Family Tree Knots: June 2023

Sunday, June 25, 2023

1931 Census of Canada - C, B, or F?

It's been a few weeks since the the Seventh Census of Canada, 1931 was released to the public and people are actually starting to really pay attention to what is recorded on the pages. One question has started to pop up on the various Facebook genealogy groups summarized along the lines of:

What do the letters written between the birth places of the father (column 16) and mother (column 17) mean?

1931 Census of Canada, Ontario, district 126, sub-district 16, Grantham Township, p. 1, extract of columns 15-17;digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 Jun 2023); citing Library and Archives Canada folder T-27276.

Here is an example from a page in the Lincoln census district for the Township of Grantham. We can see combinations of letters like "CC", "BB", "BC", and "FF". Even more interesting is that the handwriting is different from that of the enumerator. These letters are found not just on one page but on all the pages and in various handwriting.

This is where we need to do some thinking and analysis plus consult the various reports generated out of the statistics from the 1931 Census of Canada. Plus a bit of guess work.

Remember, a purpose of the census was to create statistics so that the government could understand how Canada has changed since the last enumerator and to help in future planning. Sometimes the information recorded on the forms needed to be simplified so that the folks doing the tabulation in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics could do the data entry to count the details. Such is the case for grouping where the parents are born. We saw these similar types of notations in the 1921 Census of Canada. But at least this time the statisticians kept the extra comments to a minimum on the form.

I started with the theory that:

C = Canadian Born
B = British Isles Born
F = Foreign Born

The "C" was easy since for any parent born in a province or territory that made up the Dominion of Canada in 1931 I was seeing the letter "C".

The "F" was also just as easy since I was seeing it for all sorts of countries. Even if the birth country recorded for a parent was listed as "Unknown" it had the letter "F" assigned.

However, the "B" was interesting since my samples of the census were primarily taken from Ontario. I was seeing England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales all with a "B" code. However, I needed to get a better sample. For that I turned to the Vancouver-Burrard enumeration district in British Columbia. Why there? Vancouver, being on the coast, and the west coast of Canada at that, might have a more cosmopolitan population makeup. I chose Vancouver-Burrard just because (no real good reason, honest!)

Very quickly I came across a parent born in Newfoundland. There the code was "B".

Hmmm...Newfoundland wasn't a province or territory of Canada in 1931. Yet it also wasn't part of the British Isles. Then I found a father born on the Isle of Wight coded as "B". As I kept looking on the pages I came across a mother born in India with the letter "B". Next a father who was born in Australia also had the letter "B" beside his country of birth. Same with a parent born in South Africa. All in the first sub-district in the Vancouver-Burrard district. I guess I chose wisely.

Could "B" stand for British Subject¹ other than a Canadian born person? It certainly seemed that way.

However, as I was looking in sub-district 2 I came across an entry where it was written "N.G." for "Not Given" for the parents' birth place and there was a comment stating the person was absent and they were in England. The letter code associated is "N". There is always at least one anomaly to add to the confusion.

In that same sub-district I stumbled across someone whose mother was born in the West Indies and the code was written as "B".

The next place for me to look was in the various reports for the Seventh census of Canada, 1931. I looked in Volume 1 to see if they had something along the lines of birth places of the parents. In Chapter VII of the "Analysis of the Main Subjects of the Present Census and of Part Censuses of Canada" section starting on page 227 of the report (233 page of the PDF) the title is "NATIVITY OF PARENTS". There they use the terms "Canadian", "British", and "foreign". In reading the mentions of "British" and not seeing certain countries mentioned in various tabulations throughout the report listing "Foreign" countries it would seem to me that "British" meant the person was a subject of the British Empire excluding Canada.

On page 232 of that same volume there is even a table:

Dominion Bureau of Statistics of Canada, editor, Seventh census of Canada, 1931, 13 (Ottawa, Ontario: J. O. Patenaude, I.S.O., 1936), 1. Summary. p. 232 (https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.832354/publication.html : accessed 25 Jun 2023), "Proportion of Different Classes of Parentage."

So now I believe the codes and their meaning we will typically find, excluding the "N" for not given, for the birth places of the parents are:

C = Canadian Born
B = British Subject¹ Born excluding those born in Canada
F = Foreign Born excluding those born in Canada or as a British Subject

This gives us the combinations of:

CC = father and mother born in Canada
CB = father born in Canada, mother born as a British Subject
BC = father born as a British Subject, mother born in Canada
CF = father born in Canada, mother born in a foreign country
FC = father born in a foreign country, mother born in Canada
BB = father and mother born as a British Subject
BF = father born as a British Subject, mother born in a foreign country
FB = father born in a foreign county, mother born as a British Subject
FF = father and mother born in a foreign country

As an aside, if you haven't read the "Administrative Report on the Seventh Census of Canada, 1931" by The Dominion Statistician that can be found in volume 1 starting on page 29 I'd highly recommend doing so. He has written all about the history of the census and even talks about why Canada uses the de jure method of recording where people reside. He provides all kinds of cool facts.

1. Initially I had this written as "British Empire" but after thinking it over and with some feedback I've changed this to be "British Subject" as a short way of stating "subject of the British Empire". Keep in mind that someone being a British Subject extended beyond the British Isles and included the nations, dominions, colonies, and protectorates under the rule of His Majesty King George V.

Sunday, June 11, 2023

1931 Census of Canada - Major City Street Indexes

As I keep digging deep into the Seventh Census of Canada, the one started on June 1, 1931, additional resources are starting to appear to make it just a little bit easier for us to find our kin.

On Friday, June 9, 2023, Ancestry published the first public version of their name searchable index for the 1931 Census of Canada. This index was created by Ancestry's Handwriting Recognition software. Of course, as with any transcription, there are challenge with reading the handwriting. So what if you can't find your ancestor using the name index, what else can you do?

I was creating a short presentation on the 1931 Census of Canada and was reviewing my material and all the pages I have stumbled upon over the past month on this topic. That is when I noticed the Library and Archives Canada Collections catalogue page "Census returns for the 1931 census [textual record (microfilm)]" had been updated with all kinds of potentially useful links.

One of them was a reference to Library and Archives Canada Finding aid 31-80 where there are the street indexes which may cover censuses from 1911 to 1941. If a person lived in one of the following cities, then we are in luck:

For my great-grandfather, George Kaye Warrener, who ended up with the mangled transcription of "George Heryekaner", it took me about 40 minutes of manual searching for the street address of 28 Collahie in Toronto where he lived to find him on an image. I used Google Maps and the technique I talk about in my post "1931 Census of Canada - Success Stories". I've found that to be not too bad for a place like Toronto.

Ah, but what about using that street index finding aid?

Extract from Library and Archives Canada Finding aid 31-80 for Collahie in Toronto.

In the extract above we see that Collahie in Toronto has four entries:

11-128-104
21-113-52
31-138-53
41-163-6

The first set of digits is the census year. So I would want to look at the entry "31-138-53" for the 1931 Census of Canada.

The next set of digits is the district number, 138, followed by the sub-district number, 53.

But the districts listed on the Library and Archives Canada 1931 Census search page and in Ancestry's "1931 Census of Canada" collection only list the district by name. How does one map a district number to a name?

That information is also found in Finding aid 31-80. Those pages have been extracted and are available in PDF form so that we can even download and save the files to our computer:

In looking in the PDF for Ontario I find that district number 138 is the Parkdale district.

Now I can quickly browse the images on Ancestry or LAC for the Province of Ontario, Parkdale district, and select sub-district 53 from the list. Then just skip through the pages until I find Collahie listed as the street address.

Total time using the street address to find George Kaye Warrener using the street index this time? Less than 5 minutes!

Keep in mind that some streets may be found spanning multiple sub-districts or even districts. College street is one such place in Toronto. So you will need to look at multiple locations to find the right range of street numbers. Yet this street index really does make it much easier to find the possible district and sub-district for a street address.

Best of luck in your searches!

Friday, June 9, 2023

1931 Census of Canada - Initial Searchable Index

On June 1st, 1931 the enumerators of the the seventh census of Canada began their work throughout most parts of Canada.

Jump ahead to June 1st, 2023 and the surviving information that was gathered, the population schedule on Form 1, was now available to all who wanted to take the time to wade through the images to find their ancestors. The release of those images didn't go as smoothly as hoped since there were a number of issues with the Library and Archives Canada web site during those first two days. By the morning of June 2nd, Ancestry had finished processing and loading those same images into their system so that we could view them, thus taking the pressure off LAC.

In just over a week from the time that Ancestry had first started receiving the images of the 1931 Census of Canada from Library and Archives Canada just after midnight on June 1st, Ancestry has the first public version of their searchable index ready for our use. Ancestry, along with FamilySearch, will be working hard in the coming weeks and months to improve the accuracy of the information extracted and to add more information to those indexes just like what we see for the indexes in the 1921 Census of Canada.

You can find the "1931 Census of Canada" collection and the associated searchable index on Ancestry at https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/.

Partial screen capture of the "1931 Census of Canada" search page from Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/ : accessed 9 Jun 2023).

In looking at the updated search page for the 1931 Census of Canada we find that we can search by name, birth year, where the person is living, associated family members, "relation to head", marital status, sub-district number, enumeration district, and gender. This index was effectively created by computer algorithms (AI in the marketing world) using Ancestry's Handwriting Recognition software to attempt to read what the enumerators had written down.

If you want to learn more about Ancestry's Handwriting Recognition technology and it's use in transcribing the census, you can watch their approach to the 1950 Federal Census of the United States of America, which was done last year, in their view "Teaching a Computer to Read the 1950 U.S. Census | Ancestry®".

Here is a screen capture from the 1931 Census of Canada on Ancestry with all the details open for a specific person. Yes, it is a busy screen but I'm used to it.

Screen capture of the web page from Ancestry Canada showing the 1931 Census of Canada page for Ontario, Parkdale district, sub-district 53, page 10 with "George Heryekaner" selected.

I chose this screen capture of "George Heryekaner" as my example of what we can see for a very specific reason. I'd already found him through manually looking through the censuses. He is my great-grandfather. But his name isn't "George Heryekaner" but "George Kaye Warrener". And his son isn't "Nancy" but is written as "Ronald Macgregor". OK, even I had a challenge reading the "Macgregor" part. The computer did do a good job on reading "Henriette" and "Lilian"...so kudos to our future AI Overlords.

1931 Census of Canada, Winnipeg, district 138 (Parkdale), sub-district 53 (Toronto City Ward 6), p. 10, dwelling 87, family 126, extract of household of George Heryekaner; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry Operations, Inc., Ancestry.ca (https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/ : accessed 3 Jun 2023).

When I first saw George's name recorded in the census I knew that the computer would have a fit trying to transcribe his name. And I was right! Now I thought it might guess the last name as "Kaye Warrener" or "Haye Warrener" or just "Kaye" or "Haye". However, I was wrong as to what the attempt at reading the handwriting came up with.

If I hadn't known where George and the family was living I probably would never have found him in the index. The handwriting by the enumerator is, to put it kindly, challenging. Fortunately, just like many of the other transcriptions made of records by Ancestry, we can submit our own corrections to the name and select fields. I have now added my own suggested corrections to the transcription of the 1931 Census of Canada for this family.

Contrast the handwriting above with the penmanship by the enumerator in sub-district 29 (London City Ward 4), London district, Ontario:

1931 Census of Canada, district 127 (London), sub-district 29 (London City Ward 4), p. 1, dwelling 12, family 14, extract of household of Nathaniel McKinlay; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry Operations, Inc., Ancestry.ca (https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/ : accessed 8 Jun 2023).

Here the computer had no problems reading the handwriting.

1931 Census of Canada, district 127 (London), sub-district 29 (London City Ward 4), p. 1, dwelling 12, family 14, transcription for the entry of Nathaniel McKinlay; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry Operations, Inc., Ancestry.ca (https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/ : accessed 8 Jun 2023).

As you can well imagine, this first public release of the index from Ancestry will have it's challenges. That is why it is still important to know how to actually find an address in the census and not just rely on a computer to do the work for you. I look at using our research skills to look for someone by address in my post "1931 Census of Canada - Success Stories".

So set your expectations appropriately. The computer can't perform miracles when the handwriting is not great. Yet having the ability to search by name for folks in the 1931 Census of Canada will allow us to deal with the low hanging fruit so that we can focus our research skills on those we can't easily find.

Have fun searching!

Saturday, June 3, 2023

1931 Census of Canada - Success Stories

It has been an interesting and challenging time for all involved with the public release of the 1931 Census of Canada by Library and Archives Canada on June 1, 2023. What started with joy and happiness quickly turned to sadness and frustration for the genealogy and family history community as issues on the Library and Archives Canada site prevented many from even trying to view the images. Yet I'm not going to harp on those issues since I've already done so in my post "1931 Census of Canada - A Release Fiasco?" Instead I'm going to share my own success stories and some tips on how I found the kin I was looking for.

Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada 1931 Census Collection Search page on 3 Jun 2023 at 12:23 p.m. ET.

My goal was to to find all four of my grandparents in this census. I knew that they were all alive and residing in Canada by the end of 1930. So, in theory, this goal should be achievable. Having a goal or task being achievable is one of the elements I mentioned in being Genealogy SMART, a post from July 2019:

Specific: I want to find my four grandparents in the 1931 Census of Canada.
Measurable: By the end of the process I should be able to count how many of the grandparents I have found. Hopefully all four of them.
Achievable: Since the images of the 1931 Census of Canada have been released, I believe it should be possible to find my grandparents.
Relevant: Finding them in the census will help me understand where they lived and how they were doing, economically, in 1931.
Timely: The census was just released and is available for our use.

First of all, since the images of the 1931 Census of Canada aren't yet searchable by personal details such as names or street address I had to do some work ahead of time to learn exactly where they were living. I just can't plunk their names in a search engine and have the computer spit out the answers. It's going to take a bit of work on our part. The more work we do before even looking at the images should save us time in the long run.

All of my grandparents decided that they would be living in moderate to large cities in 1931 to make it a bit more challenging for me. I know that others who have also had success stories have been able to very quickly find their kin since those folks were living in rural areas or small towns and villages.

Here are family groupings for my grandparents, along with what I discovered in this step. Note that some of this information was gathered while actually in the searching for the census records. I really should have done all this work ahead of time!

Nathanial and Winnifred (nee Warrener) McKinlay

They were married in 1930 in Toronto
In the 1932 city directory of London, Ontario they reside at 579 Colborne Street¹

Donald McMullen

He had not yet married Frances Howe
In the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada in the Winnipeg South Centre district he was living with his parents Louis Norman and Gertrude Anne (nee Martin) McMullen at 521 Toronto Street, Winnipeg²
In the 1932 city directory of Winnipeg, Manitoba no Donald McMullen was found listed but his father is recorded as "McMullen L N druggist Wpg Drug h 9, 796 Wolseley"³

Frances Howe

She had not yet married Donald McMullen
In the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada in the Winnipeg South Centre district she was living with her parents Joseph and Annie (nee Chipman) Howe at what appears to be 72 Walnut Street, Winnipeg⁴. However, the 1927 city directory gives their address as 72 Chestnut Street⁵.
In the 1932 city directory of Winnipeg, Manitoba no Frances Howe was found but her father is recorded as "Howe Joseph E asst prof Univ Man h 72 Chestnut"⁶

You might notice that I reference the 1932 city directories. Most directories weren't published the same year the information was collected so I will often use the following year's directory.

Also I recorded the district (in some cases when I was getting frustrated that I couldn't find them in the 1931 Census) they we found in for the prior census closest to the 1931 Census. This might help me figure out where I should start my looking in the 1931 Census, especially when it comes to large cities.

Since I'm dealing with moderate to large cities I also used Google Maps to place each street address on a map. This became important as I worked my way through the images.

I thought I was ready to begin my search on June 1st, 2023...but the Library and Archives Canada site had another opinion. But I did have a workaround. It was a bit more work but doable.

I started with Nathaniel and Winnifred McKinlay. Based on where I found them on the map I started with the assumption that they were in the London district and not Middlesex East or Middlesex West. Via another site I had a possible lead that the address, 579 Colborne Street, might be in sub-district 17 so I started there. After scanning the eighteen pages I didn't find them.

This is where using Google Maps became useful. With 579 Colborne Street pinned on the map I had Google Maps give me directions to the first address in sub-district 17, 290 Cheapside.

Screen capture from Google Maps for directions from 290 Cheapside Street to 579 Colborne Street in London, Ontario.

Why map the directions? As I came across the next sub-district I could put in an address from one of the pages to see if I was getting any closer to my target address. I might even jump ahead a few sub-districts and see about getting directions. By doing this I could also figure out how the sub-districts were roughly laid out.

Since I was using a workaround method which was a bit slower than just clicking the next image it did take me a bit of time. But after about 178 images I found my Dad's parents, Nathaniel and Winnifred (nee Warrener) McKinlay on page 1 in sub-district 29!

1931 census of Canada, Ontario, district 127 (London), sub-district 29 (London City Ward 4), p. 1, dwelling 12, family 14, household of Nathaniel McKinley; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census2/index1931 : accessed 1 Jun 2023).

Since I'm a persistent (some may call it stubborn) researcher, I tried my luck finding my grandmother Frances Howe. This was a bit harder since I hadn't written down in my pre-search notes the district name from the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada yet.

This bit me big time!

I spent way too much time looking in the wrong districts because of an assumption. I first looked in Winnipeg North and Winnipeg North Centre since I assumed that the Assiniboine River would be the district boundary. But when I plotted the various address I was seeing in the sub-districts for those districts they were all too far away from 72 Chestnut Street and getting further away. That's when I clued in to look at the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada all thanks to a suggestion by Dave Obee in his CanGenealogy 1931 census research tips page.

They were in the Winnipeg South Centre district in 1926! Once I started getting directions from 72 Chestnut Street to addresses for the sub-districts in that district plotted on the map everything started to work out much, much better. Relatively quickly I was able to find Frances and her parents.

1931 census of Canada, Winnipeg, district 189 (Winnipeg South Centre), sub-district 51 (Winnipeg Ward 1), p. 7, dwelling 58, family 59, household of Joseph Howe; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census2/index1931 : accessed 2 Jun 2023).

It was getting late, I was tired, and I'd already had enough challenges on the launch day while also providing guidance and tips to others via several Facebook groups. So I decided to leave looking for my other grandparent, Donald McMullen, until the daylight hours of June 2nd.

At around 11 am on June 2, 2023 Ancestry released their copies received from Library and Archives Canada and posted the images in their "1931 Census of Canada" browse only collection and the game suddenly changed for me.

Screen capture from Ancestry's "1931 Census of Canada" collection search page found at https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/.

I didn't have to deal with a slow or non-functioning LAC site. Since Ancestry had already gone through the experience of hosting the images of the 1950 Federal Census of the United States of America I figured they could deal with any amount of traffic created by Canadian researchers.

Using all the tricks I'd learned I knew I should be able to find Donald and his parents in short order.

I decided I'd first plot both where Frances Howe, his future wife, and Donald McMullen lived since I could possibly use her address as starting point.

Screen capture from Google Maps for directions from 72 Chestnut Street to 796 Wolseley Avenue in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

They are practically neighbours! According to the map, they were about a minute walk apart.

In just a few minutes I found the household of Donald's parents, Louis and Gertrude (nee Martin) in the next sub-district, number 52, from Frances Howe and her parents.

1931 Census of Canada, Winnipeg, district 189 (Winnipeg South Centre), sub-district 52 (Winnipeg Ward 1), p. 12, dwelling 110, family 140, household of Louis McMullen; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry Operations, Inc., Ancestry.ca (https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/ : accessed 2 Jun 2023).

I had actually completed my goal of finding my grandparents in the 1931 Census of Canada.

I won't bore you with the challenges I had finding Elizabeth (nee Murdoch) McKinlay, my great-grandmother, in London, Ontario. But I can tell you that it is really, really important to be not distracted when looking at the images. I missed her at least two times!

The one I dreaded finding was the household of George Kaye and Henrietta (nee McGregor) Warrener, my great-grandparents, in Toronto. With Toronto being so large I thought it would be a near impossible task. Yet I found them in about 40 minutes (again a wrong assumption got me for about 10 minutes of that time).

I still have a few great-grandparents to find but now that I have a working method it shouldn't be to much of a challenge (I know, Murphy's Law is just waiting in the wings).

My tips to you:

Do your searches when you won't get distracted!
Have a plan.
Gather as much information about where the person was living around 1931

Use city directories for 1931 and 1932
The 1935 Voters' Lists might help if you believe they stay in the same home since 1931
Use the prior census to see what district and even sub-district that street or place was listed in. The person might not even be in Canada at that time but knowing the district and sub-district may help reduce the number of pages to look at in a large city.

For a large city, make use of Google Maps to help figure out if you are getting closer to the street address you want to find
Use the images from Ancestry. Their images load so much faster than the copies on the LAC site. Plus their filmstrip found at the bottom of their image screen makes it a breeze to move to the next sub-district
Don't get stressed out trying to find your kin. Genealogy and family history research is supposed to be fun. You might even think about waiting until a searchable name index is available.

Good luck in your searches!

1. Vernon Directories Limited, Vernon's City of London (Ontario) Directory for the Year 1932 (Hamilton, Ontario: Vernon Directories Limited, 1932), 370, entry for McKinlay Nathnl (Winnifred).

2. 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada, Manitoba, district 17, sub-district 19, Winnipeg, p. 29, dwelling 219, family 366, Donald McMullen; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives Canada (www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 30 Apr 2020); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm T-27399.

3. Henderson Directories Limited, Henderson's Winnipeg Directory 1932 (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Henderson Directories Limited, 1932), 935, entry for McMullen L N.

4. 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces of Canada, Manitoba, district 17, sub-district 21, Winnipeg, p. 7, dwelling 71, family 75, Frances Howe; RG 31; digital images, Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives Canada (www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 5 Jan 2021); citing Library and Archives Canada.

5. Henderson Directories Limited, Henderson's Winnipeg Directory 1927 (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Henderson Directories Limited, 1927), 943, entry for Howe Joseph E.

6. Henderson Directories Limited, Henderson's Winnipeg Directory 1932 (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Henderson Directories Limited, 1932), 817, entry for Howe Joseph E.

Friday, June 2, 2023

1931 Census of Canada - A Release Fiasco?

Let's be honest, the public release of the images from the 1931 Census of Canada by Library and Archives Canada on June 1, 2023 was a fiasco.

On the surface all looked good according to their "Preparing the 1931 Census" page.

Screen capture of Library and Archives Canada "Preparing the 1931 Census" web page showing "Go public" checked.

At 8 a.m. ET on June 1, 2023 the 1931 Census search page was active and by 8:17 a.m. the site was already at a crawl with long delays displaying the thumbnail images of the pages and the pages themselves. Quite often it would seem like the site was stalled. The LAC site can be slow at the best of times but this was so painfully slow that I walked away from the site. Like any good genealogist, I started doing other research periodically checking back in to see if maybe they had added more back-end processing power to compensate for the load.

No such luck and by 10:43 a.m. ET an overload notice was displaying on the search page:

Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada "high level of traffic" notice on the 1931 Census search page retrieved at 10:43 a.m. on June 1, 2023.

Congratulation to the genealogy and family history researchers out there! We basically broke the Library and Archives Canad web site. I guess Library and Archives Canada forgot that there are a lot of us out there and we are very passionate and enthusiastic for any new genealogy collections, especially census releases.

I still had my hopes up and would check in on the site to see if it was getting better.

Nope!

By the evening we were now seeing a brand new message. Instead of being horribly slow in displaying the images we were getting a "Unable to open [object Object]: Error loading image at https://central-d.dev.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?id=e011717820&app=census1931&op=img" message (substitute the e011717820 for some other number for any other image).

Screen capture of "Unable to open [object Object]: Error loading image at https://central-d.dev.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?id=e011717820&app=census1931&op=img" from the Library and Archives Canada 1931 Census search page from 10:23 p.m. ET on June 1, 2023.

It almost seems like someone updated the program on the server, tested it in house OK, but forgot to change the pointer to the image files from the development version to the live production version of the 1931 Census images. Of course, by then everyone working on the web site had probably gone home since the issue still existed as of 8:30 a.m. ET on June 2, 2023.

But this error pointed me to a possible solution. For you see, I recognize that URL from my efforts in playing with the other censuses of Canada to find records with addresses to help me find land records in Ontario.

For example, here is the link to the image for the 1901 Census of Canada page from Library and Archives Canada for my 3rd great-grandfather, Luke McMullen, on page 2 in Elmsley North sub-district, Lanark South district, Ontario: https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1901&op=img&id=z000077117.

It is very similar to the image file location being given for the 1931 Census of Canada. Except the 1931 Census is pointing to a "central-d.dev.bac-lac.gc" server and not "central.bac-lac.gc.ca".

Using my browser, could I try opening the image given to me in the error massage but change "central-d.dev" to just "central"? Of course I could and I did!

Image retrieved from https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?id=e011717820&app=census1931&op=img showing the sub-district descriptive card.

Suddenly I had access to the missing images.

A small victory for me!

Now I was very familiar with navigating the images using that sort of URL. So I rearranged the stuff after the question mark in the address to put "id=" at the end to get https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=census1931&op=img&id=e011717820. Now I could quite easily and simply change the last digits of the id to go to the hopefully next image.

I decided to focus my efforts on finding the household of Nathaniel and Winnifred (Warrener) McKinlay. They are my paternal grandparents and, according to the 1932 City Directory of London, Ontario they resided at 579 Colborne Street. Why the 1932 directory and not the 1931 directory? Often a city directory wasn't published the same year the information was collected so I will use the following year's directory first as my starting point when dealing with censuses.

After about 60 minutes later of going through the images, using Google Maps to see if the addresses appearing on the images were getting closer or not to my target address, after glancing through about 178 images I found them exactly where I hoped.

A big victory for me!

"1931 Census", images, Library and Archives Canada (https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=census1931&op=img&id=e011656764 : accessed 1 Jun 2023 19h12), Population Schedule, Ontario, London district (127), London Ward 4 sub-district (29), p 1 containing the household of Nathaniel McKinley in dwelling 12, family 14.

I then pushed my luck and tried to find my other grandparents in Winnipeg. That was much more of a challenge just due to how the sub-districts are laid out in Winnipeg and where my grandparents lived. I actually had to walk away several times in frustration. But, using a search suggestion by Dave Obee in his CanGenealogy 1931 census research tips of using the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces as a possible starting place for the district I did finally find them just after midnight.

Am I glad I could access the 1931 Census of Canada? Of course I am!

Am I really annoyed at Library and Archives Canada for botching the release of this census? You bet I am!

However, despite their failures I did find my grandparents but only due to my limited understanding of how LAC stores their census images.

The release of this census could have been a wonderful success story for Library and Archives Canada. Instead I consider this to be a release fiasco. Shame on Library and Archives Canada!

I'm only hoping that Ancestry and FamilySearch, in their indexing of the 1931 Census of Canada, meets with more success and that they don't let us down.

UPDATE - 2 June 2023 11:07 AM

Ancestry Canada now has the images of the 1931 Census of Canada available on their site in the appropriately named collection "1931 Census of Canada" found at https://www.ancestry.ca/search/collections/62640/. In my limited testing it would seem that you only need a free Ancestry account, at least for those in Canada, to access the collection. A paid subscription does NOT seem to be needed. Much like the Library and Archives Canada 1931 Census site, the images can only be browsed...for now. But at least Ancestry's site works and can also handle the load.