Beginner's Guide: Finding Ontario Civil Death Registrations [Update]

Back in February 2023 I wrote "Beginner's Guide: Finding Ontario Civil Death Registrations". Since then, Ancestry has made available the digitized images for deaths registered in Ontario in 1949 and 1950 in their "Ontario, Canada, Deaths and Deaths Overseas, 1869-1949" (as I write this post it still states "1949" in the title) collection as a partner of the Archives of Ontario.

Ancestry.com, "Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1949," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2024), Harry Dempsey, died 27 Dec 1948, Registration of Death form; citing Archives of Ontario; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Collection: Registrations of Deaths; Series: Registrations of Deaths (43-500); Reel: RG 80-8; Certificate Number 043124.

As we can see in the above image of the Ontario Registration of Death, Form 6, for Harry Dempsey, all the information about him and his death is found recorded on a single form. The top half of the form has all the genealogical information we crave such as the name, place of death, residence, possible name of the spouse, names of the parents, the name and address of the informant, and possibly where the person was buried. The bottom half of the form has the "Medical Certificate of Death" including when the person died along with the cause(s) of death.

This changed in 1949 when the single form was split into two forms: Form 15, now titled "Statement of Death" and Form 16, "Medical Certificate of Death".

Ancestry.com, "Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938 and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1949," database with images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2024), Catharine Aileen Gibson, died 27 Mar 1950, Statement of Death and Medical Certificate of Death forms; citing Archives of Ontario; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Registrations of Deaths, 1950; Series: 80-08-0-2918, Certificate Number 012230. 

Since the name is written on both forms you may come across a difference in the spelling like we see for Catherine above.

In my looking at the various forms I also came across a few tidbits and gotchas:

• On Ancestry, the image of the Medical Certificate of Death seems to come after the Statement of Death image on their virtual filmstrip. So, for 1949 onward, make sure you review and even download both of those forms when you are documenting a death of someone who died in Ontario. 

• For those of the First Nations in Ontario you may come across their registration of death recorded on a different set of forms for 1949. Note that these titles are the titles used on the forms from that time period. Form 33 is "Statement of Death of an Indian" and Form 34 is "Medical Certificate of Death of an Indian". The differences seem to be primarily in the details describing where a person died where it asks the name of the "Indian Agency to Which Deceased Belonged." 

• The counties for the 1950 death registrations are a real mess if you are attempting to browse the collection. For example, if you select Lanark County, you don't find any deaths for 1950. There is a "Lanark, Middlesex, and Ontario" grouping for 1950 but they are a hodgepodge of various counties with the first one being for Peel county. I did a search for "Lanark" as an exact place of death for 1950 and found deaths recorded in county groupings such as "Essex, Peterborough, Simcoe, Wentworth, and York" and "York". Until someone at Ancestry can sort out this mess, browsing by counties is a bit of a mess to say the least!

As an aside, those with a sharp eye might also notice that on both the death registrations I use in my examples we find in the "Cause of Death" section a set of numbers added in. For Harry it is "180-0" and for Catherine it is "776X". Those are the codes from the "International List of Causes of Death" and "International Classification of Diseases" which can be found at http://www.wolfbane.com/icd/. Harry's code is a tricky one since in 1948 a new revision came out, ICD Revision 6. If we use that revision it states he died of "Malignant neoplasm of kidney". That doesn't make sense since it is clearly written on the form "Asphyxia due to fire in which he was burned to death." However, if we look at ILCD, Revision 5 we see that code 180 is "Conflagration". That makes much more sense. So be careful when looking up those codes for those years a new revision came out.