A Country Founded On Statistics

With all the current wrangling over the fate of the long-form census, we should recall the vital role stats has played in Canada's history.

In all of the controversy surrounding the long-form census, it is worth thinking about how statistics brought us together as a nation. According to Statistics Canada's History of the Census of Canada:

The first national census of Canada was taken in 1871. Under Section 8 of The Constitution Act of 1867 (formerly The British North America Act), a census was to be taken in 1871 and every tenth year thereafter. Its main goal was to determine appropriate representation by population in the new Parliament.

In 1871 the questionnaire covered a variety of subjects, and asked 211 questions on area, land holdings, vital statistics, religion, education, administration, the military, justice, agriculture, commerce, industry and finance. Not every household answered all 211 questions.

In 1867, it was unthinkable that we would not want to know more about each other. Without the benefit of radio, television, or the internet, Upper Canadians did not know their fellow New Brunswickers and Nova Scotians. Lower Canada could not watch news stories concerning their compatriots in Upper Canada.

No wonder the British North America Act called for a census to be undertaken less than five years following Confederation. We were profoundly curious about who we were.

You may wonder about what the news media had to say on the issue of statistics four years before Canada's first census. Fortunately, there is an easy way to satisfy that curiosity. Just pick up a copy "The Globe" from July 1, 1867 and see what it had to say.

Let's start with the headline just below “Confederation Day – The Dominion of Canada”:

HOW CONFEDERATION HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT – STATISTICS OF THE UNITED PROVINCES: Extent, Population, Trade and Resources of the Dominion

Yes, you are reading this correctly. On Canada's first day, the headlines were about statistics and the front page spent three columns informing Canadians of the type of information normally collected in a census. Have you ever even seen the word "statistics" in a headline before?

The second page – all of it – was nothing but statistics of every kind on subjects ranging from shipbuilding to fisheries, from live stock to public lands. The third and fourth pages of that day's paper were ads. That means that more than half of the text in the Globe on Canada's inaugural day told us who we were through the narrative of statistics.

One table was devoted to the churches we attended (the Church of Rome led the way with 44.42 per cent), the populations of the different regions (Upper Canada was the most populous), our religions (30 per cent were Methodists), and what we did for a living (almost half of us were farmers, while less than 2 per cent were "Professional Men").

I doubt there has been a newspaper edition published since more devoted to statistical information on Canada than on that first day of our existence. But I also can’t believe that we have lost that innate curiosity about ourselves in the ensuing 143 years.

Today, our national narrative is not defined through print statistics the way it was back then. We have moved to new forms of media that tell different truths and lies about ourselves. There is now much more information available than we could ever hope to watch, read or listen to.

But if we do lose our statistical base, we will have to face the fact that we will know less about ourselves than did Globe readers on July 1, 1867.

It's hard not to think that that's just a bit sad.