Library and Archives Canada (LAC) yesterday launched an expanded version of one of its most popular research guides: Finding Aid 300: Other census and related documents (1640 to 1945 , and announced it had updated its censuses pages.
This finding aid is a comprehensive guide to early census and related records found at LAC, with references mainly dating from 1640 to the 1800s. There are also some records from the 1900s, including Newfoundland and Labrador from 1921 to 1945.
New to this version of Finding Aid 300 are links to digitized images of most of the documents. Researchers can access numerous digitized records relating to Acadia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia.
LAC’s updated Censuses page includes links to databases of census returns, 1825 to 1921, and other resources.
Whenever a database, finding aid, or website is updated, I discover things that weren’t there before — or I hadn’t noticed. One item that stood out was the table of contents for each census.
For example, this is the table of contents for the 1861 census, and there is plenty of good information within each section:
- How the Census Was Collected
- From Paper to Microfilm
- Column Headings and Interpretation
- Common Abbreviations
- Schedules
- Instructions to Enumerators
- Issues about this Census and this Database
- Electoral Maps
People often post on Facebook that they don’t understand an abbreviation on a census. Well, the Common Abbreviations section probably has the answer.
Here’s another tip I found for the 1861 census. In Issues about this Census and this Database, you will learn that the census consists of multiple pages, depending on the form that was used to collect the information. A graphic (shown below) explains how to view the multiple pages.
My great grandfather Charles St-Germain was in the Klondike gold rush from 1898 to 1906 and I’ve not been able to find him in Canadian census records, in 1901 or 1905? Where are the registries the NWMP kept of all the people who flocked to the Yukon in search of gold?
I posted your question on the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group. Here are a couple of suggestions.
“I’d start with the FamilySearch Wiki page on the Yukon at https://www.familysearch.org/…/Yukon_Online_Genealogy… to see what possible records that people know about for that area. The Yukon Genealogy site at http://yukongenealogy.com/index might be of use also.”
Here’s another suggested source on CanGenealogy.com: http://www.cangenealogy.com/yukon.html
You should also consider contacting Library and Archives Canada to ask them. https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/contact-us/pages/contact-us.aspx
Caron,
By searching “Germain” in the Yukon Genealogy website, I found a Charles Germain who died at the age of 86 on August 4, 1967. The source listed is the Yukon News Obituary Index, 1966-2005.
LAC does have a page pertaining to Yukon resources: http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/places/Pages/yukon.aspx