Journalism professor Randy Boswell edited a newly published collection of essays exploring the legacy and future of Statistics Canada, which marked its 100th anniversary in 2018. Produced by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, the latest edition of Canadian Issues/Thèmes Canadiens is titled “Made to Measure: Statistics Canada @ 100”. It includes contributions from Sen. Donna Dasko, formerly one of the country’s best known pollsters, Michael Haan, Canada Research Chair in Migration and Ethnic Relations at Western University, Canada’s Official Languages Commissioner Raymond Théberge and several leading demography and census specialists.
Most of the contributors attended a December 2018 anniversary conference in Ottawa, “Statistics Canada: 100 Years and Counting,” that reviewed the agency’s many achievements, as well as the challenges it faces around technology and privacy.
In an introductory essay, Boswell described how he and his mother and daughter each worked as census takers over a period of 40 years, spanning an era of tremendous technological and demographic change and connecting a family tradition to the centenary of the federal agency.
“This has been a true family affair — three generations of collecting basic data about our fellow Canadians, contributing in our own little way to the information infrastructure that underpins the country’s social, cultural and economic policies and programs,” he wrote. “With some measure of pride, I can say we’ve had a hand in shaping Canada’s sense of itself.”
Monday, July 8, 2019 in Journalism News, News
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