Nineteenth-century census records, particularly nominal census schedules containing
detailed information about individuals, have provided the foundation for many
important historical studies. Little attention has been paid, however, to the
enumeration process and to the construction of these schedules on which so much
recent historical scholarship depends. The 1891 census of British Columbia offers
a useful case study to explain how the Dominion census worked during the late
nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. As well, it reveals
themes distinct to British Columbia’s history: the tyranny of terrain and the
challenge of distance, regionalism and sectional rivalry, alienation from Eastern
Canada, anti-Asian sentiment, and ambivalent attitudes towards Aboriginal peoples.
