Find Your Ancestors in the Newly-Released 1931 Canadian Census

If you have ancestors from Canada, you know that there is a Canadian census, like ours, conducted every ten years, but unlike ours, a complete national census is not available before 1871, since Canada did not become a confederation until 1867. The first census for the Confederation of Canada covers just the four original provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. The next census, in 1881, covered the entire country as it existed then. There are earlier censuses for Canada, but they are for individual provinces and territories. All these early censuses are digitized and available online, most on FamilySearch for free and on Ancestry and Findmypast with a subscription. For a complete listing of available Canadian censuses and where they are located, see the article in the FamilySearch wiki, called “Canada Census.”

Canadian privacy laws for the census permit release after ninety-two years (our census is released after seventy-two), and so the 1931 Canadian census was released to the public in June 2023. This census increases in importance when you consider the time period (midst of the Great Depression) and the exodus of people from Europe entering Canada preceding World War II. If your Canadian ancestors were born during the late 1920s, this will be the first census on which they were enumerated. This census contains more than forty fields of personal information, and, like our 1930 federal census, asks questions pertinent to the Great Depression, such as “Has this family a radio?” and “Total number of weeks unemployed from any cause in the last 12 months?”

According to a press release from FamilySearch, they are working in partnership with the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) and Ancestry to index this census as quickly as possible. At the time of the census, Canada’s population was about ten million; this census contains 234,687 pages and is now completely digitized. Ancestry is working with the LAC to provide its robust transcribing and searching abilities to the census images. Then, FamilySearch will do a review of the index before all three sites place the index online. At that time, those with subscriptions to the international version of Ancestry will have access, and both the LAC and FamilySearch will carry it for free. In the meantime, the entire 1931 census (as well as those earlier national censuses,) are browsable by district and sub-district on the Library and Archives Canada website with important explanations of what to expect and how to find what you are seeking.

The images are sharp and clear, although they do take a few seconds to load because they are large. You can enlarge an image by zooming in, and you can download and/or print from the website. If you know where an ancestor lived, finding him/her by browsing will not be difficult, as the website is so easy to use, and you won’t have to wait for the indexing to be completed.

If you choose to browse the images, here is a sample page. Note the three buttons way down on the bottom left that allow you to print, download, and enlarge to full screen for better viewing.

For more information:

News Release on Family Search: https://www.familysearch.org/en/newsroom/1931-census-of-canada-coming-june-2023

Step by step preparation of the indexing on Library and Archives Canada: https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng/corporate/website-updates/pages/census-1931.aspx