The Dominion Bureau of Statistics: A History of Canada's Central Statistical Office and Its Antecedents, 1841-1972

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada and Global Spin: Probing the Globalization
Debate, and the co-author of Toronto Women.

A few years ago the influential U.K. weekly, The Economist, surveyed
national statistical systems in a number of leading industrialized
countries and gave Canada the highest marks. The Dominion Bureau of
Statistics, a very good piece of work by David A. Worton, a retired
assistant chief statistician of Canada, explores the deeper roots of the
achievement.

The book begins with a brief account of the notoriously wobbly censuses
of 1851 and 1861 in the old “United Province” of present-day Ontario
and Quebec. From here, about one-fifth of the book is devoted to the
early Canadian federal government’s pioneering statistical adventures,
from Confederation in 1867 to the establishment of the Dominion Bureau
of Statistics (DBS) in 1918. The rest of the volume outlines the
subsequent growth of the DBS to 1972, just after reorganization as
Statistics Canada. A short epilogue looks at developments from 1972 to
the mid-1990s.

Those who regularly use Canadian statistics should find this work quite
fascinating and often illuminating. It is also a useful contribution to
the history of the federal bureaucracy, and to various specialized
branches of economic, intellectual, and social history.

The author’s engaging use of a version of the old “great man”
approach to the construction of his narrative gives the volume a general
appeal. Here, in the midst of all the technical detail and bureaucratic
machination, is one human: from Joseph Tach, who masterminded the
still-intriguing censuses of 1871 and 1881; to R.H. Coats, who (ably
assisted by such figures as “Misses F.A. Brown and M.E.K.
Roughsedge”) breathed vitality into the early DBS; to Herbert
Marshall, who consolidated the organization after World War II. Canada
has been good at the development of government statistics. This book
helps us understand how and why.