Library and Archives Canada New Beta Census Search

Library and Archives Canada did warn us that they were transitioning to the new "cleaner" (my term) design for their pages in a phased approached. Thanks to Gail Dever and her post "New Census Search tool designed to make it easier to find family roots in Canada" at Genealogy à la carte for the heads up I found myself spending my Sunday morning and part of the afternoon playing on the new search page and writing this up.

For now the old LAC census search page still exists at "Censuses" but it will be going away sometime in the future. In preparation for the day when that happens and just based on what Library and Archives Canada did to other topic/landing pages, I'd recommend saving or printing, maybe as a PDF if your computer supports it, those various census topic pages to your computer for safekeeping...just in case. Those current pages do have a wealth of really information on them and we don't know if they will be carried forward to the new site.

On to the new LAC census search page...

Screen capture of the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

I'll be using Luke McMullen, my 3rd great-grandfather, in the examples in this blog. Why? Because it is my blog and also his name presents some interesting challenges at times.

The expanded search box screen captures which I took on 20 Nov 2022 all appear on the same screen in your browser. I've just presented them individually for clarity.

Here are my personal observations and recommendations on how to use the current search pages to do general census searches.

My first recommendation for anyone who has done census searches using any of the genealogy sites is to click on the "Advanced search" link at the top of the search form. What that does is open up the "Census year(s)", "Who", "When", "Where" and "Location in the archive" search forms so that you can see all the possible things you can search on. Yes, you could click the "More" button in the "Who", "Where", and "Location in the archive" but why click several buttons when one button will do the work for you.

Census year(s)

Screen capture of the expanded "Census year(s)" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

In the census years I would suggest to select only the years the person was alive...assuming you know that little bit of information. Why? So that you don't get overwhelmed or confused with extra results that don't apply to your person. Since Luke McMullen was born about 1818 and died in 1906 I would probably uncheck the boxes for 1911 and 1921 under "Dominion of Canada" and 1916 and 1926 under "All Prairies". 

Who

Screen capture of the expanded "Who" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

For the "Who" I'd recommend just filling in the "First name" and "Last name". The reason for not filling in the other boxes, except possibly "Gender", is that we probably don't know those details, what was transcribed, and, just as importantly, we don't know what was told to the enumerator. For example, in the various records for Luke McMullen I've found that his birth year was stated or calculated as 1818 or 1819 or 1820 or 1826. The form doesn't currently support age ranges so if you put in a specific age then you may miss many of the census search returns. As for 'Religion", I don't know about your family, but my kin who followed the various Protestant branches seemed to switch churches in almost every census enumeration.

When it comes to names and what the enumerator wrote or scribbled and playing the "guess what the blind transcriber saw" game is no longer fun, then try making use of the wildcard '*' character. If I search for "Luke McMullen" I get back five results: 1851, 1861 (agricultural), 1871 (Ontario), 1891, and 1901. Yet the 1871 Census of Canada result doesn't have an image attached since that transcription index entry was created by the Ontario Genealogical Society in the 1980s of just the heads of household. But what about the 1871 Census of Canada for Luke McMullen with an image?

Well this is where the wildcard comes in handy.

If I do a search for "Luke McMull*n" then the 1871 Census of Canada with an image appears in the list. The gotcha there here is that his last name was transcribed as "Luke McMullin"

Also, for anyone with a surname that starts with "Mc" or "Mac" I'd recommend replacing the "c" or "ac" with the wildcard. So when searching for McMullen I might start with "M*Mullen"

But I'm still missing the 1861 population schedule and the 1881 census so I tried searching using "Luke *Mull*n". Now I got back 15 results. Hmmm, just a few more than I expected! Most of them are of a Luke Mullin in Quebec. Yet if I filter on just the Province for "Ontario" I get only four results and still no 1881 and nothing before 1861. To find Luke in the Census of 1881 I had to search for "luke *mull*" and there I found his name transcribed as "Luke Mullem". By the way, I can't fault the transcriber in this case. It really does look like it is written by the enumerator as "Luke Mullem". However, there is another gotcha when it comes to filtering on the provinces but this is for when I discuss the "Where" search box below.

As for that Census of 1861 Canada it appears that the enumerator wrote on the population schedule Luke's name as "Luk McMullen". 

When

Screen capture of the expanded "When" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

I'd also leave the dates in the "When" blank just for the same reason I recommended leaving the "Age" blank in the "Who" search box. Our ancestors just weren't too consistent when it come to stating their age and it didn't help that on at least one census it asks "Age next birthday".

Where

Screen capture of the expanded "Where" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

The "Where" box is handy if you know in which province your kin resided. Yet if they moved to another province, quite often the phase "Go west, young man" comes to mind, you may miss later census entries. Where the "Where" search box does come in handy is if you are looking for someone in a specific place at a specific time. One does need to keep in mind that district names and sub-district names, along with their numbers, may have changed between the taking of the censuses. 

One thing that is missing on in the "Where" search box is the being able to search by page number. Why would that be useful? What if you were presented with a source citation along the lines of:

1901 census of Canada, Ontario, district 81, sub-district f-2, p. 2, dwelling 17, family 17, Luke McMullen; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 May 2013); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm T-6478.

Yes, I know that this is not a perfect citation but for my purposes it is "good enough". If we don't have Ancestry there is still enough information to find the page on the Library and Archives Canada site even without searching using the name...except the new search form, unlike the old form, doesn't let me narrow down the results to just a single page. The page number is captured in the "Record Information - Details" screen when I look at the search results so this should be a simple thing to add to the form by the developers. 

There is a gotcha, the one I alluded to in the "Who" section, when searching for folks in the censuses before 1871 who lived in Ontario. They weren't living in a place named Ontario yet. They were living on Upper Canada or Canada West according to the government. The same challenge for those living in the province presently called Quebec. Quebec was known as Lower Canada and then later Canada East. You may also have same challenge with the Prairie provinces since depending on the time they may have been enumerated under "The Territories" .

Location in the archive

Screen capture of the expanded "Location in the archive" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

Unless you are doing an arcane search leave the various fields in the "Location in the archive" blank. However, there have been times when I've been helping out someone in their research using Ancestry where I want to point them to the image on the Library and Archives Canada site and I do have the image number that I've found embedded in the Ancestry URL. With this extra search field it will make it very easy for me to find the image. As I said...arcane!

Getting back to Luke McMullen, finding him in the new LAC Census search page I would have to look for "Luk* *mull*" and filter just on the years he was alive. There will be a number of entries that don't apply to him. I can't filter on "Ontario" for the Province since then I'd miss the censuses of 1851 and 1861 for those censuses are recorded as being in "Canada West".

Collection Search Results

Once you get to the search results screen there is one thing to note: don't use the back button to get back to adjust or modify your various filters. 

Screen capture of the search results page in Collection Search for the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) system taken on 20 Nov 2022.

Instead, at the top of the search results page click on the "Modify search" to open up the search boxes just like we have seen on the initial search page. Make your changes here and click on the Search button to update the results.

Now not all is bad. The new image display page coming from the Collection Search page allows you to zoom in and out on the image by increments. So that is a nice feature. Plus being able to search from one screen, once some issues are hopefully dealt with, is a good thing.

Wrapping Up

Since this is a beta version of the page I figure now is the time to give my constructive feedback to Library and Archives Canada in the hopes of influencing the page and how it works. I've signed up for a 10 minute online feedback session and I've sent a laundry list of things to LAC via their "email us your comments" link at the top of the search page.

• Add search by page number in the "Where" search box. It is there in the old search system so hopefully that is an oversight.
• Add the ability to search by multiple Provinces in the "Where" search box. As I've noticed with Luke McMullen, LAC treats Ontario, Canada West, and Upper Canada as different places. Being able to select all three in my search would be a nice feature.
• One search feature that would be possibly the hardest to implement is to search for a range of numbers. Most of our kin had a range of ages or years recorded in the censuses. Being able to search for something like "From year: 1818" "To year: 1826" for a year would help us to get rid of the extra folks in the returned results. Same with searching by age.

 

Finally, and this is the important thing to remember. This is a beta version of the pages and things will change, hopefully for the better. So when you get frustrated, not if but when, step away from the computer or switch back to the familiar old Census search pages (at least for now).

UPDATE - 22 Nov 2022

It really can pay off to provide constructive feedback for I received a reply to my email from someone in the Digital Access, Public Services Branch at Library and Archives Canada. There are a few things I will share:

• They are in the process of introducing search ranges for"Age", 'Year of birth", and "Year of immigration". So keep an eye open for it in the upcoming weeks.
• Being able to select multiple "Provinces" is already an improvement that was requested by the Library and Archives Canada genealogy staff. So it is one of the features they will be working on.

For my issue with the page number, they pointed out that is actually under the "Location in the archive" search box but only if a specific year is selected. I've advocated that it should be in the "Where" section since the page number, line number, and family number is more associated with the district, sub-district, and division number when created a citation.