POST 1901 CENSUS PROJECT
Open the door to Canada's Historic Census
TOWN HALL MEETINGS |
|
This page contains the presentation of Dr. L. Gordon Goldsborough to the Town Hall Meeting held in Winnipeg. Dr. Goldsborough attended the evening session of the meeting. Good evening. My name is Gordon Goldsborough, and I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to you today. In the course of your travels across the country, your group has undoubtedly heard a range of views on the contentious issue of providing access to census data collected after 1901. My view, which I am sure you have heard from many others, is that Statistics Canada and the Government of Canada should endorse the recommendations of the Expert Panel on Access to Historical Census Records and immediately transfer the data from the 1906 census to the National Archives and commit to a policy of full, unrestricted access following a reasonable period of time to assure the privacy of living census respondents. In my view, the "compromise" proposal by Statistics Canada is hardly better than no access at all. That said, I do not intend to waste your time by restating the comments of others speaking at these meetings. I asked to speak this evening because the basis for my support of improved accessibility of census data is, I suspect, a little different from those of others. Although it is true that people do use information contained in old census records to reconstruct their family trees, and to study changes in societies over time, there is yet another reason that old census data can be valuable. It can provide critical information on environmental change. Allow me to explain. I am a professor at the University of Manitoba in the fields of biology and environmental science. My area of expertise in the assessment of water quality and plant growth in lakes, rivers and wetlands of the prairies, as impacted by climate change, agriculture, and urban expansion. In addition to my academic responsibilities, I am also the Executive Director of a field station at Delta Marsh, north of the city of Portage la Prairie, about 130 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg. Regrettably, the environment of Delta Marsh is deteriorating, we believe, due to the increased human activity in and around it. These changes were subtle at first, unnoticeable by European settlers who arrived in the 1870s to find what appeared to be limitless numbers of ducks and geese, and abundant marsh grass for their livestock. The number of people increased greatly in 1901, when a railway arrived, bringing huge numbers of city-dwellers to enjoy the fresh breezes at the shore of Lake Manitoba bordering the marsh. Invariably, many stayed to build cottages and homes. By the 1910s, the few available records indicate that a flourishing community of year-round residents was established, some supported by a fishing industry on the lake, others by raising livestock, and still others by growing crops on the drier uplands around the marsh edges. Long-term residents of the area tell us of dramatic declines in water quality and waterfowl abundance which might be attributed to the growth of this human community. But are we confident in this conclusion? No, because hard scientific data are virtually non-existent prior to the 1960s. We have information on barely half of the period over which intensive human settlement has occurred. So we necessarily turn to other, indirect measures of human activity to fill in the gaps. So how does this relate to old census data? Simply, that the census provides environmental scientists with a tool for reconstructing, at least indirectly, the conditions of the past as a comparison to the conditions of the present. We live in a technologically advanced day where it is easy, cheap and fast to measure environmental conditions using sophisticated equipment. We tend to forget that it has not always been so. Indeed, it has only been a few decades since our environmental monitoring capabilities were rudimentary. So it is often difficult to say with any certainty that anything has changed because we have no data from times before the change. Therefore, scientists turn to a variety of what are referred to as "proxy" methods of reconstructing past environments. These include analysis of the rings of long-lived trees, layers in sediments from the bottoms of deep lakes, and other similar "archives" of indirect environmental data. If the results from several of these proxy measures agree, scientists have more confidence that their reconstructions are valid. These proxy measures are not restricted to those measurable with an expensive piece of equipment. Extremely useful information can exist in written records from long ago. For example, records of the Hudson's Bay Company fur trade posts contain the dates when lakes and rivers melted in the spring and froze in the autumn, thereby providing indirect measures of temperatures for places and times for which no actual measurements exist. What information exists in old census files that can benefit the reconstruction of past conditions? They tell us how many people lived in a particular area. They tell us the sizes of families, which in turn tells us the opportunities for future growth of the community. They tell us, in some cases, the occupations of family members from which we can infer the type of activities (and potential impacts) occurring in an area. Comparison of successive censes for the same place can document changes in the intensity of land use. Recall that I said Delta Marsh was first reached by rail in 1901, coincidentally the last year of publicly accessible census data. Subsequent censes were carried out at five-year intervals on the prairies: in 1906, 1911, and so on. This means that, if data from these censes were available, we would gain new perspective on the nature of the human community at each of these times and its change over time. Admittedly, data contained in the census is not as much as we might like. And there are other sources from which some of this information can be obtained. But, I reiterate that the best reconstructions come when information from several sources are combined. Now, critics might argue that community-wide summaries of the old census data are already available. Aren't these good enough? No, because they are compiled for too large an area to provide the kind of detailed information on specific sites that access to the full data would provide. The post-1901 summaries for Manitoba encompass far too large an area to be of any use in reconstructing the growth and development of the local community that contributed to changes in the Delta Marsh ecosystem. I realize that, on hearing my presentation so far, some might conclude that my needs would be served by the compromise proposed by Statistics Canada, whereby post-1901 census data would be made available under restricted conditions. I wish to dispel this misconception by saying that I emphatically do not believe the compromise is anything of the sort. It would provide census data only to bona fide family members or to researchers duly sanctioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Under these conditions, scientists such as myself would have no access. It is unlikely that any projects such as the one at Delta Marsh would be approved. As a scientist, I lack credentials in the strict discipline of history that the committee might require to give me access. In turn, it is unlikely that committee members would have adequate credentials in environmental impact assessment to judge the quality of my research proposal. I conclude that the compromise will not serve the interests of a large number of legitimate users of census data. On numerous occasions, the people of Canada have showed that they support far greater access to historical information in old census data. A couple of weeks ago, information from the 1901 British census was made available on the Internet. The web site was accessible for only a few hours before it was brought to its knees by demand that exceeded supply by a factor of 20 times! At around the same time, the American government released data from their 1930 census, apparently demonstrating that privacy-conscious Americans are less concerned about protection of their census data than their Canadian cousins. In the coming months, the Government of Manitoba will proclaim revisions to its Vital Statistics Act that will give unrestricted access to data on births, deaths, and marriages at least 70 to 80 years after they had occurred, bringing its legislation in line with that in such other provinces as British Columbia and Ontario. Just this afternoon, I conducted impromptu survey of my class of 206 first-year environmental science students, and 82% would support the release of post-1901 census data. The present legislation is bureaucracy at its worst, and it needs to be changed. In conclusion, I acknowledge the legitimate need to protect personal information provided by living Canadians in the national census. But I believe the assertion of perpetual secrecy made by Statistics Canada is ludicrous and patronizing, and it impedes legitimate uses of census information such as the one I have described this evening. Therefore, I hope that Bills currently before the Senate and the House of Commons will receive favourable consideration so we will gain immediate access to the 1906 census, the 1911 census in 2003, and others in the due course of time. Canadians deserve to know their own heritage. Thank you for your time and attention. Dr. L. Gordon Goldsborough Director, Delta Marsh Field Station 208 Buller Building University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2 |
Post 1901 Census Project Site Sponsored by:
Everything for The Family Historian!
1-800-361-5168 Bookstore Website
Copyright © GlobalGenealogy.com Inc. 1995-2009
