This dataset represents all 827,933 block-faces in Canada for the 1996 census. The dataset was designed for geocoding and census data extraction and it covers 43 urban centres in Canada.

A block-face represents one side of a street between two consecutive features intersecting that street. The dataset includes attribute information for street names (including street types and direction), address ranges, geographic codes for linkages with other census boundaries, geographic coordinates, and population and dwelling counts from the 1996 Census. They are displayed on a map via their representative point, which is the geographic coordinate located at the mid-point of the block-face, set back a perpendicular distance of 22, 11, 5, or 1 metre from the street centre line.

The original dataset is available from Statistics Canada as a text file (.txt). For viewing in Scholars GeoPortal, the dataset was converted from this original format into a Shapefile using the point coordinates available for each record. Each point is the population centre of an Enumeration Area.

The original data, and other supporting files and documentation, are available as additional downloads from Scholars GeoPortal.