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I am anxiously waiting for the release of the 1926 Canadian Prairie Province Census. The Canadian Census website on June 2nd states:

The 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) will be transferred from Statistics Canada to Library and Archives Canada on June 1, 2018. Due to the extent of the work involved in preparing the data, we do not yet have a date for when it will be made available to the public. We will update this section when a date is confirmed.

But, does anyone know, approximately, how long the process for "preparing the data" for the public will take? (For instance, does someone know how long it took to "process" the 1921, 1916, 1901 data?)

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An online article from The Star (Toronto ON) confirmed my hazy memory of the release of the 1921 Canada census -- it was available very quickly because of partnership with ancestry.com:

1921 Canadian census data released online, to genealogists’ delight (Fri., Aug. 9, 2013)

The 1921 census was released by Library and Archives Canada on the Ancestry.ca genealogy site Thursday. ...Library and Archives Canada has never published the census without a partner. Transcription and organizing work has already begun at Ancestry.ca, so people can search by name, location, and other key details, later this year. The raw data is available for free on the private site already, and according to Anderson, will also be available on the government site in three years.

A more detailed timeline is found at
Wikipedia - Canada 1921 Census - Release date and format

...In 2013 the records were opened for public use and transferred to Library and Archives Canada (LAC). ...On 8 August 2013, raw digital images of the population schedules were made available to browse for free with a geographic index of districts and sub-districts on the private Ancestry.ca website. Ancestry.ca transcribed and indexed the data to facilitate advanced searches by individual Ancestry.ca subscribers, and in person at LAC and subscribing libraries, from late in 2013. The census data was scheduled to be made available on the LAC website three years after being made available on the Ancestry.ca website. The fully indexed online census data was launched by Ancestry.ca on 29 October 2013. The data is free to search, subject to registration on the Ancestry.ca website. On 30 August 2017, the results of the 1921 were made available on the Library and Archives Canada website.

As for the 1926 census, Libraries and Archives Canada says (as of 6 Jun 2018) :

Regarding the 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta), we are currently developing an index and plan to make the data from the census available on our website; in the coming months we will be in a better position to estimate a release date.

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  • Seems the quote from Libraries and Archives Canada has changed between Jun 2 and Jun 6! :) Now it states "in the coming months" they will give us an "estimated release date", which sounds like it could be a while until it is released. :( But that was the information I was looking for... thanks for your answer.
    – TJinBC
    Jun 7, 2018 at 3:23
  • @TJinBC Thanks for awarding the bounty! The LAC page is probably the best place to check for updates. Although the page doesn't mention another partnership, LAC probably has some process for indexing the all records they have been putting online. In 1921, the 3 provinces were only 1.7 M of the almost 9 M population of Canada, so the 1926 census is a "smaller" record set than many.
    – bgwiehle
    Jun 7, 2018 at 12:35
  • Does anyone know if this census will be added to Ancestry's or MyHeritage's source list soon?
    – TJinBC
    May 25, 2019 at 23:03
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I was looking on the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/projects/country/ca) and saw that they are in the process of indexing and reviewing the 1926 Canadian Census records. As of today, they are 40% indexed with 31% reviewed.

I am not sure if they are providing the indexing for LAC but I guess time will tell.

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The 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces returns were transferred to Library and Archives Canada from Statistics Canada on 46 microfilm reels (48,529 images) We have digitized the images into PDF and JPG formats FamilySearch has indexed the images so that they will be searchable on our website and they are now conducting quality control We plan to have the census online in March 2019

source: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/Pages/2018/1926-Census-announcement.aspx

Date modified: 2018-10-30

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