Greetings All My thanks to Doug Porteous on the Can-Saskatchewan mail list for posting the URL for the following article of the 20 June Globe and Mail. Thanks also to Garth Ulrich, our Canada Census Committee member in Saskatchewan for forwarding it to me. The URL for the original article is: http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20010620/COCENSUS.html Happy Hunting. Gordon A. Watts gordon_watts@telus.net Co-Chair, Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC http://globalgenealogy.com/Census en francais http://globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm Permission to forward this message without notice is granted. ======================================== Don't muzzle our past Wilfrid Laurier never intended to keep the 1906 census secret, says historian BILL WAISER BILL WAISER Wednesday, June 20, 2001 In 2005, Saskatchewan and Alberta will celebrate their centennial as provinces. All kinds of special events are being planned for the occasion. But, as things now stand, one important historical player -- the 1906 special Western census -- will not be there. At the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of immigrants helped fuel what became known as the "Laurier Boom." Most newcomers were attracted by the promise of the "last best West" and took up homesteads in record numbers. Prairie cities became some of the world's fastest growing urban centres: Saskatoon, for example, mushroomed from 113 people in 1901 to more than 12,000 a decade later. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier took pride that one of Confederation's last great tasks -- settlement of the Western interior -- was finally being realized. He recognized that a new agricultural society was in the making, one with a distinctive, continental European component, and wanted to capture this change. He ordered a special Western census for June, 1906 -- held in the three Prairie provinces only. It was an unprecedented exercise. Census-taking was normally held every 10 years -- the last one in 1901. But Western Canada's growth was so phenomenal that Laurier decided to take a kind of statistical snapshot of the region's population and agriculture for posterity. This census material is now almost a century old. According to federal legislation (the Privacy, Access to Information, and National Archives acts), it should have been made available for public consultation in 1998. Ian Wilson, the Chief Archivist, has asked Statistics Canada to transfer the 1906 census to the custody and control of the Archives. This request has not been honoured and the law has not been respected. Those opposed to releasing the 1906 census contend that prime minister Laurier made a pledge that the information would remain confidential forever. But none of these opponents -- or anyone else for that matter -- has been able to produce any evidence of the so-called Laurier promise. What we do know is that the 1906 census did have a confidentiality provision "to keep inviolate the secrecy of the information" that was specifically aimed at census enumerators, not the general public generations later. The Laurier government wanted to assure Westerners that census information would not be passed along to tax collectors or military conscription personnel, and instructed its census workers to emphasize this point. But the 1906 census instructions also state, "The Census is intended to be a permanent record, and its schedules will be stored in the Archives of the Dominion." Releasing the 1906 census data would not break a promise to Canadians; it would keep one. The continuing failure to transfer these records to the National Archives breaks faith with the original intentions of the Laurier government and violates the current access and privacy laws of Canada. Maybe it's time for three of the Liberal leadership hopefuls -- John Manley, Brian Tobin and Sheila Copps -- to show some leadership on this important issue. In November, 1999, then industry minister Manley appointed an expert panel to investigate how historical census material should be handled. The panel concluded that there was no impediment to transferring the 1906 census to the National Archives -- a position supported by a legal opinion from the Department of Justice. Mr. Tobin, the new industry minister, has had several months to study and act on the report. Researchers from his province of Newfoundland currently enjoy access to its 1945 census. One wonders why Western Canadians are being denied the same privilege, especially given the purpose of the 1906 census. Ms. Copps, meanwhile, has been promoting Canadian heritage at every opportunity, but has been uncharacteristically silent on the census question. Surely, her department should be championing the fundamental importance of this material for a more complete understanding of Canada's past. Then there's Jean Chrétien, who likes to compare himself to Laurier and seems to be looking for a legacy. What better way to honour one of our most successful prime ministers than to provide access to the census that gave credence to the term, "Canada's Century"? It's time to release the 1906 special Western census for public consultation. The Saskatchewan and Alberta centennials are just four years away. Researchers need time to examine the material to learn more about the Laurier era in general, and the histories of Western families in particular. There are half a million individual stories waiting to be told. Now that's a celebration. Bill Waiser lives in Saskatoon. He is a board member of Canada's National History Society.