Canadian Census Questions and Tracing Your Family History

Use these Questions to Help You Transcribe the Census Records

Need to know the Canadian census questions to transcribe Canadian census records from microfilm? Maybe you just want to know what the Canadian censuses asked. This is the place to find them!

At some point you are very likely to need to know the census questions for each census year.

If you are going to need to transcribe census record data from microfilm, as opposed to being able to print it from the microfilm machine, you are going to need a form which follows the order of questions on the original census form.

If you make your own forms, you need to know what the questions were and the order in which they were asked.

So, Here are The Questions

If you want to save the Canadian census questions list to your computer so you can read it or print it later, you will need to download the Acrobat file containing the question list.

Here for help getting or using the Adobe Acrobat Reader

To open the Question List in your browser, just click on the appropriate link in the table below for the census year you wish to see. It will open the list in your browser - either a new page or a new tab. To get back to this page from there, simply use the "back" or "<" button on your browser, close the page, or close the tab.

Canada Census Before 1867 Confederation

1851 Canada East and West	1851 New Brunswick
1851 Nova Scotia	-
1861 Canada East and West	1861 New Brunswick
1861 Nova Scotia	1861 Prince Edward Island

Canada Census After 1867 Confederation

1871	1881	1891	1901
1906	1911	1916	1921
-	1926	1931	-

Another very important part of the information you need to keep for all census records and indexes you find is the source for your successful search. If you need to go back to that record, you need to know how to find it again. Also, sourcing is important for anyone reading your family history file to show them that you did not make this up!

Be Ready - Know the Questions!