In order to track the high rates of population growth in western Canada, the Canadian government called for a special census of the prairie provinces (Manitoba, and the two newly created provinces of Saskatchewan, and Alberta). This endeavour continued every 10 years from 1906 to 1956, at which time the Census of the Northwest Provinces became part of the Canada-wide census. Through this research tool you can access digitized images of original census returns, which recorded the names of family members, their sex, marital status, year of immigration to Canada, post office address, etc.

As this is not a nominally-indexed database, it is not searchable by family name. Our simple search tool allows researchers to search by Province, District Name, District Number, and Sub-district Number. The digitized images within this database are copies of the original microfilm records held by Library and Archives Canada. The information on these images can be used to prepare family histories, the history of towns and villages, research immigration trends and a great deal more. See what you can discover!