The Bureau, precursor to Statistics Canada, was founded in 1918 as a centralized national agency to replace piecemeal arrangements which had developed over time and no longer satisfied statistical needs. The author (who is a retired assistant chief statistician of Canada) traces its evolution and looks at the individuals who influenced it. He discusses how Canada's statistical system has coped with the country's evolution from a staple economy to a mature industrial power; the changing nature of the technology for gathering, compiling, analyzing, and disseminating information; and some notable Canadian contributions to the science and production of statistics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR