POST 1901 CENSUS PROJECT
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This page contains the written submission of Ghislaine (Duguay) Joiner re: public access to 1906 and 1911 Census Record made to Environics Research Group. From: Ghislaine Joiner To: censusconsultations@environics.ca Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 7:59 PM Subject: Census release Dear Sirs, I am writing in regards to the question as to whether any post-1901census information will be released to the public. I am one of those who is researching my family, and have found the census to be an invaluable source in finding families, their names, ages, place of residence, and more. This information gives us a snapshot if you will of our ancestors, and we can almost see the family there in the writing. I don't know of any other source which can give us such a view of families past, who was living in their household, the size of their land & buildings, relationship of all residents to the head of household, ages, birthdates, occupations, education level, languages spoken, wages, place of birth, religion, neighbors, and more. It is such a great feeling to find your family right there, and to learn so much about them. But, alas, that was 1901, 101 years ago. They are all dead and gone, even the babies who grew up. So I do not see that there is any invasion of privacy of any of these people. I believe that waiting 90 or 100 years after the date of the census for release is sufficient. The census should be made completely accessible to the public. I can see no downside to doing this. After that amount of time, most of these people are history themselves, and why should we not be allowed to access government records which are a treasure of information to many people? What harm is there in that? There is no harm in releasing a census about people who are long gone. There is no privacy issue here. Privacy for who? Respect their privacy while they may still be living, but I think that the great majority of the people on post-1901 censuses have passed away.As I understand it, there was a 'promise' not to reveal this information, but that it was truly a promise not to reveal it in their lifetime. I was born in Quebec, and have lived in the US for most of my life. I am proud to be of Canadian heritage, and have found out so much new information about my ancestors, much of it with the help of the 1891 and 1901 census returns. One thing that I think you should think about and look at is how the U.S. releases the census. As I am sure you are aware, the 1930 census is about to be released. I have not heard one word or seen one story on TV about anyone being against this release. In fact, I have seen nothing at all, except the excitement and anticipation on genealogical websites of researchers trying to find out more about their families. People aren't worried that the census release will reveal private information about themselves. The Canadian census is so valuable to us because many of us started out knowing absolutely nothing about most of our ancestors, and these bits of information from the census give us pieces to our puzzles, and they are invaluable, irreplaceable, and much of it can be found nowhere else. I just hope that Statistics Canada can see the value of the census, and that the right thing to do is to allow the release of post-1901 census returns to the public. Thank you, Ghislaine (Duguay) Joiner San Clemente, California USA |
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