To celebrate Canada Day, the nation's 139th birthday, Ancestry.ca has launched the first searchable every-name index to the 1901 and 1906 Canadian Censuses. The 1901 index includes over 5 million people and is linked to more than 130,000 images of original census pages – the very pages the enumerators used that year.

Along with the 1901 census index, Ancestry.ca is launching the 1906 census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The federal government commissioned a special census of the region after 1901 as a result of explosive population growth during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The 1906 census index includes more than 800,000 people, which also links to original census images.

These two new indexes join the every-name index to the 1911 census, launched by Ancestry.ca earlier this year. As a result, over 13 million Canadians are now searchable in these three databases.

Related: Researching Canadian Ancestors