Hi Arlene and List, I have been reading your discussion on births registrations with some interest . Arlene's last sentence made me think to go and look at a couple of books we have on our shelf as potential re-publications - except we're not too sure how popular they would be. One of the book is the Canada Year Book for 1922-23 and there was an interesting piece in it under "Vital Statistics" so I scanned the 3 pages and have OCR'd and extracted a part of it here for your information: "II. VITAL STATISTICS. The collection of vital statistics commenced in Canada, as in England, with the registration of baptisms, marriages and burials by the ecclesiastical authorities. These registers, maintained by the priests from the first settlement of the country, have made it possible for the vital statistics of the French colony to be compiled from the year 1610.* In the beginning, only one copy of such records was made, but in 1678 the Sovereign Council of Quebec ordered that in future such records should be made in duplicate, and that one copy, duly authenticated, should be delivered to the civil authorities. This arrangement was continued after the cession of the country to England, and was extended to the newly-established Protestant churches by an Act of 1793, but the registration among these latter remained seriously defective, both in Lower Canada and in the newly-established province of Upper Canada. In English-speaking Canada, vital statistics were from the commencement seriously defective, the pioneer settlers often going out into the wilds far from the authority of government and the ministrations of religion. While a law existed in Upper Canada requiring ministers of religion to deposit duplicates of their registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths with the clerks of the peace for transmission to the provincial secretary, this law remained practically a dead letter. Again, the efforts made to secure records of births and deaths at the censuses of 1851 and 1861 produced most unsatisfactory and even ridiculous results, as was pointed out by Dr. J. C. Tache, secretary of the board of registration and statistics, in a memorial published in the report of the Canadian Minister of Agriculture for the year 1865. Nevertheless, in spite of the inherent unsoundness of securing at a point of time in a decennial census a record of births and deaths occurring over a considerable period of time, this method was persisted in down to 1911, when the obviously untrustworthy character of the results obtained led to the discarding of the data obtained at the inquiry. In Montreal and Toronto, for example, the local records showed 11,038 and 5,593 deaths respectively in the calendar year 1910, while the census records showed only 7,359 and 3,148 deaths respectively in the year from June 1, 1910, to May 31, 1911. Similar discrepancies were shown for other areas, proving the census data to be very incomplete. The Dominion Government instituted in the early 80's a plan for compiling the annual mortuary statistics of cities of 25,000 population and over, by subsidizing local boards of health to supply the information under special regulations. A beginning was made with the five cities of Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Halifax and St. John. By 1891 the list had grown to 25, at a time when in most of the provinces the only birth and death statistics were those of the municipalities. Upon the organization of provincial bureaus of vital statistics, however, this work was abandoned, though a conference of Dominion and provincial officials, held in 1893, passed a resolution calling upon the provincial and Dominion authorities to cooperate in the work of collecting, compiling and publishing the vital statistics of the Dominion. This resolution had, however, no immediate practical results in securing accurate or comparable vital statistics. Each province (except New Brunswick, which had no vital statistics) enacted its own legislation on vital statistics and administered such legislation according to its own individual methods. While the vital statistics of Ontario were published in considerable detail annually from 1871, the arrangements for the collection of data were unsatisfactory. Only in 1906 was the publication of vital statistics begun in Prince Edward Island (no report for 1912 has ever been issued), and in Nova Scotia the publication of vital statistics dates only from 1909. Because of the lacunae, and even more because of the incomparability of facts collected, of methods of collection and of standard of enforcement, Canadian vital statistics remained extremely unsatisfactory and impossible to be compiled on a national basis, as was pointed out by the 1912 commission on official statistics, which recommended that "for the Dominion, now engaged in building up its national unity, it is important that uniform data should render possible to statisticians the institution of true interprovincial and international comparisons. By effective co-operation of the provinces with the Dominion this object should be capable of attainment without sacrificing the liberty of each province to satisfy its own special statistical requirements." The scheme of co-operation, thus outlined, has now been brought into effect as a consequence of the establishment of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics under the Statistics Act of 1918, which specifically provided that the Bureau should publish an annual report on vital statistics, and of the Dominion-Provincial conferences on vital statistics. The scheme was in the first instance drawn up in the Bureau and submitted to the various provinces; later a Dominion-Provincial conference on vital statistics was held in June, 1918, when a comprehensive and final discussion took place. At the conferences of 1918, it was agreed: (1) that the model Vital Statistics Act prepared by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, when accepted by the legislatures, should form the basis of the vital statistics legislation of the several provinces, thus scouring uniformity and comparability; (2) that the provinces should undertake to obtain the returns of births, marriages and deaths on the prescribed forms as approved find adopted at the conference, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics to supply the forms free of charge; (3) that the provinces should forward to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, at such times as might be agreed upon, either the original return of births, marriages and deaths, or certified transcriptions of the same; the Dominion Bureau of Statistics to undertake the mechanical compilation and tabulation of the same. Under the scheme outlined above, the vital statistics of all the provinces, except Quebec, have been secured and compiled on a uniform basis for the year 1920, and with the commencement of 1921, it became possible to issue complete monthly statements for the eight provinces. The first annual report has been issued, covering the year 1921, and may be obtained on application to the Dominion Statistician. Statistics showing births, marriages, deaths and natural increase in the nine provinces of Canada in recent years are given under the various headings in the following tables. The statistics for the eight provinces constituting the registration area of Canada are compiled for the provinces in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, while the figures for Quebec are taken from the provincial returns. The totals for the nine provinces are approximately equivalent to what they would be for the Dominion as a whole, since the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, which are not as yet covered by the new scheme of vital statistics, contain between them less than l-700th of the population of the Dominion. <3 paragraphs removed for brevity> * For a summary of the vital statistics of the Roman Catholic population from 1610 to 1883, see the Statistical Year Book of Quebec, 1921, English or French edition, p. 51. For details by years of this movement of population, see Vol. V of the Census of 1871, pp. 160-265 and Vol.IV of the Census ot 1881, pp. 134-145. " I apologize for the length of the quote but it I couldn't see a way to cut it any more without removing some interesting comments. I would be interested to hear any comments from any of you if you think that you would be interested in seeing a book filled with information about Canada at this sort of level made available, on CD, for you to own. We also have this book for 1916-17, 1937 and 1950, and a similar one, "The Canadian Almanac," for 1919. As I said, I find these books fascinating - but then I like all sorts of strange things :-) Malcolm Archive CD Books Canada Inc. Attn: Malcolm Moody - President P.O. Box 11, Manotick, Ontario, K4M 1A2, Canada. phone: (613) 692-2667 e-mail: [email protected] Canadian web site: http://www.archivecdbooks.ca > > From: Arlene Halme <[email protected]> > Date: 22 March 2005 21:10:34 GMT-05:00 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Birth Registration > > > My father was born in the Comox Hospital in 1920 but his birth wasn't > registered until he started school in 1926 when he needed proof of > age. When he joined the Army he needed a birth certificate and Vital > Stats turned up 2 birth dates for him 9 days apart so he always > celebrated 2 birthdays each year. His next older brother also did not > have his birth registered until he started school. I'm not sure if it > was lack of a Vital Stats office in small communities or people just > didn't know they had to register a birth with a government office. My > grandmother probably thought that the baptism record would suffice as > it did in Finland. Would be interesting to know what the regulations > in the 20's were. > > Arlene >