A Century of Canadian Census Geography: The Canadian Peoples on Their Territory, 1851-1951

Geoff Cunfer, Canada
Laurent Richard, Université Laval
Marc St-Hilaire, Département de géographie Université Laval

Thanks to a partnership with Ancestry, the complete count of Canadian census microdata 1851-1921, will be available for research shortly. Built by an interdisciplinary research team, the census microdata bases are accompanied by a geographic component allowing for mapping and spatial analyses, and which implied first, the building of 10,000 census subdistricts (CSD) and 910 census districts (CD) polygons and, second, the geocoding of the 38,000,000 lines of data at the CSD level. This paper aims at presenting those two main tasks, elaborated in continuity with what has been done for the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure for 1911-1951 censuses (St-Hilaire et al., 2007), but showing some differences due to the specificities of the compete count compared with the CCRI sample, and also to the more remote period (1851-1901). The presentation ends with some examples of queries and spatial analyses which the component will make possible.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 104. New Complete Count Canadian Census data