By Julia Barkhouse

We all love the Census. It’s the number one genealogical resource for finding ancestors because it gives reliable information on every Canadian, where they lived, how old they were, whether they worked, and other useful tidbits. It provides a snapshot of our population at a given time and place.

I love the Census for making it possible to track the movements of my great-grandfather, Henry D. Barkhouse. He was the inspiration for the recent work that my team, the Digital Access Agile Team, did to consolidate and release Census Search Beta in November 2022.

I want to take you through my journey in researching Henry D.’s life in the Census. He was born in 1864 and died in 1947 in Nova Scotia. My father never knew him, as he passed before my father was born. A very tall man, he married my great-grandmother, Samantha Udora (Dora) Butler, in 1899 in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia. They had eight children. He was a farmer, and his homestead has been passed down in my family to the present day. Other than this basic information, I know very little about him.

Henry D. Barkhouse (1864–1947) and Samantha Udora (Dora) Butler at the Barkhouse homestead in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia (c. 1930–1947). Image courtesy of the author, Julia Barkhouse.

Before starting my research, I record the information that I know about Henry D.:

• Last name: Barkhouse
• First name: Henry D.
• Gender: Male
• Dates: 1864–1947
• Occupation: Farmer
• Province: Nova Scotia (I didn’t know the district or sub-district)

Armed with this information, I expect to find Henry D. in the censuses from 1871 to 1921. The 1931 and 1941 censuses are not yet available.

The research journey begins, and I find him in the 1871 Census.

Page of Census of Canada, 1871 (Item Number: 3150873)

With the first hit, I learn more about him. The census record confirms that he was born in 1864 and that he was seven at the time of the Census in 1871. Now, I can fill in the gaps with the district and sub-district names for Scots Bay. I also learn his religion. I can view the image and get more information about his education and whether he had any infirmities. I can also connect to his parents (James and Rebecca) and his brothers and sisters. Now, I have more information that I can use to find him in other censuses, and I can update my family tree.

At this point, I realize that I have to replicate this search in other Census of Canada databases. I decide to perform the same search in the 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921 censuses. Performing the same search five more times will be long and (dare I say) frustrating.

Inspiration strikes: What if I could consolidate all the censuses into one master database of census records? This would allow me to use the same search parameters, search Henry D.’s name once, and get all the hits from all Census databases. I could view the results from 1871 to 1921 on one screen and use our built-in tools to save these results to MyResearch in order to come back to them later. This would shorten the time it takes to do research on each ancestor.

This idea required some quality thinking. Each census is slightly different. While it appears that all censuses capture similar information, the early ones (before Confederation) differ greatly from those conducted after 1867. As well, there were censuses of individual provinces (Ontario and Manitoba) and the Prairie Provinces (formerly “the Territories”). The search raised a number of questions, the biggest of which was: What happens when you put that amount of data in one database?

Conducting the search was a daunting task. Library and Archives Canada has 17 Canadian censuses comprising almost 44 million names. Each name is a record in our database. The search started with a detailed analysis of each census to compare and contrast the data captured in our databases. In this analysis, my team came up with a workplan and identified several improvements or questions to address after the launch. Our first release is Census Search Beta, which combines the 17 Census databases into a single interface. We call it “Beta” to indicate that our product is nearly complete and is being improved every two weeks. Our acceptance criteria before releasing the Beta product to the public were the following:

• A search interface with all the fields currently available in our standalone databases plus a few more based on feedback from our clients (for example, gender, ethnic origin, place of birth, religion, occupation);
• Search results with filters for province, census year, district and sub-district;
• An item display that shows the digital object in our harmonized viewer and the full list of available fields (such as name, gender, age).

Once the censuses were migrated and available in Census Search, we were able to improve the overall search experience for our clients. Now, you can zoom the images with our harmonized viewer or view in fullscreen. You can also download and export your search results in a variety of formats (HTML, XML, CSV or JSON). You can save records to MyResearch and come back to them later. You can add transcriptions or comments to Co-Lab to tag or translate the images. You can suggest a correction to a record and help us improve the Census data.

Screenshot of Census Search (Library and Archives Canada website)

The first release for Census Search was a considerable task, and we are very happy with our achievement. We also have a blueprint for improvements moving forward. Following our initial launch, we have a number of questions and issues that we want to investigate and for which we want to come up with viable solutions. You will see these released as improvements to Census Search as we move out of the Beta phase. The purpose of this work is to:

• bundle the images so users can navigate to the next page and view persons or families who may have been enumerated at the bottom of one page and whose information is continued on the next;
• program the search interface to adjust itself with greyed-out text or pop-up messages for instances where not all censuses have data for all fields (for example, ethnic origin, place of birth, religion)
• track the geographical changes to the country over time. Once the data was put together, we wanted to track the changes to provinces, territories, districts and sub-districts;
• find a way to isolate one person and connect this person in each census, or to connect a person and their relationships to other people;
• add any additional schedules (for example, agricultural schedules) to Census Search, and identify whether a person has additional information there;
• clean up the data, and create historical data dictionaries that contextualize the terms used at the time (for example, “ethnicity”);
• sort the search results to group together people by census year or in alphabetical order (ascending or descending).

As for my great-grandfather? Now, when I search for Henry D. in Census Search, I get his results from 1871 to 1921. I can save them to a list in MyResearch and come back to them to trace other family members as well. As we add more enhancements to Census Search, I will be able to page through the Census and view his family if they are enumerated over two pages. I will be able to see whether Henry D. has an entry in the agricultural schedules, since he was a farmer. I might learn how large his farm was and whether he kept chickens, pigs or cows.

Screenshot of Census Search results saved in MyResearch (Library and Archives Canada website)

Creating Census Search has been a journey, and we have only just begun. As you can see, we have many enhancements and features coming to make the experience more enjoyable for you, our clients. Consolidating 17 datasets into one database was only the first step. We hope you will join us as we develop this free resource for you. You can send us your feedback via our email. You can also sign up for a 10-minute feedback session with us.

Julia Barkhouse has worked at Library and Archives Canada in data quality, database management and administration for the last 14 years. She is currently the Collections Data Analyst on the Digital Access Agile Team.