Historical Statistics of Canada

The second edition of Historical statistics of Canada was jointly produced by the Social Science Federation of Canada and Statistics Canada in 1983. This volume contains about 1,088 statistical tables on the social, economic and institutional conditions of Canada from the start of Confederation in 1867 to the mid-1970s. The tables are arranged in sections with an introduction explaining the content of each section, the principal sources of data for each table, and general explanatory notes regarding the statistics. In most cases, there is sufficient description of the individual series to enable the reader to use them without consulting the numerous basic sources referenced in the publication.

The electronic version of this historical publication is accessible on the Internet site of Statistics Canada as a free downloadable document: text as HTML pages and all tables as individual spreadsheets in a comma delimited format (CSV) (which allows online viewing or downloading).

This second edition published by Statistics Canada in 1983, like the earlier volume published by the Macmillan Company of Canada in 1965, was the result of a collaboration of many persons from the academic community, Statistics Canada and the Social Science Research Council of Canada. Both editions enjoyed wide circulation and use, but are long out of print.

To preserve this important source of historical statistics on Canada, the original book was scanned and re-captured in electronic form as text and tables. All data have been verified to reflect what was originally published. No changes have been made other than correcting obvious mistakes in the original paper volume such as incorrect references to footnotes. None of the statistics have been corrected, revised or updated.