Canada, Northwest Provinces Census, 1906 - FamilySearch Historical Records

Canada

What is in this Collection?
This collection contains indexes of the Northwest Provinces of Canada. There are some printed forms that were written in English and French. The responses that the people gave to the enumerator, were either in English or French. The census day for Canada was June 24th, 1906.

Collection Content
These censuses list a large proportion of the population. Unfortunately, portions of some have been lost, and some geographical areas within the provinces were missed by the census takers. Since the boundaries varied from census to census, it is not easy to tell which census district an eastern Canadian township or western Canadian village was in. Contemporary maps of the census districts have been lost or destroyed.

National census records are arranged by province and within provinces by census districts and sub-districts. Census districts are voting districts, not counties. Although a voting district may have the same name as a county, it may not include the same townships. In some provinces, townships are equivalent to census sub-districts. A number was assigned to a district, a letter to a sub-district and a number to a subdivision of a sub-district. Some sub-districts also have a number, i.e. "a(1)" means sub-district "a1" and "a1" means sub-district "a", subdivision "1".

The national government of Canada has taken censuses every ten years since 1871 and every five years since 1971. Newfoundland was not part of Canada until 1949 and most 19th-century censuses for this area contain statistical summaries and very few names.

The Canada Census article has more details.

What Can this Collection Tell Me?
Census records may contain the following information:


 * Full name
 * Gender
 * Age
 * Marital status
 * Relationship to head of household
 * Place of birth
 * Approximate year of birth

How Do I Search the Collection?
To begin your search it is helpful to know:
 * The name of your ancestor.
 * The place where your ancestor lived.
 * The names of family members.

Search by Name by visiting the Collection Page: Fill in the requested information in the initial search page. This search will return a list of possible matches. Compare the information about the ancestors in the list to what you already know about your ancestors to determine if this is the correct family or person. You may need to compare the information about more than one person to find your ancestor.

What Do I Do Next?
When you have located your ancestor’s census record, carefully evaluate each piece of information about them. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details that can lead you to other records about your ancestors.

I Found Who I was Looking for, What Now?

 * Use the locality and dates found in your census search to search other records, like civil registration or church records.

I Can't Find Who I'm Looking for, What Now?

 * If you can’t find your ancestor's location, you can try looking through the civil registration first to get the information that you need. When you have found that information, you can guess where your ancestor might be living at the time of the census.

Citing this Collection
Citing your sources makes it easy for others to find and evaluate the records you used. When you copy information from a record, list where you found that information. Here you can find citations already created for the entire collection and for each individual record or image.

Collection citation:

Record citation (or citation for the index entry):