The individual data from Canada's 1931 census, released on June 1, 2023, open new possibilities for understanding British Columbian society between the two world wars. We can learn about where people came from (most non-Indigenous adults in BC were not born in the province); the sizes and estimated values of their homes; what they did for a living; and whether they were or had recently been unemployed. Local history is certainly enriched by this evidence.1 The following essay draws mainly on this newly opened source to present a social profile of one region in BC's Interior in the early 1930s—the Kootenay village of Creston and the countryside nearby, numbering almost 1,500 named individuals.2
The village of Creston, incorporated in 1924, had a population of some 710 named people living in 197 households. There were another 248 households in the outlying countryside, with a total population of around 760. (A few people were not identified with a household, and a nine-man gold mining camp was probably well outside the village.) Heads of households were usually men, most living with wives but a significant minority without a woman. Only 25 women were listed as household heads, all but six of them widows.
Of the 445 heads of households, only 14 were born in British Columbia. The great majority of adults had come toPrairie provinces, and 22 in the three Atlantic provinces. At least 55 families had arrived in the Creston region from the Prairies during the previous dozen years: we know this from the birthplaces of their children. The majority of household heads came from outside Canada: easily the largest numbers were from England (98) and the United States (78)—Creston, of course, is very near the American border, and Americans were welcome to settle in the developing Creston Valley. The other leading countries of origin were far behind in numbers: Sweden (17),3 Germany (14), Italy (13), and Ireland (10). The rest numbered in the single digits, led by Scotland, Russia, and China (eight each).
