some immigrants anglicized their names. Boisvert may have evolved into Greenwood. Johan Kuch may have called himself John Cook. Even the enumerator may have created his own variations. For example, an English enumerator might have written John Baptist instead of Jean-Baptiste.

Where — Searching by place

Searching by place is helpful if you can’t find someone when searching by name or if you want to search a specific location.

In the Where section, you can search by:

• province or territory
  • Click one or more provinces.
• place keyword
  • Censuses are organized by province and territory, then districts and sub-districts, not cities. Use this field to search for cities, institutions (schools, prisons), or rural keywords like “meridian.”
• district or sub-district
  • Start typing to get suggestions, then choose the relevant district or sub-district.

The first step is to try to locate where the individual you are searching for lived. You can do this several ways.

Searching by district, sub-district or division

Census returns from 1825 onwards are organized by province or territory.

• Each province and territory is divided into districts. These are based on federal electoral districts and usually correspond to counties and cities.
• Districts are divided into sub-districts, generally corresponding to townships, civil parishes, and larger towns.
• Small towns and villages were usually enumerated within the surrounding township and not identified separately. For some cities, some wards or suburban areas were enumerated in the surrounding county/district.

All districts and sub-districts are listed in the database, but you can also see them in each year page.

If the person you are looking for lived in a city

Try searching the annual city directory for that year. City directories list adult residents alphabetically and indicate occupation and address. LAC holds some of these directories in the Canadian directories collection.

• Find the person’s name in the alphabetical section to see their address.
• Next, check the street section of the directory to see the names of their neighbours.
• Now search for those names in the database.

There are also street indexes for some larger cities. Street indexes can be used to find in which district and sub-district a specific street, avenue, or institution was enumerated. Once you have located the district and sub-district numbers of interest to you, search the database using that information.

If you know the name of a place, but not where it is located

Try our Post Offices and Postmasters database.

• Search by place name. If there was a post office there, it will indicate the electoral district and sometimes other location details.
• For example, the entry for Archville indicates that it was part of Nepean (township) in Carleton District. So, in this case, you would try searching for Nepean in the census database.

If you know where the place was located (after 1891)

Try searching federal electoral district maps. Not only were federal electoral districts redrawn after each census (after 1891), but the new electoral districts were used to draw the census districts for the next census.

• Use the following electoral atlases to locate a place and then search for that district in the census. Keep in mind that there may have been minor changes to some boundaries before the districts were redrawn.
  • Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada, 1895
  • Electoral atlas of the Dominion of Canada: as divided for the tenth general election held in the year 1904
  • Electoral atlas of the Dominion of Canada, according to the Redistribution act of 1914 and the Amending act of 1915
  • Federal electoral district maps, 1924
  • Map of federal Electoral Districts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, 1924

Terminology and abbreviations

Terminology

Aggregate returns

A type of census that only includes the number of individuals, rather than listing their names.

Agricultural returns

Agricultural returns provide information such as acreage, livestock and agricultural products. Only some names on the Canada West agricultural pages are indexed in this database. More will be added in the future.

Enumerators and enumeration

Enumerators were the individuals who collected information for the census. This collection of information is known as enumeration.

Enumerators visited census districts, which were divided into sub-districts. These units are made up of cities, towns, groups of townships, reserves, and other less well-defined areas. Some larger sub-districts were further divided into divisions.

Military census

A census taken of military settlements that included discharged soldiers and civilian settlers. These can be aggregate or nominal.

Nominal census

A type of census that includes names of individuals.

Originals

An original archival document

Return

Another term for a census record or a list of people.

Schedules

Specific census questionnaires. Censuses had several different questionnaires and therefore several different schedules. Some schedules asked about deaths, agriculture, or industry. Not all schedules have survived.

Transcripts

A handwritten or typed copy of original records

Abbreviations

You will see many abbreviations on census pages. Some pages are written in English and some are written in French. It is helpful to know what the abbreviations mean for both languages.

There are some abbreviations that were only used in one year. Those are explained on the individual census information pages.

Access the records

In 1955, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics was authorized by the Public Records Committee to microfilm and destroy the original paper census returns from 1881 onwards. That is why only microfilm copies exist. The original paper copies that still exist for census before 1881 are fragile and not available for consultation. The digitized microfilms are available.

See Crediting and citing Library and Archives Canada material for an example of how to cite census records.

Digitized records

Canadian census records from 1825 onwards can be searched using Census search.

Other census records, including those early census records and related documents are available through Collection search or the Héritage website.

Records that are not digitized

You will need to see census records that are not digitized in person. If you cannot visit us in person, you may want to order copies or hire a researcher. Please note that microfilm copies of the census up to 1916 are available for on-site consultation.

Related links

• Birth, marriage, death and divorce records
• Citizenship and naturalization records