Re: All Canadian census' are free!
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In reply to:
1871 census lookup
john burns 6/16/14
Every once in a while I have to get on my soapbox.Our Canadian census have not been sold exclusively to ancestry.They belong to Canadian citizens and original records are free to view at Library and Archives Canada.
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/Pages/census.aspxhttp://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/Pages/census.aspx
The one problem is that there isn't any way to do a "fuzzy search" so you have to know the exact way the name was transcribed for the index. Some names have many possibilities.One way to get around this is to search the name on the LDS site
https://familysearch.org/search
This is free, however except for the 1881 Census you do not get to see the whole family only the stats for the individual searched for.When you put the two searches together though you are all set.When you find the right person on the LDS site all you have to do is go to Archives Canada, put in the exact spelling from the LDS index and you will be able to see that page of the census.
The only one that is different is the 1921 Census which was only recently released.This one was released to Ancestry for a few years (5 I think)However they have to make it free for that period-just go to ancestry and specify the 1921 Canadian census.After that period it will be available at Archives Canada and will have to be paid for at Ancestry.
Sorry if the above is confusing-but it makes me feel like I could "spit nails" when people are tricked into thinking that Ancestry is the only game in town.
Burdette