O Canada!

Published February 18, 2011 | By

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I love Canada and I’m proud to be Canadian.

But… researching Canada genealogy can be problematic. I learned very quickly when I started researching, that Canadian genealogical data available online can be sporadic and difficult to find.

In the beginning, I literally spent hours online searching key phrases and keywords looking for information and the results were disappointing. Most of these sites are not optimized for search engines and one must dig through a lot of dirt to find the ‘gems’ – and there are some gems.

Once I found great sites for Canadian family genealogy research, I made a point of saving them to my ‘favourites’ and quickly built up quite a list of valuable links related to my own research.

Here are the ten best sites for Canadian genealogy research that I have found with some background information and tips and hints. I feel that these ten links provided 90% of the verifiable data I obtained regarding Canadian ancestors.

Archives of Canada- Although this site can be confusing and difficult to navigate, it’s well worth the time and effort. There is a wealth of information available here. My advice? Think of it as a genealogical treasure hunt and explore every link you come across that may be relevant to your research. Be sure to bookmark and/or record the ones you find valuable as it can be very difficult to find them again later. To get you started here are my favourite links within the archives collection:
- Canadian Genealogy Centre
- Collections Canada
- Digital Collections Canada
- Archive Databases
- Provincial Archival Networks
Automated Genealogy – This site provides detailed and proofed transcriptions of the Canadian Censuses as well as links to other genealogy projects.
Veterans’ Affairs Canada – Records and Collections – This collection includes the Books of Remembrance; the Canadian Virtual War Memorial; and Diaries, Letters and Stories.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission – This site is for research of Commonwealth soldiers and veterans who died during wars.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography – Great dictionary of biographies of prominent and noted Canadians.
Rootsweb- A global collaborative site of user input data, family genealogy histories, documents and information.
- Canada GenWeb
- Message Boards – Canada
Cyndi’s List – This section of the site leads you through numerous links to resources for Canadian genealogy research.
The Olive Tree Genealogy – The Canadian section of this site contains numerous links for Canadian genealogy research – some of them being quite obscure and valuable.
Ancestry.ca- A paid site that is well worth the money to attempt to fill in the gaps not filled by using the free resources and sites available.
- Drouin Collection – French Canadian collection of parish and church records from 1608 to 1935.
familysearch.org – Although this site has recently started adding digitized records to its’ collection, the majority of the information available is provided by users and can therefore be questionable. I recommend this site for finding leads to information missing elsewhere and then pursuing primary sources elsewhere.

All of these links and more can be found on my ‘Genealogy Links‘ page. Feel free to browse and find some valuable links for global genealogical research.

photo credit: Sam Howzit

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Posted in Acadia, Acadian, Alberta, Birth, British Columbia, Business Records, Canada, Canadian, Censuses, Civil Registration, Court Records, Culture, Death, Diaries, Family Genealogies, Immigration, Labrador, Land Records, Letters, Location, Manitoba, Marriage, Military, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Newspapers Archive, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, PEI, Photos, Prince Edward Island, Probate, Quebec, Records, Saskatchewan, Tips, Tools, War of 1812, Wars, Wars, Wills, WWI, WWII, Yukon

6 Responses to O Canada!

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- admin on January 20, 2012 at 1:03 pm
  
  Yes, we just migrated our three blogs to a new server and unfortunately there were a few major hitches. Our sites were completely down for three days during the migration and we have some lingering issues with this site that I am working to fix. Please be patient with me and keep trying. I hope to have it fixed before too long.
  
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6 Responses to O Canada!

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