The Census, a peek into Canada in 1911.
“On June 15, 1911 Margaret Nicholson writes this is a letter to her husband: The Census man was around, I gave him your age as 60. Is that right? I always save five for myself. How was that? He did not take Herb’s or Marion’s. So that is over.”
So in 1911, Marion and Herb were considered not to be living in Richmond, but Edith was, although she was working in Montreal. A bit bizarre. It is probably because Edith had an unstable job and Marion had a good position with the Montreal Board. Flora was at school, and like, today, considered to be living at home.
The 1911 Census information entered the public domain a few years ago. The report is available online at archives.org.
“From the first census of 1871 to the fifth of 1911 a period of forty years, the population increased from 3,689,2557 to 7,204, 838 or nearly 100 percent.
The largest gain in a Canadian city in the forty years was for Montreal, with a gain of 355, 480; second was Toronto and third Winnipeg.
The rural population in 1911 was 3, 924,394, and the urban population was 3, 280, 444. The increase of rural population in the ten years is therefore 574,878 and of the urban 1, 258,645, which is 17.16 percent for the former and 62.25 percent for the latter.
The number of occupied dwellings in the subdistricts of the Dominion is 1911 was 1, 413, 913 and the number of families 1, 488, 353, compared with 1,028, 892 dwellings and 1,070, 747 families in 1901. The average number of persons per dwelling in 1911 was 5.096 and per family was 4. 841, compared with averages of 5.220 per dwelling and 5. 016 per family in 1901.
For the Census of 1901 the class of divorced persons was added and for the Census of 1911 the class of legally separated. In 1901 there were 661 divorced and in 1911 there were 1,530. In 1911 the legally separated numbered 1,286 males and 1, 584 females. There were also 29,097 males and 9,362 females not given. (Apparently, not given means men working on the railroad and not accessible to the census takers and women in boarding houses. So Marion and Herb may not be a statistic here. I know that most couples splitting up did it casually, so they are not in the divorce statistics. (I wonder if these people lied to the Census takers? Margaret jokes that she lied about her age.) You had to apply to Parliament for a divorce. My husband’s grandmother was American and she just left her first two husbands.)
