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The Interpretation of Origin Statistics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

N. B. Ryder
N. B. Ryder*
Affiliation:
Miami University
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Extract

The most important source of data for research into Canadian society is the federal census. These decennial inventories, of which there have been nine since Confederation, contain hosts of numbers, most of them unfortunately rather widely ignored by social scientists. Of the battery of questions to which every individual is subjected, a few are singled out as yielding fundamental facts, and appear again and again in the tabulated product in cross-classification with other subjects. The three basic attributes, which are the sine qua non of a personal census, are age, sex, and geographical location. Next to these in importance, if we may judge by the volume and detail of published tabulations and analysis, is origin. Now the intriguing circumstance about this highly emphasized piece of information is that it remained undefined until 1951. There was no explicit indication of the operations required to identify the referent of the term. Furthermore, the answers obtained and published clearly applied to an array of different types of evidence, which could easily overlap for a given individual.

Consider, for example, the 1941 census, and its question, there termed “racial origin.” The “Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators,” which are required reading for anyone making serious use of census statistics, give the following clues:

What is racial origin? The word “race” signifies—“Descendants of a common ancestor.” [It may be asserted that this does not specify a practicable operation.] … a person's racial origin and nationality very often are different …. The name of a country from which a person came to Canada gives no indication of that person's racial origin …. The word “Canadian” does not denote a racial origin, but a nationality; the same applies to the word “American” …. What determines racial origin? As a general rule a person's racial origin is to be traced through his father ….

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , November 1955 , pp. 466 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1955

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Toronto, June 3, 1955.

References

1 1941 Census, Administrative Report of the Dominion Statistician, 10.

2 1870–1 Census, I, xxii.Google Scholar

3 It is a puzzling inconsistency that Belgian and Austrian are acceptable answers to the question on origin, but that Swiss has been rejected (since 1921). None of the countries to which these terms refer has a single and distinctive offlcial language by which to identify it culturally, but then neither has Canada. Denial of the right to Swiss ethnic allegiance seems peculiarly inappropriate on the part of Canadians.

4 1921 Census, I, xiv.Google Scholar

5 1931 Census, I, 45.Google Scholar

6 1901 Census, I, xx.Google Scholar

7 1911 Census, Special Report on the Foreign Born Population, 30.

8 1921 Census, I, xiv–xv, n. 9.Google Scholar

9 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces, xxxv.

10 “The name of a country from which a person came to Canada gives no indication of that person's racial origin …” 1941 Census, Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators, 44.

11 1951 Census, Enumeration Manual, 44.

12 Russian, although relatively small in size, has been included because of its close relationship to other origins.

13 This information is available only for 1931 and 1941. Because the latter was a war year, it contained some special categories of misstatement. The cessation of migration during the decade 1931–41 should make the two censuses comparable with respect to the information shown in Table II.

14 1931 Census, II, Table 58.

15 Alberta (Norquay and Subdivision 91) and Saskatchewan (Francis, Big Stick, Enterprise, Leader, and Subdivision 170).

16 Assuming that those who are German in origin had, since 1901, grown in numbers at the same rate as the total population, an assumption which does not seem unreasonable, they would now number over 800 thousand, or 30 per cent greater than that actually recorded.

17 Origins of the Mennonites

18 The size of the Netherland origin can be estimated at 160,000, or 40 per cent less than that recorded. Their size was much smaller in relative terms in 1941.

19 This is a comparison of origin as reported on birth transcripts with origin as reported on the census. The check covers the parents of all children under the age of one, in 4 census districts, and all births in these districts in the 12 months preceding the date of the census. For matched cards, various pieces of information, including origin, were compared. ( Charles, E., The Changing Size of the Family in Canada, Census Monograph no. 1, Ottawa, 1941, pp. 276–9.Google Scholar)

20 This practice also tends to exaggerate the contribution of recent immigrant groups to the Canadian population. In 1951, the immigrant population whose mother tongue was not English had a male:female ratio of 1.37. This ratio implies a 16 per cent greater representation of these origins in the next generation, ceteris paribus, than if the sexes were balanced.

21 The ethnic endogamy of the British, considered as a group, was 0.785 in 1951.