1931 Canadian census

I was pleased to read in yesterday's Newsletter about the release of the 1931 census. My wife is fortunate in having a copy of her great-uncle's receipt for a parcel of land in Weyburn, Saskatchewan which gives the location as NW Quarter of Section 15, Township 2, Range 21 West of 2 Meridian. This enabled me to find his family relatively quickly. As well as her great-uncle, there was his wife, two daughters and two sons. The daughter who gave us the copy of the receipt had not yet been born.

I shall be interested to learn how others make use of this new resource.

 

I'm cranky about the unindexed version lol. Its totally awesome that they released it, but the "names" of the districts don't align with the table 21 descriptions of each district, and its worse the farther west you get. Like Quebec and Ontario are fine, but every town I was looking for in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia were not in the "named" districts. There's no district finder other than what's in the printed instructions so table 21 is all we have, even if it doesn't align at ALL with what the districts are listed on the 1931 census page.

Plus the subdistrict names are indexed only partway - so instead of getting say, Township 49 Range 12, Lakeview, Vegreville, Alberta which is what is on the subdistrict identification card, we get "Township 49" and good luck with identifying that.

Since this is supposed to be an "AI supported" index I'm expecting that it will be on LAC fairly quickly and then Ancestry and FamilySearch. I'm very curious how the system will handle the split boundaries - my family is from Lloydminister which is partly in Alberta and partly in Saskatchewan in 1931.

 

I am fortunate that a relative died on the 14th June 1931 and newspapers state his Mother was of Butts Street, Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. So I went through the whole of Sydney Mines street hunting. Zilch! Butt Street exists today so I was able to narrow it down and only had to search 3 wards - about 60 images of neighbouring streets in the wards - to find the right household - listed under Railway Street - which doesn't exist today. Now wondering if Butt Street and Railway Street were the same.
The relative who died on the 14th was at Greene Street, Montreal according to the newspaper - I will be waiting for an index for that one, as I don't know where to start looking in such a big city and he was known by two different first and surnames!

 

I see an index is now available on Ancestry.
Interestingly an enumerator in Nova Scotia has entered surname, middle initial, first name. So George McGregor TAYLOR is entered as: TAYLOR Mc George. The ancestry transcript reads M George TAYLOR. Further down the page HIGGINS B Hugh is transcribed as B Hugh HIGGINS. Could make searching interesting!
Got my missing man, William Notman Russell MITCHELL, also known as Billy TAYLOR the Marathan Runner is transcribed as 'Miche W MITCHELL', age 78, he was 28!

 

I just received the e-mail from Ancestry regarding this. I looked up my grandparents; I expect it was my grandmother who filled it out as it is complete to full names of everyone, however whoever transcribed it spelled my youngest aunt's name as Andrew instead of Audrey. The "y" extends down into the next row and is covered by that person's name so I can understand the error. She is listed as a daughter though, aged 5 so the census must have been after the end of May. Parents and eight children, all gone now except my youngest uncle who turned 99 in April.

 

They asked a lot of questions back in 1931, but one caught my attention. How much money did you earn in 1930? Well, my grandfather apparently earned $1200.00. He was a foreman sidewalks for the township, which fits with what I was told that he laid a lot of the sidewalks in Toronto at that time. I am trying to figure out whether that would be a good income for a family with eight children; it computes to $21,798 in today's (American?) dollars but it also states that A dollar today only buys 5.505% of what it could buy back then. So would that have been considered a good income then? My math understanding is not even close to what it once was.

He also owned his home but I was also told he lost it during the depression.

 

The so called 'husband' of my Great Grandmother was a Coal Miner in Nova Scotia. He is down as earning $1100 in the year - though he has been temporary laid off for 20 weeks which possibly restricted any potential extra earnings. All the miners on the same page had all earned less than him, but had all been laid off for longer lengths of time.
He also surprisingly also owned his own house even though he had only been in Canada for 20 years.

 

My grandparents emigrated in 1906 and 1911 and were married in Toronto in 1913. According to the census, he was unemployed for 12 weeks, and the last line says work completed and weather conditions. He was at work June 1st, had written temporary layoff in the why not at work but had crossed it out.

 

I found my Dad's uncle Dan easily enough in Winnipeg. He was on $1400 working for the "steam railway" (like most of his neighbours) as a "carman". From his death record (and the map) this was the CNR, where he worked as a carpenter 1922-54. A carman in Canada works on rolling stock, so carpenter makes sense. This sounds like a good steady job, and he owned a little house, worth $2900; that looks reasonably affordable.

How he came to be a carpenter is hard to fathom: in 1911 he was (at 17) third cattleman on an Aberdeenshire farm; he emigrated in 1912. In 1916 he was a teamster living with his sister in the census, but in reality in France with the CEF (and shown as O for overseas in the census). He acquired a wife during his final home leave in 1919, and she followed him to stay near to Buxton demob centre and then crossed to Canada on her own. In 1921 he was a labourer on the railroad.

 

I missed the section where it stated the value of their home, it was $3900. It had seven rooms and they had a radio.

 

I found my Needhams! The town they are in is a little strange but the AI was close with the last name and transcribed it as Reedham.

So Peter when can we add these to Lost Cousins?