Vancouver, British Columbia

Vancouver was a Census Division in British Columbia as recorded in the 1881–1901 Canadian census series. It comprised the constituent Census Subdivisions listed below for each year it appears in the published volumes. BC 1921 federal electoral district covering area around Vancouver; centroid is on Vancouver Island, not city. Distinct from City of Vancouver.

Population trajectory across census years

Aggregate population summed from constituent Census Subdivisions in this Census Division each year. Where the published 1851–1921 census volumes report a CD-level total, the figures should match within rounding; for cities split into wards, the per-CSD sum may diverge from the published CD aggregate.

Constituent Census Subdivisions by year

1881 census

• Comox & Alberni (pop 279)
• Cowichin, Salt Spring Isl. (pop 848)
• Nanaïmo, Noonas Bay (pop 2,803)
• Saanich N & S wd (pop 488)
• Sooke Lake, Highland, &c. (pop 286)
• Western Coast (pop 5,287)

1891 census

• Alberni (pop 191)
• Comox (pop 548)
• Comox S (pop 140)
• Cowichan N (pop 921)
• Cowichan S (pop 413)
• Gabriola Island wd (pop 125)
• Goldstream and Sooke (pop 3,270)
• Lake and High Land (pop 335)
• Mayne Island wd (pop 197)
• Mountain (pop 1,625)
• Nanaimo, City—Cité wd (pop 6,512)
• Saanich N & S wd (pop 610)
• Salt Spring Island wd (pop 436)
• West Shore (pop 2,906)

1901 census

• Alberni (pop 4,181)
• Comox (pop 3,493)
• Cowichan (pop 3,613)
• Esquimalt (part) (pop 504)
• Nanaimo, City—Cité wd (pop 6,130)
• Nanaimo, North—Nord (pop 1,439)
• Nanaimo, South—Sud (pop 5,146)
• Victoria, North—Nord (pop 1,656)
• Victoria, South—Sud (pop 1,036)

Lineage

Boundary changes connecting this Census Division to others in the 1851–1921 series, derived from spatial polygon overlap across census-year boundary files.

• Split off from British Colombia in 1881.
• Merged into Comox-Atlin in 1911.
• Split into Nanaimo in 1911.

Identifiers

• HGIS Canada CD ID: CD_BC_Vancouver

Sources

Census Division boundaries derived from the Canadian Peoples / TCP 1851–1921 Census Subdivision boundary files (NAME_CD_<year> attributes, hosted at the HGIS Lab, University of Saskatchewan). Constituent-CSD memberships use the P10_falls_within CIDOC-CRM relationships emitted by the spatial CIDOC builder. Wikidata grounding for Census Divisions performed via the HGIS Canada Knowledge Graph project's MCP-assisted disambiguation pipeline. See the About / Methodology page for the full data pipeline.