The final countdown begins for the online release of the 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced yesterday the database of this long-awaited census of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will be available in a free searchable index on its website in March 2019, along with digitized images.
While genealogists are an impatient lot, the process to make the census available to the public seems to be moving at a decent pace.
On June 1 this year, Statistics Canada transferred the 45,000 pages of the 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces to LAC. The Statistics Act states that returns are to be transferred from Statistics Canada to Library and Archives Canada 92 years after a census has been taken. In the case of the 1926 census, that would be the year 2018.
Over the summer, LAC concluded an agreement with FamilySearch to index the thousands of census entries so people can easily find the material on both websites.
With the help of volunteer indexers, FamilySearch completed the indexing and is now proceeding with quality control.
FamilySearch will next send the index to LAC on December 1, and LAC will then start building its new database.
Since 1871, a Canada-wide census has been held 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.
Great news!!! And March really isn’t that long to wait… so looking forward to seeing where my great-great-uncle was living then…I know at some point he separated from his wife. In directories he’s still listed at the family home, but I’m curious to see if he was counted there in 1926…