CANADIAN ROOTS
On the eve of the country’s 150th anniversary, Jonathan Scott hunts down online resources for researching Canadian roots
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, when the British colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were united into one state in July 1867. For genealogists with Canadian connections, there’s a host of material online. We’ve attempted to cover as much ground as possible, taking in archives, commercial sites, as well as lesser-known labours of love.
Of the commercial sites, Ancestry probably has the lion’s share of Canadian data, while there’s all kinds of free material on Family-Search. The national repository, Library and Archives Canada, has free databases, finding aids and more besides. As in the US and Australia, what’s available through the state-level archives varies a great deal. So whether your ancestors migrated to the prairie states of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, worked for Hudson’s Bay Company, or traded through the Port of Quebec, there’s lots online to help you.