Your Guide to Finding Canadian Ancestors

The Handybook for Genealogists (10th or 11th edition) as a section on Canada, which includes a map, basic historical information, a brief description of record types, vital records coverage and a bibliography of resources,

[Bibliography coming...]

First, bookmark or print out these FHL documents: Canada Research Outline. *How Canadian National Census are Organized * Canadian Census Records Before 1871 * Canadian 1871 Census * Canadian 1881 Census * Canadian 1891 Census and Canadian 1901 Census.

There are also research guidelines for 10 of the provinces of Alberta * British Columbia * Manitoba * New Brunswick * Newfoundland * Northwest Territory * Nova Scotia * Nunavut * Ontario * Prince Edward Island * Quebec * Saskatchewan * Yukon, as well as a listing of major indexes for Canada and its provinces.

To find where a place in Canada is located and view current maps, use Geographical Names of Canada, or try Places in Canada. You might first want to read Dick Eastman's review of this site.

See what's available at the Canada Gen Web Before you go straight to the genweb of the province or territory of interest, take a few minute to explore the pages listed on the black bar to the left.

Visit the Canadian Genealogy Centre, the genealogy website for the Library and Archives of Canada. You will want to see what's available in their several databases as well as visit their How-to page, which breaks down into sources by topic and sources by place. For each of these, the list of topics and places is on the left hand side of the page. There is also a links page (again, links are on the left) and a query page you can use to contact the Centre.

The

You can search AMICUS a combined catalog of the Library and Archives of Canada plus over 1300 Canadian libraries. Note this searches only for published material; it won't help you find manuscripts and other archival resources. Visit the Archives Canada to locate material in archives throughout Canada.

As I write this (Feb.2007) there are two search engines on the site. ArchiviaNet is being phased out and Archives Search is replacing it.

The $ Genealogical Research Library $ is a subscription database for Canada that boasts millions of name is one massive index. I've not tried it, but it does offer a free search and memberships as low as $10 for one week. I would like to see a better description of what it indexes. $Ingeneas$ is a database of Canandian records that can be searched for free, and information from "hits" will then be sent to the requestor for a price. The results usually give sufficient information to allow you to find the information yourself. Ingeneas has one free database, which includes data from a few lists of immigrant settlers and passenger lists scattered within various collections, mostly relating to immigrants from Great Britain arriving in Canada between 1801 and 1849.

Help may be available from a kind volunteer at the Canada Genweb's Genealogy Helplist: Canada.

Find even more helpful Canada links on these pages:

• Canada GenWeb links page.
• Canadian Genealogy and History
• GenealogyLinks: Canada
• Cyndi's List Canada Index Page