THE LATEST CANADIAN CENSUS The Sixth Census of Canada. Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics. IT T is not generally known that to the credit of Canada belongs the first census of modern times. Its date was 1666, when Charles II was on the English throne and Louis XIV was the ruler of New France. There had been earlier records of the French settlement in what is now Nova Scotia, and of the infant colony on the St. Lawrence, taken respectively in 1605 and 1608; but the census of 1666 was a systematic 'nominal' enumeration of the people of New France, taken on a fixed date. There is a record of each individual by name, shewing age, sex, place of residence, occupation and conjugal condition. The results are recorded in a document of 154 pages which reposes in the archives at Paris and is a storehouse of information for historical students and genealogists; there is also an accurate transcript in the Public Archives at Ottawa. This census antedates any similar effort by over a century. There were some local censuses taken in the Netherlands and elsewhere during the eighteenth century, but neither France nor England attempted any census worthy of the name till the early years of the nineteenth century, and the first American census was not taken till 1790. There is a disposition to accuse the British Dominions of failing to make any serious contributions of an original character to civilisation, but on the credit side should be placed the achievement of initiating what is to-day one of the regular institutions of every civilised society. Under the French régime the census was repeated several times, and after the country passed under the British flag various Governors-General made spasmodic efforts to maintain the practice. But the British officials found great difficulty in taking the census of a population which spoke another tongue than their own, and the results were unsatisfactory. However, as the country filled up, the need for a regular census became clear and the legislature of the united provinces in 1847 passed a measure under which a census of Upper and Lower Canada was taken, first in 1851 and then in 1861. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which were at that time separate colonies, also took a census in the same years. When confederation was arranged it was decreed by the British North America Act that the census and statistics' should fall within federal as distinguished from provincial jurisdiction. In 1870 the first Federal Parliament passed a Dominion Census Act and the first census thereunder was taken in 1871. Similar comprehensive censuses have followed every ten years, in 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911. In 1886, however, a special extra census of Manitoba and the North-west Territories was taken, midway between the regular censuses. As the provinces receive from the Federal treasury subsidies whose amount is determined by their population, it was decided to make the 'quinquennial census a regular institution for the provinces whose growth of population was abnormal as the result of the flowing tide of immigration. So there was a special census of Manitoba in 1896, and in 1906 and 1916 it was extended to Saskatchewan and Alberta, which had been created provinces in 1905. The census of June 1, 1921, the main details of which are now available, is therefore the sixth comprehensive census to be taken since confederation. The administration of the census was originally under the Ministry of Agriculture, but in 1912 a reorganization and centralisation of the country's statistical work transferred it to the Ministry of Trade and Commerce. The Bureau of Statistics had been extremely fortunate in its chief, Mr. R. H. Coats, a graduate of Toronto University, whose reputation as a statistician is deservedly high both inside and outside his own country, and thanks largely to his ability and organizing powers it is to-day one of the most efficient parts of Canada's administrative machinery. The increase of the population of Canada has been disappointing to a body of optimists, including some of the leading statesmen of the Dominion, who foretold a population of twenty millions for Canada by the year 1920. But as the following table shows, the increase has been steady and substantial. The population in 1871 was 3,689,257 and in 1921 it was 8,788,483. The actual increases in each successive decade have been as follows: The net result is that in 50 years there has been a total increment of 5,099,226, or 238 per cent. Naturally there is an enormous divergence in the ratio of the increases for the different provinces. Between 1901 and 1911 the percentage increases in Saskatchewan and Alberta were 439.48 and 412.58 respectively; but in the next decade their increment reached the more normal figures of 54 per cent. and 57 per cent. The fecundity of the French-Canadian race is demonstrated by the increase of 98 per cent. which has taken place in Quebec's population since 1871; but Ontario has not been laggard in the race, for its parallel rate of increment is 80.99 per cent. There is, however, a vital factor of differentiation between the two sets of figures. Ontario has been gaining steadily by immigration, but Quebec's increase is for the most part due to domestic fertility. There are enthusiasts in Great Britain who attribute the decline of her rural population to the absence of a protective tariff for the last 70 years, but they will find small comfort in the statistical history of Prince Edward Island, the most purely agricultural community in Canada. Up to the last census the rural population of this province was at least 80 per cent. of the total. Prince Edward Island is a very ancient settlement dating back to the middle of the eighteenth century, and has always contrived to preserve peculiar traditions of its own. In 1871 it had 94,021 people within its bounds. That figure increased to 109,078 in 1891, but has since steadily declined, dropping to 88,615 in 1921. Yet Prince Edward Island, with an area of 2,184 square miles, of which the greater part is arable, is an Arcadian isle, surrounded by waters enormously rich in fishing resources. Various explanations are offered for the comparative stagnation of this island, and there is little doubt that if better economic conditions existed, and the co-operative fabric of the Danish farmers were imitated, this province could easily maintain a population of half-a-million. But the real tragedy of the census is revealed by the figures for the Yukon territory. In 1871, census officials could not have reached it within a year, and the population consisted solely of Indians and Eskimos; but the Klondike boom attracted crowds of gold-seekers and their satellites, and in 1901 the census showed a population of 27,219. The boom, however, soon petered out; by 1911 the population had declined to 8,512, and to-day this figure has been cut in half. Dawson City is like a graveyard. In general, the census reveals a very marked shifting in the proportion of rural to urban population. In 1891 the rural population was more than double the urban, the exact figures being 3,296,141 to 1,537,098, and the respective percentages 68.20 and 31.80. By 1901 the urban population had grown to 37.50 per cent. of the total, and by 1911 to 45.42 per cent. To-day the urban population is almost on a parity with the rural, the exact figures being 4,435,710 rural and 4,352,773 urban. The greatest change is visible in the Province of Quebec. The last three decades, and particularly the last of the three, have seen an amazing growth of industrialism in this province. Montreal has been transformed from a modest little port to a great commercial entrepôt and industrial centre; the water powers and pulpwood resources of the province have brought into existence scores of little industrial towns. These industrial developments have more than counterbalanced the agricultural advantages secured by the opening up of the vast territory along the Transcontinental line between Winnipeg and Quebec. In the last decade the rural population of the Province of Quebec has actually declined by 304, while the urban population has increased by 355,725. In Ontario the process of industrialisation began at an earlier date, and the change of the ratio between the two classes of population has been more gradual. Since 1891 there has been an actual decline of roughly 70,000 in the rural population of the Province of Ontario. Indeed, in 1911 the shrinkage shown was 100,000, but the colonisation of the Timiskaming and the Rainy River districts has brought some gains, which compensate for the almost unbroken series of declines shown in the returns for the old farming counties of Ontario. To-day the industrial population of Ontario is placed at 1,707,283, and the rural at 1,226,379. The three prairie provinces began purely as farming settlements, and to this day there are very few genuine industries within their bounds. There are, it is true, assembling' and fabricating plants in most of the urban centres; there is also some lumbering in Manitoba and Alberta, and there is extensive coal-mining in Alberta, and a lesser amount in Saskatchewan. But industrialisation on any serious scale has not yet developed these prairie provinces. Yet their census figures bear out the contention of the late Sir Robert Giffen and others, that in new countries, factory industries, with the protection which alone is supposed to make them possible, are not necessary for the growth of a very substantial urban civilisation. It has been calculated that a purely rural population in whose midst there are no factory industries will demand a complementary urban population of professional men, artisans, people engaged in transportation, finance and distribution, and other auxiliary types of at least half its own number. It happens that Winnipeg, situated as it is at the gateway of the West, performs the function of a distributing and transportation centre for both Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and the population of these two provinces should properly be lumped together for this particular calculation. This process reveals a rural population for the two provinces of 887,054, and an urban population of 480,241. Of Manitoba's urban population of 261,616 almost 200,000 are contained in the Winnipeg area; there is only one other town (namely, Brandon) whose population exceeds 10,000. New Brunswick and Saskatchewan are the only two provinces where the rural population is still double the urban. But there has been a very welcome addition to the rural population of British Columbia. In 1911, roughly 52 per cent. of the population of a province which is possessed of a glorious climate and unique beauty of landscape, was huddled in the three coast cities of Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster, and a few mining towns. To-day the rural population is distinctly growing. Two-thirds of the emigrants who have settled in British Columbia during the last decade have chosen rural occupations. At the other end of the Dominion, the Province of Nova Scotia shows a depressing tendency to industrialism. In 1891 only 17 per cent. of the population was classed as urban; to-day 43.34 per cent. come within the urban category and the rural population has declined in 30 years by 75,000, or roughly 20 per cent. |