Where the heck did they go? Part 1 - Canada

So the bug has bit you and you are seeking out your great-grandparents. If they were born in Canada before 1911 you might be in luck! A great place to check for them are in census returns. In most provinces, these were done every ten years. Some you can find on-line, others you may have to actually go into a library to see if they have these on microfilm. Personally, I always try and track down the census returns for "my people" cause alot of times you might find "missing" people from other parts of your tree listed in a family member's home or children you did not know existed cause they died young in between census years. A word of caution, knowing how to SPELL usually was not a requirement to getting the job of being the census taker so you may need to "be creative" when thinking of ways the recorder (and sometimes the transcriber of the original record) MAY have spelled your family members name.

Here are some Canadian sites that may help you track down that illusive Uncle George:

Alberta: http://www.afhs.ab.ca/data/cemeteries/search.php This site contains about 165,000 cemetery records for the province of Alberta. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any sites for this province that have vital stats.

British Columbia: http://bcarchives.bc.ca/ Click collections under the photo then Vital Event Records on the left. On the right you will find a list of the different vital records you can search. The best thing about the BC records is it lets you see deaths that are as current as 1989. Something not many do, the whole "privacy" thing. This site is basically an index.

Manitoba: http://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca//Query.php Again, more of an index (by that I mean no images with indepth information allowing you to be sure the John Smith you are looking for is the John Smith whose record shows up). This has births, marriages and deaths.

New Brunswick: http://archives.gnb.ca/Archives/Default.aspx?culture=en-CA If you hold your cursor on the word "Search" at the top left a drop down menu will appear with your options of records to search. You'll notice some of these options have arrows. That's cause there are more records available within those. Some of the records you can find here are births, marriages, deaths, Brenan's Funeral Home records and land grants. You can also find the link to the Newspaper Vital Statistics done by Danny Johnson under that search tab too! Here you will find information that was published in New Brunswick area newspapers between 1784 and 1896.

Nova Scotia: https://novascotiagenealogy.com A vital statistic site. Not to knock my own province's website, but this is one of my most favorite Canadian sites cause you can actually view the images of these documents right online, not just the indexed version. Anything that saves me money (not having to pay to order something) and time (not having to wait 3 plus weeks for a microfilm to come from the Provincial Archives) is always a bonus!!

Ontario: http://islandnet.com/ocfa/ This is more cemetery records. While great in directing you to where someone may be buried, it unfortunately contains no information about birth or death dates, just that someone with that name is there.

Prince Edward Island: http://islandregister.com Not like the majority of sites I have posted with Vital stats

Saskatchewan: http://www.isc.ca/VitalStatistics/Genealogy/vsgs_srch.aspx Again, more vital stats, however only birth and deaths at the moment. This is one of my newer finds

Other sites you can use to find cemetery records are www.findagrave.com and www.interment.net - both of these work for the States as well.

www.rootsweb.com is good and so is www.ancestry.com and ancestry.ca BUT the ancestry sites are only fully accessible if you purchase a subscription or your local library has.

But my all time favorite and most used site has got to be http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start This particular one is global. Some of it is just indexed records but some have actual images you can view which is fantastic if you are like me and like to see that stuff to make sure what the index states it is is true (don't forget, alot of these records that are index only have been transcribed by a person who may have read incorrectly or noted it incorrectly and just has been staring at the microfilms for so long they are damn near big-eyed-blind!) When you go to the above link if you click "Search or Browse or Record Collection" you can search specifically by area record instead of the whole database.


******Now I'm not sure about provinces other than NS and NB, but if you know what county your relatives lived in within these provinces you might want to bring up your search engine and type in whatever County NB Genweb. This will usually get you the hit for the individual county's website which could have a great amount of information, and more importantly, a search bar on their site which will allow you to check for your families surname and see if they have any records posted related to them. For the record, I've done this with American counties too.

On-line Canadian Census returns:
www.automatedgenealogy.com Here you will find the 1851 census of NB, 1852 of Ontario and Quebec, 1901 of Canada, 1906 of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and the 1911 of Canada.

www.familysearch.org Here you will find the 1881 Census of Canada (as well as 1880 on the states and other records)

www.collectionscanada.ca/genealogy/index-e.html: Here you will be able to find the digitizedimages of the 1891 Canadian census. Also Attestation papers for your family if they served in WW1.

Other than ancestry which requires a paid subscription, everything else I have posted is 100% FREE!! Ahhhh, my favorite F word, despite some thinking it might be fudge.

Happy researching!