The Canadian Historical GIS | Canadian Historical Geographic Information System

Introduction

Hosted by the University of Saskatchewan’s Historical GIS Lab, the Canadian Historical GIS makes available computerized maps and data from the Canadian censuses. Here you can explore, map, and download statistical information about every place in Canada as the nation expanded through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Users can dynamically generate, explore, map, and download data about population, ages, housing, national origin, agriculture, fisheries, and other topics.

Geographic Data

The Canadian Historical GIS (CHGIS) provides polygon layers at the Census Subdivision (CSD) level for all provinces and territories, designed for use with Canadian census data. Polygon map layers in the geodatabase correspond to the Canadian censuses of 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and 1921. The data are in an ESRI geodatabase format, in Lambert Conformal Conic projection, and are topologically correct. The map layers are designed to join with individual-level data created by The Canadian Peoples / Les populations canadiennes (TCP/LPC) Project. In many cases they are also suitable to join with aggregate CSD-level tables from the published census volumes. Click here to download CHGIS geodatabases.

The Historical GIS Lab (HGIS Lab) at the University of Saskatchewan (hgis.usask.ca) and the Centre interuniversitaire d'études québécoises (CIEQ) at Université Laval (www.cieq.ca) worked together to create these GIS layers. The published census volumes did not include maps of CSDs, and original maps employed by the Canadian Statistics Bureau have not been located in the archives, despite considerable searching by scholars over the years. This project re-creates the published census geography as established in each census year in a GIS format useful for historical analysis of both individual-level and aggregate census data.

The census GIS maps provided here were developed by Geoff Cunfer and Sauvelm McClean at the University of Saskatchewan’s HGIS Lab and by Marc St-Hilaire, Laurent Richard, and Nicolas Lanouette at Université Laval’s Centre interuniversitaire d'études québécoises (CIEQ).

Aggregate Data

Another product available from CHGIS is machine-readable tables of aggregate data digitized from the published census volumes for 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and 1921. Assembled from individual level data collected throughout the country, the Census Office published total, aggregated values for each Census Division (CD) and Census Subdivision (CSD) in Canada. Hitherto available only in paper format, CHGIS has digitized selected tables for use with spreadsheet, database, statistical, or GIS software. The product is provided in a variety of versions, each useable for different purposes. Click here to download aggregate census tables.

The aggregate census data were developed by Geoff Cunfer and Rhianne Billard at the University of Saskatchewan’s HGIS Lab with help from Sauvelm McClean and a small team of student assistants, and by Marc St-Hilaire, Laurent Richard, and Nicolas Lanouette at Université Laval’s Centre interuniversitaire d'études québécoises (CIEQ).

Acknowledgements

The data available from CHGIS were developed as part of The Canadian Peoples / Les populations canadiennes Project. TCP/LPC was funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), with major matching contributions from the private company Ancestry and from the partner universities listed below. It was based at University of Guelph, where Kris Inwood served as Principle Investigator. Other Investigators included Peter Baskerville (University of Alberta), Geoff Cunfer (University of Saskatchewan), Lisa Dillon and Alain Gagnon (Université de Montréal), Shari Ell (University of Toronto), Herbert Emery (University of New Brunswick), Chad Gaffield (University of Ottawa), Ian Keay (Queen’s University), and Marc St-Hilaire (Université Laval).

The Canadian Historical GIS was developed at the University of Saskatchewan’s HGIS Lab by Geoff Cunfer, Jim Clifford, and Ben Hoy, with support from the Digital Research Centre. Funding for the HGIS Lab comes from the CFI, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Arts and Science and History Department.