O, Canada! Let the excitement begin.
In advance of the expected March deadline, FamilySearch late yesterday released the index of the 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces for Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
The free database provides a searchable index of two million names linked to 45,000 digital pages of the historical regional Canadian census
Since 1871, four years after Confederation, the Canadian government has held a country-wide census every 10 years.
The population of the Prairie provinces, however, was rapidly expanding, so there was a need for more frequent population counts in those provinces. It was decided to conduct a census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in June 1906 (in between the Canada-wide censuses), and every 10 years thereafter.
On her blog, My Genealogy Life, Alberta-based genealogist Patricia Greber writes, “Some of the indexes are linked to the images, but not all.” She explains how to find the elusive images.
To explore the census and other collections on FamilySearch, you will need to set up a free account, which is very quick and easy to do.
Or you can search the 1926 census on Library and Archives Canada’s website. Other Canadian censuses are here on LAC’s website.
Does this mean it’s only 5 more years until we see the 1931 Canadian Census?
Yes. Statistics Canada will release the 1931 Canada Census to Library and Archives Canada in 2023. Then, as with the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces, it will take almost a year, i.e., sometime in 2024, to index and make it searchable online.
So excited to finally have this. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to correct spelling mistakes. For instance, I knew that Girardin ancestors were living in La Salle, Manitoba, near my Hogue ancestors, but a search didn’t find them. It was only by browsing the images that I could determine that they had been indexed as Givardni!