The Census is Canada’s largest and oldest dataset. Geographers, sociologists, planners, historians, and others have used the Census to understand social and economic change and its geography, yet urban researchers have rarely used it to its full potential.
In this application-focused Knowledge Café, Zachary Taylor and Leanne Trimble will introduce urban researchers to the ever-expanding universe of historical and contemporary Census data that is available to them, and the challenges of doing so and also the support provided by the university’s Map and Data Library. They will briefly demonstrate new data discovery, processing, exploration, and visualization tools created at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario, including the Census Inventory and Discovery Portal, the Census Questions Database, the Canadian Neighbourhood Change Explorer, the Canadian Longitudinal Tract Database, the UNI-CEN Archive, and the Canadian Historical Census Observatory.
Zachary and Leanne will conclude with discussion of examples of innovative Census research and potential avenues for future work on cities and urbanization using this unique data source.
About the speakers
Dr Zack Taylor is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Western Ontario, Director of the Unified Infrastructure for Canadian Census Research (UNI-CEN) project, and a visiting professor at the School of Cities in 2026. Leanne Trimble is Head of the University of Toronto’s Map and Data Library and Principal Investigator of the SSHRC-funded Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership.
Leanne Trimble is a Data Librarian and Head of the Map & Data Library at the University of Toronto Libraries. She has been supporting GIS and data use in academic contexts for nearly 20 years. Her research interests relate to historical government statistical and spatial data, with a focus on improving discovery and access for hidden collections. Leanne was the PI for the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2021-25) to form the Canadian Census Data Discovery Partnership (CCDDP).
