More information on Block-face

Censuses:

2006, 2001, 1996, 1991, 1986, 1981, 1976, 1971

Remarks:

Population and dwelling counts are not disseminated for individual block-faces, since there are confidentiality concerns about releasing small population and dwelling counts at this level of geography.

Table 1 in the Introduction shows the number of block faces by province and territory.

Refer to related definitions of geocoding; representative point and Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).

Changes prior to the current census:

Major changes in 2001:

• Block-faces were defined for the entire country, rather than only in urban centres covered by the former street network files.
• Block-faces were formed by addressable and non-addressable streets, rather than by addressable streets only.
• Two block-faces were generated opposite a road T-junction, rather than just one block-face.
• Block-faces were not formed when physical features (such as rivers or railroads) intersected the road unless these features were coincident with a boundary of a standard geographic area.
• Block-faces were not formed when a single-address enumeration area (EA) was smaller than a city block. In these cases, the EA was offset from the street, rather than digitally represented as a polygon intersecting the street.
• Block-faces were formed when streets crossed the limits of map tiles (the map tiles, which were based on the National Topographic System of Natural Resources Canada, formed the Canada-wide coverage in the 2001 National Geographic Base).
• Population and dwelling counts were not disseminated for individual block-faces.

Prior to 2001:

• Block-faces were defined only in urban centres covered by street network files.
• Block-faces were formed by addressable streets only.
• Only one block-face was generated opposite a road T-junction.
• Block-faces were formed when physical features intersected roads even when the boundaries of standard geographic areas were not coincident with these features.
• Block-faces were formed when a single-address EA was smaller than a city block since the EA was digitally represented as a polygon intersecting the street.
• Block-faces were not formed when streets crossed the limits of map tiles, since map tiles were not used.
• Population and dwelling counts were disseminated for individual block-faces.

Prior to 1991, block-faces were not created when EA boundaries split city blocks.