The Data Aren't Alright Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Archives

The settlement of the Canadian prairie provinces in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was shaped by waves of immigration, including significant numbers of Ukrainians seeking new opportunities. Understanding the early settlement patterns of Ukrainians is a challenging task, particularly because of the inaccuracy of ethnic origin data in historical Canadian Census of Population records. This challenge is due in part to the unique political and historic circumstances of Ukraine during major periods of Canadian immigration. These factors complicate efforts to accurately trace the origins of settlers using traditional sources of demographic data.

Archival documents, such as homestead records and township maps, contain more accurate place-of-origin data, but they are harder to access because of inadequate digitization. Homestead records include hand-written information about naturalization and citizenship status as well as the date of arrival on the homestead. This information has been partially transcribed through a community initiative, but the database is incomplete and not machine-readable. Township maps contain handwritten names and geographic locations of settlers, but they have not been widely digitized and are accessible only in provincial archives.

This presentation will address the limitations of historical census data in capturing the ethnic origins of early Ukrainian-Canadian settlers and highlight the importance of archival research in reconstructing histories that are obscured by systemic inaccuracies in official records. This work is part of a larger program of research investigating the spatial and social dynamics of Ukrainian-Canadian settlement in Canada.