POST 1901 CENSUS PROJECT
Open the door to Canada's Historic Census
TOWN HALL MEETINGS |
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This page contains correspondence from Lisa Dillon, Ph. D., relating to the Town Hall Meeting held in Montreal. Her presentation to the Town Hall meeting follows. Lisa attended the evening session of these meetings. Sunday, January 13, 2002 5:25 PM I went to the consultation meeting on Friday night in Montreal; there were only about 15 people in the audience, which might include note-takers for Environics. Presenters included James Neelan, Jacques Gagnon, myself and Diane Baillargeon who represented variously the genealogical and archival communities while I spoke from the academic community. There was a fifth presenter whose name I did not catch. Presenters reiterated the value of census material for both genealogical and historical research and rejected a compromise proposal which would restrict the abilities to conduct comprehensive genealogical research and which would also require archivists to act as police, which is not their role. The two Environics representatives asked the speakers why they think the Privacy Commissioners are against the release of the manuscript censuses and whether they see a 92-year rule as an effective balance between privacy and access. They asked me what whether the government should be concerned if a portion of the Canadian population expressed dissent with the release of the 1906 and 1911 manuscript censuses, and at what threshold (10,000? 20,000? 2% of the population?) this portion of the Canadian population would wield enough influence to prevent the release of the manuscript censuses. Rather than be lured into stating a threshold, I just reiterated that the Canadian government should listen the thousands of Canadians who have been consistently supporting the release of the manuscript censuses, and also pay attention to their experience with the 1901 Census of Canada and 1945 Census of Newfoundland, neither of which invoked opposition when they were released to the public. I tried in my presentation to show them that there are overlapping interests among genealogists and academic historians, and I also made the point during the q&a that, since technology is changing so rapidly, we cannot predict in advance how historians' interests are going to develop or what historians are going to be able to do with large amounts of data, so we need to make the maximum amount of information available. Lisa Dillon, Ph.D. on the future of the 1906 and 1911 Censuses My name is Dr. Lisa Dillon; I am Professor of Historical Demography, Département de Démographie, Université de Montréal. I am here today to support the transfer of the manuscripts of 1906 and 1911 Censuses of Canada to the National Archives of Canada and their public release to all Canadians and international researchers. I speak as a historical demographer with over 10 years academic experience working with historical census mansucripts and census data. In addition to my own views, I represent the Canadian Community on History and Computing, a sub-committee of the Canadian Historical Association, and the International Microdata Access Group, which was formed in 1999 to foster the international collaboration of researchers who work with historical and contemporary microdata in order to facilitate transnational comparative research. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address the committee. I wish to make clear that the implications of our decisions regarding the 1906 and 1911 censuses transcend the interests of the Canadian genealogical community. Indeed, the failure to allow Canadians access to the 1906 and 1911 Censuses of Canada will jeopardize Canada’s proud standing in the international community of researchers, scientists and policymakers, and Canada’s ability to sustain its tradition of path-breaking research which uses detailed, complete population data. I would like to describe this strong tradition to you. This is a tradition which has been built on the co-operation of genealogists and academic historians. Since the 1960s, Canada has led the world in the creation of complete and highly-detailed historical databases which include not only anonymized samples but also total national populations. In the 1960s, the Programme de Recherche en Démographie historique created the Register of the Population of Québec ancien (RPQA) based on more than 700,000 baptismal, marriage and death certificates registered before 1800. More recently, the University of Ottawa worked together with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to create a 100% database of the 1881 Census of Canada, featuring 4.3 million cases. Genealogist volunteer and academic historian collaboration was crucial to the completion of this dataset. The data was originally transcribed and entered into computerized format by volunteers; volunteers also played a role in the final stage of the project in contributing over 500 hours in checking and cleaning the dataset. As opposed to anonymized samples, these 100% databases contain complete information about every enumerated individual, including first and last names which are necessary to link together family members, to link individuals across time and to trace cultural patterns indicated by naming trends. By building and using databases which encompass entire national populations, we are able to examine unique sub-groups of the population and local communities to an extent never before possible with sampled census data, such as the oldest old, Afro-Canadians, widows and widowers, native peoples, and residents of sparsely-populated regions. To build such datasets, we need open access to manuscript census enumerations from as many years as possible. Members of the 1881 Canadian Census Project are now engaged in an international collaboration, the North Atlantic Population Project, to work with similarly complete data from the United States, Great Britain, Norway and Iceland. Thus, Canadian population researchers and their international colleagues have established new world standards for social science research infrastructure which depend upon access to detailed historical records. These international standards must be sustained by each country in order to maximize researchers’ capacity to generate important and relevant research. Such research would enable Canadian social science researchers to develop long-term perspectives on important issues such as employment patterns, standards of living, single parenthood, ethinc plurality and the household arrangements of the elderly. Today, the Canadian government is often challenged to formulate policies which deal with these very matters. Long-range perspectives on these issues would contribute important insights to the policy planning process. Statistics Canada’s decisions concerning the 1906 and 1911 census manuscripts affect a community of genealogists, local historians and university-based scholars who share increasingly close ties. The methodological cross-fertilization of genealogy and history which we see in the 1881 Canadian Census Project has set a precedent for future collaborations. You have probably heard the news that within days of posting the 1901 Census of England and Wales on its website, the British Public Records Office website was receiving over one million hits an hour. Canadian enthusiasm for the historical census is no less extensive, and as a director of the 1881 Canadian Census Project, I have experienced first-hand the considerable and constant pressure exerted by the Canadian genealogical community to access census records as soon as possible. Both genealogists and social historians need large-scale, systematic historical data on which to base their research. I urge that Statistics Canada accept the recommendation of the Expert Panel, “the immediate public release through the National Archives of the 1906 Census with a scheduled release of the 1911 Census in 2003 and the 1916 Census in 2008,” and that “the government commit itself to the public release of census information arising from the censuses held from 1921 onwards.” |
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