In a recent press release , Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announced three new online products to assist genealogists and family historians to access information on their ancestors in both LAC and other Canadian collections. Chief among these is the newly redesigned Canadian Genealogy Centre website, at www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy. The website makes available Canadian collections of immigration, military, public service, land and census records and provides advice and guidance to researchers. It was voted one of the world's 100-best genealogy websites by Family Tree magazine.

"The new Canadian Genealogy Centre website provides easy access to records of significant interest to Canadians," said Librarian and Archivist of Canada Ian E. Wilson. "The search tools allow Canadians access to a very personal piece of Canadian history-a piece relating to somebody's own family-with the click of a mouse." Mr. Wilson added that the new website and search tools demonstrate how LAC's priorities in digitizing its collections and in working through partnerships with other institutions, benefit Canadians wherever they may be.

Labels: Canada, genealogy, online resources

A new service out of Quebec, Canada is in the news. According to a press release out today, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) announces a new Web site dedicated to genealogical research. Launched by BAnQ in partnership with Library and Archives Canada (LAC), www.thatsmyfamily.info, also available in French at www.voicimafamille.info, provides the public with a user-friendly and innovative federated search engine free of charge.

Designed to respond to the growing public interest in genealogy, www.thatsmyfamily.info features a set of search tools that even beginners can master rapidly. Maintained by BAnQ, the new search engine allows genealogists to conduct searches against several databases at once.

Most of the interface-compatible databases brought together at www.thatsmyfamily.info are hosted by federal, provincial or territorial Canadian libraries or archives centres. The project's leading partners are BAnQ, LAC and the Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists of Canada.

Labels: Canada, genealogy resources, online resources

Announced today in Canada's Cape Breton Post, "CBS's new fall season is full of Canadian reality." Among the release of new reality TV programs is Who Do You Think You Are?, a genealogy-based series of profiles in which 13 prominent Canadians trace their family histories. Don Cherry, Shaun Majumder and Chantal Kreviazuk will be among those profiled.

Labels: Canada, genealogy programs

The Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Ancestry.ca, the largest Canadian family history web site announced, at the Ontario Genealogical Society's (OGS) annual seminar, a strategic partnership to make more resources accessible to Canadians interested in online family research, as noted in press release out today.

Initially, Ancestry.ca and LAC will focus on indexing the Quebec City passenger lists from 1870 - 1900, which comprise more than 750,000 names. The digital images of these and other passenger lists are already available on the LAC web site. The index for Quebec City will be available free of charge on www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy as well as on Ancestry.ca. LAC and Ancestry.ca will continue to work together to ensure that eventually the entire Canadian passenger list collection from 1865 to 1935, which includes ports in Halifax, St. John, Vancouver, Victoria and North Sydney, is digitized and indexed.

In addition to the Canadian passenger list collection, later this year Ancestry.ca and LAC will also make available border crossings records from the United States to Canada that took place between 1908 and 1935, and other Canadian immigration forms later this year. These additions will add to Ancestry.ca's already expansive Canadian Border Crossing Collection, which already includes more than 4 million names of individuals who crossed the Canadian-U.S. border between 1895 and 1956.

Labels: Canada, online resources

An article in the West Island Chronicle spotlights the Quebec Family History Society ROOTS 2007 Conference, celebrating 30 years of volunteer community service. The conference will be held June 15 -17 at Montreal's McGill University.

Labels: Canada, genealogy conferences and seminars

Digitized newspapers and books are a great boon to genealogy, and more and more such resources are being put online. A recent article in Nova Scotia's Amherst Citizen, "Finding treasure in digitized books," discusses the difficulty of building a personal library and finding the right books, and suggests a useful resource for Canadian local histories. Our Roots, Canada’s Local Histories (http://www.ourroots.ca/) is an on-line library of Canadian history books. Although limited by copyright, availability and funding, the library is well stocked. Thousands of English and French titles are available. Each book listed on the web site has been digitized. In other words, every page of each book has been scanned or photographed. The pages can be viewed and printed. In a brief survey of the site, I was able to view the scanned images at no charge.

Labels: Canada, genealogy books, online resources

Great news and one more place to check -- online -- for those who have not yet found their immigrant ancestor in U. S. passenger lists. In a recent press release, Ancestry.com announced announced the release of a new Canadian records collection, offering 4 million names of individuals who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border between 1895 and 1956. These historical records are the latest addition to Ancestry.com's Immigration Records Collection, which also includes more than 100 million names from the largest online collection of U.S. passenger lists, spanning 1820 to 1960.

An often-overlooked, but major U.S. immigration channel, the U.S.-Canadian border typically offered easier entrance to the United States than sea ports such as Ellis Island. This new collection includes immigrants who first sailed to or settled in Canada before continuing to the United States as well as U.S. and Canadian citizens crossing the border. Among the busiest ports of entry on both sides of the border were Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Detroit, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.The border crossings also contain a surprising number of nationalities with Russians, Italians and Chinese among the most common nationalities of people crossing the U.S.-Canadian border.

While you do pay to access the records, you can search the records without charge. To learn more about the collection, see Border Crossings: From Canada to U. S., 1895-1956.

Labels: Canada, immigration, United States

Good news for Canadian researchers -- great new historical records go online, complimenting available census and vital records. Ancestry.ca and Canadiana.org today announced a partnership to digitize and bring online nearly 300 years of Canadiana.org's early historical records spanning from the 1600s to the 1900s. The new collection includes more than 6,200 publication titles and 1.6 million pages of family histories, local histories, biographies, civil service records and other early historical documents. Ancestry.ca is digitizing and making these records available online along with its existing and highly complementary collections such as the fully indexed 1851, 1901, 1906 and 1911 Censuses of Canada. The Genealogy and Local History Collection to 1900 is the largest family and local history collection of its kind in Canada. Such records go a long way toward helping researchers build the "story" of their ancestors.

Labels: Canada, online resources