POST 1901 CENSUS PROJECT
Open the door to Canada's Historic Census
TOWN HALL MEETINGS |
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This page contains the presentation of Professor Eric W. Sager to the Town Hall meeting held at Vancouver. 30 JANUARY 2002 I represent the Canadian Families Project -- a 5-year project funded by the SSHRC to study the History of Families and Households in Canada in the Past. We are a team of 13 scholars assisted by many student research assistants. We have created, for our benefit and for the benefit of any other researchers, a computerized national sample of the 1901 Census of Canada. We were among the first users of the original Census schedules of 1901 after those Census returns were released to the public ten years ago. Our project, I hope, suggests very clearly som of the benefits of access to Historical Censuses. The Census is a great Historical Treasure, and, I would argue, our most precious one. It is the only Historical Monument which seeks to preserve and to commemorate all Canadians - famour and anonymous, rich and poor, young and old, women and men, in all parts of the country -- all of them named in one great memorial. In our project we can ask some very important questions: Was there a traditional family type in Canada a century ago? Who lived with whom? What did the family economy look like in the era before the modern welfare state? What was the fate of immigrants in our labour markets? How many children had women of different ages given birth to, and why was fertility declining? how many singe-parent families were there, and how did they cope? The list of questions is a very long one -- and these canot be answered without access to the Census -- for it is our single most comprehensive social survey of the Canadian people. Is the Census of such value only to University Academics such as myself? NO -- IT IS NOT. We all have read lamensts about Canadian's lack of knowledg of their history. In recent years there have been many surveys that reveal a disturbingly large proportion of Canadians who lack basic knowledge about people and events in our past. I am not among the pessimists here -- because every day, in my classrooms -- and every time I give a talk to groups off campus -- I see again the enormous and healthy appetite among Canadians for their history -- an insatiable curiosity. And nothing in my experience so excites that curiosity as does one's first sighting of the Historical Census (even in its cramped microfilm format) -- that painstaking record of individual, real people, in their families, the basic conditions of their lives as told to enumerators, passed on to us and to posterity -- in perpetuity. And there is no dobut that the Census was for perpetuity and for future use. The conclusions of the Expert pnel on Access to Historical Census Records (June 2000) and the legal opinions of the Department of Justice are consistent and unabiguous: in the Census and Statistics Act of 1905 the government was balancing the absolute necessity of short term confidentiality and the need for eventual access for Historical research. the Census instructions direct that "Clear and legible records" be mad since "the Census is intended to be a permanent record and its schedules will be stored in the Archives of the Dominion." Elsewhere the instructions stat that "it [the Census] will have value as a record for Historical use..." I understand fully that government must balance very legitiamate public interests here -- the real interest in maintaining confidentiality and preserving the integrity of present-day Censuses, and the public interest in Historical knowledge. I believe that the recommendations of the Expert Panel achieve that balance. Far from placing at risk the process of Census-taking in Canada today and in the future, controlled access to Historical Censuse after 92 years is very likely to have the opposite effect. We have here a wonderful opportunity to Persuad the public of the benefits of co-operation in the Census -- an opportunity to create a greater public opinion in support of the Census. As you may know, at the beginning of this month the Public Record Office in Britain place the UK Census of 1901 on a web site. Were there complaints about the release of confidential information? Hardly> This must have been the most popular launch of a web site ever in Britain -- 20 million people tried to log on and the system crashed. According to The Times newspaper, "The site attracted double the 10 million fans who logged on to see Madonna perform in London in 2000, the record Internet audience for a single event." To use the digital image of the 1901 Census, each user pays a small fee... The P.R.O. hopes to earn a 1 million pound windfall from the Census web site. The Census is a great gift to Canadians -- and to Statistics Canada and the National Archives. Here is their opportunity to achieve what the CBC did with its Peoples History of Canada... Here is their greatest single opportunity to win public support for the Census -- and for the whole process of information gathering and storage by these two National institutions. Let us hope that government grants this unique opportunity to the National Archives, to Statistics Canada, AND TO ALL CANADIANS. |
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