Old LAC Site via the Wayback Machine

For those of us who make use of the Library and Archives Canada web site in our daily genealogy and family history research the change to the new look and feel has been a constant challenge. Key pages which we are very familiar with have undergone drastic changes with potentially useful material omitted or they have just vanished into the aether. So what can we do?

This is when we can turn to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Before we head into the Wayback Machine's copy of the Library and Archives Canada web site there are a few things to note:

• What the Wayback Machine has available is a snapshot taken on various days. For the LAC site I am generally wanting to be looking at the archived copies of the pages made before the end of August 2022 when LAC flipped to the new look and feel of the site.
  
• The Wayback Machine is not speedy (neither is the LAC site at times!). Remember, this is an archive and is not meant to be used like you are browsing the Internet.
• Searching databases won't work. The Wayback Machine can't copy the database back-end systems.
• Links found on the Wayback Machine's archive that point to other sites will attempt to go Wayback Machine's copy of that other site. We probably don't want that. I'll address that later in this post.
  
• We won't see any new material added to the LAC site.
  

When I'm using the Wayback Machine's copy of the Library and Archives Canada site I start with the 15 Jul 2022 copy of the LAC home page: https://web.archive.org/web/20220715023037/https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx. Why that date? I just have it bookmarked and it works for my purposes.

Screen Capture from 25 Nov 2022 of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine capture of the Library and Archives Canada home page which was made on 15 Jul 2022.

I can now navigate on that page. Usually I will use the "Discover the Collection" or possibly the "Search the Collection" drop down menus to select what I want to see. Just remember that any page where you can do a search will appear but the searching part won't work.

 

What if you have a URL in your bookmarks that is no longer working on the new LAC site?

My first place to check is the "A to Z tools and guides" page on the new Library and Archives Canada site and filter by the keywords. If the page appears in the list then check it out. It might have all that you are looking for.

But what if the page has been gutted of all the really useful information or it is not found?

Then go back to the Internet Archive home page and at the top where it has the Wayback Machine search box copy and paste your URL you had bookmarked. By the way, this works for many of the "lost" pages and web sites on the Internet, not just for the Library and Archives Canada site.

Screen capture taken 25 Nov 2022 of the Internet Archive home page.

For example, I've not been able to find Merchant Marine page on the new Library and Archives Canada site. For those researching anyone who served in the Merchant Marine (peacetime) or Merchant Navy (wartime), this page was a great place to find out where many of the records are held (hint, it isn't LAC) and also what collections LAC has that may help you out in your research. The page used to be at "https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/topics/employment/Pages/merchant-marine.aspx" but if I go to that URL it just brings me to the new Library and Archives Canada site. However, if I copy and paste that address into the Wayback Machine it displays:

Screen capture taken 25 Nov 2022 of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine's archive dates of the Library and Archives Canada Merchant Marine page.

A total of 61 snapshots of that page have been archived by the Wayback machine. If I hover my mouse pointer over the highlighted dates in the calendars I can then select the time of the capture of the page in question. For the LAC site I will generally want to see pages from before 30 Aug 2022. There are no updates to the page in August so I might pick 15 Jul 2022 at 10:32:18 or 7 Jul 2022 taken at 18:49:22.

And here is the page from the snapshot taken by the Wayback Machine:

Screen capture taken 25 Nov 2022 of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine snapshot at https://web.archive.org/web/20220707184922/https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/topics/employment/Pages/merchant-marine.aspx of the old Library and Archives Canada Merchant Marine page (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/topics/employment/Pages/merchant-marine.aspx).

One of the links on that page points to how to submit an ATIP request to Veterans Affairs Canada in order to request wartime records of those who served in the Merchant Navy. The problem is that the link doesn't actually take you to Veterans Affairs Canada but to the Wayback Machine copy. We don't want that.

Screen capture taken 25 Nov 2022 of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine snapshot of the old Library and Archives Canada Merchant Marine page concerning how to request Wartime records.

This is where we have to do some work. If we hover the mouse pointer on the URL and right click (on a Windows system...a Mac or mobile device will be done differently) you can copy the link which appears to be:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220707184922/https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/veterans-rights/access-to-information-privacy/how-to-submit-atip-request

Notice that the URL is made up of two parts:

1. The Wayback Machine details that include the date and time stamp: https://web.archive.org/web/20220707184922

2. The URL of the web page we are looking at: https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/veterans-rights/access-to-information-privacy/how-to-submit-atip-request

We just want to take that second part of the address, https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/veterans-rights/access-to-information-privacy/how-to-submit-atip-request, and copy that into our web browser. With any luck we will be able to get to the right page on that site.

The new Library and Archives Canada web site is still undergoing updates through a phased approach. You will get frustrated, annoyed, a really ticked off when you can't find what you know used to be there. Hopefully this post will ease some of the frustrations you are feeling.

Also, if it is an important page that really should be there, voice your concerns by going to the "Ask reference a question" page, select "Reference" as the "Request Type", and let them know (politely of course) how useful the page was and ask if it will be made available on the site sometime in the near future. 

Remember, the Wayback Machine works for a number of other web pages found in the Internet that may have disappeared into the aether. If you do find the Wayback Machine, or the Internet Archive in general, to be a useful tool, please consider making a small donation to help them pay for their back-end resources.

Library and Archives Canada New Beta Census Search

Library and Archives Canada did warn us that they were transitioning to the new "cleaner" (my term) design for their pages in a phased approached. Thanks to Gail Dever and her post "New Census Search tool designed to make it easier to find family roots in Canada" at Genealogy à la carte for the heads up I found myself spending my Sunday morning and part of the afternoon playing on the new search page and writing this up.

For now the old LAC census search page still exists at "Censuses" but it will be going away sometime in the future. In preparation for the day when that happens and just based on what Library and Archives Canada did to other topic/landing pages, I'd recommend saving or printing, maybe as a PDF if your computer supports it, those various census topic pages to your computer for safekeeping...just in case. Those current pages do have a wealth of really information on them and we don't know if they will be carried forward to the new site.

On to the new LAC census search page...

Screen capture of the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

I'll be using Luke McMullen, my 3rd great-grandfather, in the examples in this blog. Why? Because it is my blog and also his name presents some interesting challenges at times.

The expanded search box screen captures which I took on 20 Nov 2022 all appear on the same screen in your browser. I've just presented them individually for clarity.

Here are my personal observations and recommendations on how to use the current search pages to do general census searches.

My first recommendation for anyone who has done census searches using any of the genealogy sites is to click on the "Advanced search" link at the top of the search form. What that does is open up the "Census year(s)", "Who", "When", "Where" and "Location in the archive" search forms so that you can see all the possible things you can search on. Yes, you could click the "More" button in the "Who", "Where", and "Location in the archive" but why click several buttons when one button will do the work for you.

Census year(s)

Screen capture of the expanded "Census year(s)" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

In the census years I would suggest to select only the years the person was alive...assuming you know that little bit of information. Why? So that you don't get overwhelmed or confused with extra results that don't apply to your person. Since Luke McMullen was born about 1818 and died in 1906 I would probably uncheck the boxes for 1911 and 1921 under "Dominion of Canada" and 1916 and 1926 under "All Prairies". 

Who

Screen capture of the expanded "Who" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

For the "Who" I'd recommend just filling in the "First name" and "Last name". The reason for not filling in the other boxes, except possibly "Gender", is that we probably don't know those details, what was transcribed, and, just as importantly, we don't know what was told to the enumerator. For example, in the various records for Luke McMullen I've found that his birth year was stated or calculated as 1818 or 1819 or 1820 or 1826. The form doesn't currently support age ranges so if you put in a specific age then you may miss many of the census search returns. As for 'Religion", I don't know about your family, but my kin who followed the various Protestant branches seemed to switch churches in almost every census enumeration.

When it comes to names and what the enumerator wrote or scribbled and playing the "guess what the blind transcriber saw" game is no longer fun, then try making use of the wildcard '*' character. If I search for "Luke McMullen" I get back five results: 1851, 1861 (agricultural), 1871 (Ontario), 1891, and 1901. Yet the 1871 Census of Canada result doesn't have an image attached since that transcription index entry was created by the Ontario Genealogical Society in the 1980s of just the heads of household. But what about the 1871 Census of Canada for Luke McMullen with an image?

Well this is where the wildcard comes in handy.

If I do a search for "Luke McMull*n" then the 1871 Census of Canada with an image appears in the list. The gotcha there here is that his last name was transcribed as "Luke McMullin"

Also, for anyone with a surname that starts with "Mc" or "Mac" I'd recommend replacing the "c" or "ac" with the wildcard. So when searching for McMullen I might start with "M*Mullen"

But I'm still missing the 1861 population schedule and the 1881 census so I tried searching using "Luke *Mull*n". Now I got back 15 results. Hmmm, just a few more than I expected! Most of them are of a Luke Mullin in Quebec. Yet if I filter on just the Province for "Ontario" I get only four results and still no 1881 and nothing before 1861. To find Luke in the Census of 1881 I had to search for "luke *mull*" and there I found his name transcribed as "Luke Mullem". By the way, I can't fault the transcriber in this case. It really does look like it is written by the enumerator as "Luke Mullem". However, there is another gotcha when it comes to filtering on the provinces but this is for when I discuss the "Where" search box below.

As for that Census of 1861 Canada it appears that the enumerator wrote on the population schedule Luke's name as "Luk McMullen". 

When

Screen capture of the expanded "When" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

I'd also leave the dates in the "When" blank just for the same reason I recommended leaving the "Age" blank in the "Who" search box. Our ancestors just weren't too consistent when it come to stating their age and it didn't help that on at least one census it asks "Age next birthday".

Where

Screen capture of the expanded "Where" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

The "Where" box is handy if you know in which province your kin resided. Yet if they moved to another province, quite often the phase "Go west, young man" comes to mind, you may miss later census entries. Where the "Where" search box does come in handy is if you are looking for someone in a specific place at a specific time. One does need to keep in mind that district names and sub-district names, along with their numbers, may have changed between the taking of the censuses. 

One thing that is missing on in the "Where" search box is the being able to search by page number. Why would that be useful? What if you were presented with a source citation along the lines of:

1901 census of Canada, Ontario, district 81, sub-district f-2, p. 2, dwelling 17, family 17, Luke McMullen; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 May 2013); citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm T-6478.

Yes, I know that this is not a perfect citation but for my purposes it is "good enough". If we don't have Ancestry there is still enough information to find the page on the Library and Archives Canada site even without searching using the name...except the new search form, unlike the old form, doesn't let me narrow down the results to just a single page. The page number is captured in the "Record Information - Details" screen when I look at the search results so this should be a simple thing to add to the form by the developers. 

There is a gotcha, the one I alluded to in the "Who" section, when searching for folks in the censuses before 1871 who lived in Ontario. They weren't living in a place named Ontario yet. They were living on Upper Canada or Canada West according to the government. The same challenge for those living in the province presently called Quebec. Quebec was known as Lower Canada and then later Canada East. You may also have same challenge with the Prairie provinces since depending on the time they may have been enumerated under "The Territories" .

Location in the archive

Screen capture of the expanded "Location in the archive" search box on the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) screen taken on 20 Nov 2022.

Unless you are doing an arcane search leave the various fields in the "Location in the archive" blank. However, there have been times when I've been helping out someone in their research using Ancestry where I want to point them to the image on the Library and Archives Canada site and I do have the image number that I've found embedded in the Ancestry URL. With this extra search field it will make it very easy for me to find the image. As I said...arcane!

Getting back to Luke McMullen, finding him in the new LAC Census search page I would have to look for "Luk* *mull*" and filter just on the years he was alive. There will be a number of entries that don't apply to him. I can't filter on "Ontario" for the Province since then I'd miss the censuses of 1851 and 1861 for those censuses are recorded as being in "Canada West".

Collection Search Results

Once you get to the search results screen there is one thing to note: don't use the back button to get back to adjust or modify your various filters. 

Screen capture of the search results page in Collection Search for the new Library and Archives Canada Census Search (beta) system taken on 20 Nov 2022.

Instead, at the top of the search results page click on the "Modify search" to open up the search boxes just like we have seen on the initial search page. Make your changes here and click on the Search button to update the results.

Now not all is bad. The new image display page coming from the Collection Search page allows you to zoom in and out on the image by increments. So that is a nice feature. Plus being able to search from one screen, once some issues are hopefully dealt with, is a good thing.

Wrapping Up

Since this is a beta version of the page I figure now is the time to give my constructive feedback to Library and Archives Canada in the hopes of influencing the page and how it works. I've signed up for a 10 minute online feedback session and I've sent a laundry list of things to LAC via their "email us your comments" link at the top of the search page.

• Add search by page number in the "Where" search box. It is there in the old search system so hopefully that is an oversight.
• Add the ability to search by multiple Provinces in the "Where" search box. As I've noticed with Luke McMullen, LAC treats Ontario, Canada West, and Upper Canada as different places. Being able to select all three in my search would be a nice feature.
• One search feature that would be possibly the hardest to implement is to search for a range of numbers. Most of our kin had a range of ages or years recorded in the censuses. Being able to search for something like "From year: 1818" "To year: 1826" for a year would help us to get rid of the extra folks in the returned results. Same with searching by age.

 

Finally, and this is the important thing to remember. This is a beta version of the pages and things will change, hopefully for the better. So when you get frustrated, not if but when, step away from the computer or switch back to the familiar old Census search pages (at least for now).

UPDATE - 22 Nov 2022

It really can pay off to provide constructive feedback for I received a reply to my email from someone in the Digital Access, Public Services Branch at Library and Archives Canada. There are a few things I will share:

• They are in the process of introducing search ranges for"Age", 'Year of birth", and "Year of immigration". So keep an eye open for it in the upcoming weeks.
• Being able to select multiple "Provinces" is already an improvement that was requested by the Library and Archives Canada genealogy staff. So it is one of the features they will be working on.

For my issue with the page number, they pointed out that is actually under the "Location in the archive" search box but only if a specific year is selected. I've advocated that it should be in the "Where" section since the page number, line number, and family number is more associated with the district, sub-district, and division number when created a citation.

Webinar - Researching a Canadian Soldier of the Great War

I will be speaking at the Lambton County Branch of Ontario Ancestors meeting on Thursday, November 10, 2022 starting at 7 pm ET on "Researching a Canadian Soldier of the Great War". In this presentation I will be looking at the various online resources that are available to us as we seek to learn more about and honour those men and women who served Canada during the First World War.

Registration to attend via Zoom can be found at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtdOyoqTksGNVrfjOh0Sf8fiu4QJIVB_O_.

I hope to see you there!

First and Second World War Research Resource Pages Updated

 

For those who are researching their kin who served Canada during the First or Second World Wars, I've updated my resources pages with corrected links and new sites that may just help you in your goal to honour those who have served.

First World War: Researching a Soldier of the Great War

Second World War: Researching the Canadian Fallen