1906 census a locked treasure trove Elaine Carey Demographics Reporter · · · · · · · They were just a group of amateur family historians who wanted to know more about their grandparents and where they settled back in the early 1900s. Personal details from the 1906 census of the Prairies were to be released in 1998, after the requisite 92-year waiting period. It would be a treasure trove. But Statistics Canada decided it would never again release that information from any census, starting with the one in 1906, on the grounds of privacy. Now the amateur historians are mad. Largely grandmothers and grandfathers themselves, they took up petitions, made Freedom of Information requests, got a bill introduced into the Senate and finally, this year, launched a court action to force the government to let them know more about their own history. After five years of struggling, the strange battle between the Chief Statistician of Canada and the country's part-time genealogists seems no closer to a settlement. One thing is certain, though. The genealogists aren't going away. "What we are is extremely tenacious," says Lois Sparling, the Alberta lawyer and amateur historian who launched the Federal Court action against Statistics Canada, naming 11 Canadians across the country as co-plaintiffs. "This issue is about the importance of history versus the privacy of dead people," she says. What makes it a broader issue is that the 1911 national census of all Canadians is due to be released next summer. If StatsCan has its way, it never will be. "For people with European ancestors, the only place they're going to get the place and date of birth of their great-great-grandma is the 1911 census," she says. When the government conducted the first census of the Prairie provinces in 1906, it didn't collect a lot of personal information on the settlers who lived there. Its one-page form asked who lived in the household, what their relationship was to the head of the family, their sex, age, place of birth, the year they immigrated to Canada, post office address and the township they lived in. And it wanted to know the number and age of all the horses, cows, sheep, hogs and pigs they owned because at that point, everyone who lived on the Prairies was a farmer, says Sparling. It doesn't seem like much, but getting that information "is a big issue on the Prairies because so many people came from Eastern Europe where the records were poor," she says. "It's crucial to people doing family history and social history - it tells you that this woman is that woman's widowed daughter and it arranges people by family which you can't get from any other source." The personal details from that census should have been turned over under law to the National Archives in 1998, under the 92-year rule, for release to the public for research purposes. But StatsCan, citing the instructions given to the enumerators in that and subsequent censuses, refused. -------------------------------------------------------------------- `Mountainous haystacks of microfilm full of millions of golden, invaluable needles.' Senator Lorna Milne -------------------------------------------------------------------- Starting in 1906, the enumerators were told to inform the people they were canvassing that the information would be kept private, it says. But StatsCan admits the enumerators were also instructed to inform them the information they provided would be useful to historians and that it would be stored in the Public Archives, which at that time were completely open to the public. The instructions, says Sparling, were so contradictory that the case before the Federal Court trial division is all about "what do these words mean and what do those words mean. "Our legal argument is that it's contradictory to say confidentiality will be maintained forever when the same instructions talk about the records being part of history." StatsCan sought several legal opinions on the case, all of which concluded the census should be released. "I haven't seen a legal opinion against the release of the 1906 census written by anybody," says Sparling. Even a government panel backed the release of the information. In 1999, then-Industry Minister John Manley set up a panel to "provide expert advice on the legal, privacy and archival implications" of releasing historical census records. The members of the panel included Richard Van Loon, president of Carleton University, the Honourable Gerard La Forest, a retired Supreme Court judge and Lorna Marsden, president of York University. After months of study and an Environics research poll of public opinion, the panel recommended that the 1906 census be turned over to the National Archives immediately and every subsequent census, after 92 years. StatsCan held on to the panel's recommendations for nine months, then quietly slipped them on to its Web site last Dec. 15. But they were accompanied by a statement from Brian Tobin, who was by then industry minister, that "further broad-based consultation with all Canadians is needed because the issues at stake are complex and far-reaching." Ivan Fellegi, chief statistician at StatsCan, told a public hearing he was concerned "the expert panel may not have properly addressed the need for a `balance of competing public goods and the impact on the integrity of the statistical system in their research.'" So StatsCan then spent $260,000 to hire Environics to conduct another poll and hold public meetings on the public's concern about releasing census data. It conducted 22 public meetings and found that by a two-to-one margin, the public supported releasing the records. But it also held 22 focus groups, where a selection of people are surveyed for their opinions. The participants rejected releasing the information by two to one. Meanwhile, Liberal Senator Lorna Milne, daughter of former Toronto Mayor Bill Dennison and an avid genealogist, introduced a private member's bill to change the law to force the release of every census after 92 years. But at Manley's urging she withdrew the bill and tried to work out a compromise. She got one that was "unfortunately heavily bureaucratic," she says, but in September, 2000, Parliament was dissolved, an election was called and after it was over Fellegi "was no longer interested in the compromise." So Milne reintroduced her bill. "Census records can only be described as mountainous haystacks of microfilm full of millions of golden, invaluable needles," she said in her speech. She also decried "the lack of motivation on the part of the government to deal with how Canada will record its history" and "the complete and utter intransigence and inflexibility of the present chief statistician, Dr. Ivan Fellegi." -------------------------------------------------------------------- `Not having that history would be a real loss, whether it's good history or bad.' Toronto public school trustee Sheila Ward -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fellegi has refused to comment on the matter because the issue is before the Federal Court. "This is all about Parliamentarians versus bureaucrats," Milne says. "It's fascinating and frustrating but I'm not going to give up until the census is released." Toronto public school trustee Sheila Ward, one of the 11 plaintiffs in the court case, got involved when she tried to complete her own family tree and was looking for details of where her maternal grandfather settled on the Prairies. "The census would be a huge help to tell me where he was in 1906," she says. But on a broader level, "I just believe the census is part of our history. Not having that history would be a real loss, whether it's good history or bad. We don't have much appreciation of it in Canada, unlike the Americans who celebrate it ad nauseum. "But we're now in this ridiculous battle with Statistics Canada over some illusive promise made of confidentiality, when all you're talking about is the names of people and where they lived," she says. "I really can't believe that 90-some years after the census any of those people would care if they were alive. "Its just beyond me," she says. "It's a perfect example of why you can't let bureaucrats run things." The sad part, she says, is that a lot of people get into tracing their family history when they're in their retirement years and have the time. "These folks are being denied their history and some will probably pass on before this is settled," she says. "I think that's just unconscionable." One of those is 77-year-old Muriel Davidson of Brampton, a long-time friend of Milne's and one of the 11 plaintiffs. She has devoted the past five years of her life to trying to get the census records released, collecting more than 20,000 names on petitions and working the computer lines. Her supporters are made up of people of all ages and from all different backgrounds, who communicate over the Internet and have never met. She has backers in New Zealand, Britain, Australia and Germany, all of whom have roots in Canada and want the census information released. "It's all politics about a promise they made we cannot find and they can't prove," she says. Retired school teacher Gordon Watts of Port Coquitlam, B.C., is another one of the main organizers of the Canadian family history community in this battle. "The upshot of this is that 235 years of census records are available in the archives for anyone who wants to access them without restrictions," he says." What we're seeking is exactly the same rights after 1901." What's really annoying, says Sparling, is that current census data is sold to "anyone who can pay the price and they can track you down to a half block. "