For those of you who do not have a subscription to Ancestry, there is good news. The Canada 1921 census is now available for free on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) website.
Several years ago, LAC signed a contentious contract with Ancestry whereby in exchange for Ancestry taking the time to digitize and transcribe the Canada 1921 census (or more specifically, the microfilm of the census), Ancestry had the exclusive rights to put the census records on their subscription website for a period of four years starting in August 2013. Now, four years later, LAC has put the records on their website.
With some exceptions, national censuses in Canada are done every ten years. The Canada 1921 census was the sixth national census and it follows the one taken in 1911. One big advantage of the 1921 census is that it asks questions about the birthplace of both parents.
The 1921 census was taken on 1 June 1921. At that time, Canada had a total population count of 8,788,483 people, or about 25% of the country’s population today.
One thing to note with this collection is that the original records from the 1921 census were destroyed when the records were transferred to microfilm back in 1955. The quality of these microfilm images varies enormously, and the odd image is, unfortunately, unreadable.
These records can be searched by first name, last name, age, province and keyword. If you cannot find your ancestors by searching by name, you might want to consider scanning the images by location if you happen to know where your ancestors lived. Alternatively, try searching for your ancestors by alternative name spellings (the Ancestry translation was not always the best). See the LAC website for more details. Access is free.
Source: Internet Genealogy Magazine