* Nationality in Canada Cenus

[Anthony_Pigott]

Having just tried the Canadian 1921 Census template from the downloads page, it appears that the 'Nationality' field from the census is creating an 'Origin' fact but the 'Origin' field is not creating a fact at all. This seems to be the same with the AS supplied 1901 and 1911 templates. This seems to be 'back to front' or am I missing something?

Anthony

[tatewise]

Just like FH you can customise AS in many ways.
The supplied templates are just a starting off point.

The mechanism that creates a National or Tribal Origin Attribute is configurable.

Firstly it can be switched on/off using the Tools > Options > Census settings > Facts to create > Nationality option.

In any Census Template any Census Column can be assigned the Column Type of Nationality.
It is this assignment that causes the associated Attribute to be created. See Help for details.

So you can change it such that either, neither, or both columns create the Attribute.

[tatewise]

Sorry, having just run an experiment, it seems that only the left most Column that is of Type Nationality actually creates a National or Tribal Origin Attribute.

I suspect the author Nick Walker had not considered the possibility of two Nationality columns.
If he reads this thread I am sure he will comment.

[johnmorrisoniom]

When I created the 1921 template I copied the 1911 template and re-ordered and added a few fields only. This appeared to produce the results I was expecting. If there is a better way of doing it, that would be fine.

[Anthony_Pigott]

Thanks for the responses.

The term 'Nationality' can have different shades of meaning these days, but looking at the original Canadian census forms, it seems clear that for 1901-1921, 'Nationality' on the census means nationality in the sense of citizenship and 'Origin' means racial or cultural origin. The definition of the underlying GEDCOM element of the 'National or Tribal Origin' FH fact seems clearly to align with 'Origin' on the census. The default text template in FH for the 'National or Tribal Origin' fact is " {individual} was {value} " which is perhaps confusing as it sounds more like nationality/citizenship. Something like "{individual} was of {value} origin " might be better.

I shall modify my templates accordingly. Obviously it's up to people how they use any of this but those writing templates for AS or user group download might want to consider modifying them to reflect the more natural interpretation.

Regards

Anthony

[tatewise]

I am not sure if it helps, but the GEDCOM specification says in Chapter 2 Lineage-Linked Grammar under Primitive Elements of the Lineage-Linked Form:

NATIONAL_OR_TRIBAL_ORIGIN:=
The person's division of national origin or other folk, house, kindred, lineage, or tribal interest.
Examples: Irish, Swede, Egyptian Coptic, Sioux Dakota Rosebud, Apache Chiricawa, Navajo Bitter
Water, Eastern Cherokee Taliwa Wolf, and so forth.

and in Appendix A Lineage-Linked GEDCOM Tag Definition:

NATI {NATIONALITY}:=
The national heritage of an individual.