Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria 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 Victoria; not coterminous with City of Victoria.

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

• Esquimalt, Metchosin (pop 614)
• Victoria wd (pop 762)
• Victoria, James’ Bay, Ward—Quartier (pop 2,000)
• Victoria, Johnson Street, Ward—Quartier (pop 2,665)
• Victoria, Yates Street, Ward—Quartier (pop 1,260)

1891 census

• Esquimalt (part) (pop 740)
• Metchosin wd (pop 215)
• Victoria wd (pop 742)
• Victoria, James’ Bay, Ward—Quartier (pop 3,873)
• Victoria, Johnson Street, Ward—Quartier (pop 8,707)
• Victoria, Yates Street, Ward—Quartier (pop 4,261)

1901 census

• Esquimalt (part) (pop 1,191)
• Metchosin wd (pop 160)
• Victoria wd (pop 1,418)
• Victoria, City—Cité wd (pop 20,919)

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 Nanaimo in 1911.
• Split into Victoria City in 1911.

Identifiers

• HGIS Canada CD ID: CD_BC_Victoria

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.