Category: Recensement de la Nouvelle-France en 1667

Categories: Canada, Nouvelle-France | Chronicles of New France | Quebecois

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Intendant Jean Talon began his administrative appointment by taking stock of the colony. This included two census documents, the first in the winter of 1665-66, and another census in 1667. He conducted both census on the de jure principle – that is, counting people where they normally reside.

Under the de jure method an individual is enumerated as belonging to the locality that they normally reside in, even if on the census date they are elsewhere.

The 1666 census was actually ordered by the king's minister Colbert. It was haphazardly done and missed a quarter of the population. Very unhappy that the census showed only around 3,000 people in the colony, Colbert ordered another one. The 1667 census was the result. It is missing a sixth of the population.*

  • The 1667 census is in 179 pages of manuscript. It is deposited in the Archives of Paris, and there is a copy in the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa. Talon's handwritten document can be viewed at the website Collections Canada.
  • Talon's listing of the inhabitants of New France in 1667, handwritten in cursive, was transcribed into print form within Benjamin Sulte's History of French Canada, Volume IV, Chapter IV, pages 64 - 78, - 1977 edition.
  • Jean-Guy Senécal, Laval University, Québec, used optical character recognition software to render photocopies of Benjamin Sulte's transcription of the 1667 Census of New France into a searchable word-processor document that facilitates working with the census report. A copy can be downloaded at: Google Document: 1667 Census of New France.


  • Thompson Rivers University: Census in Canada
  • Mythes et réalités dans l'histoire du Québec, chapitre V: L'intendant Jean Talon, une réévaluation à la baisse. pg 124, Auteur: Marcel Trudel, éditions Bibliothèque québécoise 2006 (BQ) ISBN-978-2-89406-267-8

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