Illustrated Historical Atlases of Ontario Counties Online

If you have been reading my blog for some time, you know how important land records in Ontario can be for locating where our ancestors lived. As part of any land record research we also want to "see" where they were on a map. Quite often I will make use of the numerous illustrated atlases of the counties of Ontario found digitized on the "In Search of Your Canadian Past: The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project" hosted by the McGill University.

Partial screen capture of the landing page for the In Search of Your Canadian Past: The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project site taken 2 Feb 2026.

This site has high quality scans of maps from books originally published in the late 1870s to early 1880s. Yet have you ever wondered where those maps came from and if there was anything more than just those maps in those books?

Wonder no longer!

Some of you might have seen a group of large books like this in your local library or archive if you live in Ontario.

Picture of the shelving holding the Illustrated Historical Atlases of Ontario held at the Nepean Centrepointe Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (taken 10 Feb 2026).

Here we see a picture of the various Illustrated Historical Atlases of Ontario Counties held at the Nepean Centrepointe branch of the Ottawa Public Library. They are available for anyone to peruse. During the joint Ottawa Public Library and Ottawa Branch of Ontario Ancestors in-person drop-ins, we've periodically used these books instead of going online to look at the maps. 

But what if you don't have access to a library or archive with those books? 

One of the projects announced in November 2024 by the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, CRKN, the fine folks who bring us the Canadiana and Héritage, was an update to the Ontario Historical County Atlases. That project has now been completed.

We can find those recently digitized books online for the following counties (some counties are group together into a single book): 

Ontario county atlases:  

• Brant
• Carleton
• Elgin
• Frontenac, Lennox and Addington
• Haldimand
• Halton
• Hastings and Prince Edward
• Huron
• Lincoln and Welland
• Middlesex
• Norfolk
• Northumberland and Durham
• Ontario
• Oxford
• Peel 
• Perth
• Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry
• Wentworth
• York, township of West Gwillimbury and town of Bradford

The Illustrated Historical Atlases of the counties not only have the maps of the townships but also possibly the following sections that help us understand the history of the county:

• Early settlement details
• Military history of the units raised in the county
• Key officials at the time the atlas was created
• Histories of the villages, towns, and townships
• Biographical sketches of prominent people and families in the county 

Often we will also find a list of those who patronized or subscribed to the atlas at the time of its creation. We might learn where they resided in the township, village, or town, when they settled, where they were born, and even their occupation. However, not everyone paid to have their name included. So, your ancestor might not be listed.

Then there are the pictures of various notable buildings, farms, and even people. 

If you live on the property previously owned by James McLaurin located on Lot 21 of the 6th Concession in the Township of Osgoode, wouldn't it be interesting to see what it looked like in the late 1870s?

Illustrated historical atlas of the county of Carleton (including city of Ottawa) Ont. (Toronto : H. Belden, 1879), p. 5, sketch of the "Res. of Jas. McLaurin. Con. 6, Lot 21, Osgoode Tp., Ont.," [image 60 of 100] (https://n2t.net/ark:/69429/m07m03x85b1p : accessed 10 Feb 2026).

Of course there are the obligatory maps of the townships. But you might even find street maps of the villages and towns. 

Illustrated historical atlas of the county of Carleton (including city of Ottawa) Ont. (Toronto : H. Belden, 1879), p. 46, map of Stittsville as part of the Map of No. Gower page [image 84 of 100] (https://n2t.net/ark:/69429/m07m03x85b1p : accessed 10 Feb 2026). 

In addition to the county atlases, some of the county maps are found in the Dominion of Canada atlases:  

• Bruce County edition
• Grey County edition
• Kent County edition
• Lambton County edition
• Lanark County edition
• Simcoe County edition
• Victoria County edition
• Waterloo County edition

For the counties found listed in the Dominion of Canada atlases, generally you will find the maps of the townships towards the end of the book. But don't just stop after you find maps of the townships. In many cases you will come across a "Biographical Directory" of those who lived not only in the rural parts of the county but also the towns and villages. 

Illustrated atlas of the Dominion of Canada [Victoria County edition] (Toronto : Belden & Co., 1881), Biographical Directory of Victoria County Subscribers, p 3 [image 179 of 180], Ops Township, Alexander McKinnon  (https://n2t.net/ark:/69429/m2025000032wv5b : accessed 10 Feb 2026).

Above is the entry for my 3rd great-grandfather, Alexander McKinnon, who lived in Ops Township in Victoria County. If I didn't already have this additional information, now I have a starting point not just for locating any land records but also when and where he was born, and when he came to Upper Canada. 

Just note that this directory is of subscribers, i.e. those who paid to have their name listed. That means not every person will be mentioned in the directory.

 

Even better, these books have been made full text searchable. When I typed in "McKinnon" into the search box, two matches appeared. One of them was the page that has the clipping shown above found almost at the end of the book. Of course, the accuracy of the search depends on the quality of the images. That means we may have to actually read what is on the pages on not just rely on searching for names.

 

Finally, you might have notice that not all the counties in Ontario have been digitized. Only those atlases held in the collection of the McGill University Libraries were included in this project. The maps on The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project for several counties, such as Renfrew, came from material held by Library and Archives Canada. We can see the list of where the maps came from on the The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project Primary Source Material page. 

Maybe CRKN might consider asking permission from Library and Archives Canada or the publishers of the reprints to also digitize those books that aren't already found on Canadiana?

Bill C-3 (2025) and Searching for Birth Registrations in Ontario

Ever since Royal Assent was granted on 20 Nov 2025 to Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), there has been a steady increase in the number of posts seen in the various Ontario genealogy groups on Facebook I participate in, and also by the branches of Ontario Ancestors.

Screen capture of the start of An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), Assented to 20 Nov 2025 as Bill C-3 in the First Session, Forty-fifth Parliament 3-4 Charles III, 2025.

This change to the Citizenship Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-29) for Canada removed the first generation born outside Canada limitation of Canadian citizenship in some situations.

Note those very important words, "in some situations," that is on the page from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. In looking at the "Document Checklist: Application for a Citizenship Certificate (Proof of Citizenship) (CIT 0014)" form I noticed this note in Scenario 3 on the paper form:

On December 15, 2025, the Citizenship Act was amended requiring that applicants who are born outside of Canada to a Canadian parent who was also born outside Canada must demonstrate that at least one of their Canadian citizen parents has 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada prior to the birth of the applicant. 

I initially had a feeling this is a very important note. But, based on a comment sent to me and reading Appendix F on the "Guide for Paper Applications for a Citizenship Certificate for Adults and Minors (Proof of Citizenship) under Section 3 (CIT 0001)" page, this seems to only apply to folks born after 15 Dec 2025.

However, I am not a lawyer, nor do I portray one on TV. So I don't pretend to understand the gotchas involved not only when it comes to applying for a citizenship certificate but also who can make use of this claim of Canadian citizenship through descent beyond the first generation. If you have any questions about doing this process, I'm definitely the wrong person to ask. Instead, I recommend contacting a law firm that deals in Canadian citizenship and immigration for guidance. The money and time spent talking with a competent legal expert many save you grief and disappointment later.

One of the key document that folks are often having challenges with locating is evidence of a great-grandparent's birth. With birth, marriage, and death registrations in Canada being a provincial concern, each province started civil registrations in different years. You will need to first brush up on when registrations started where your ancestor was born and then figure out where to find those documents.

Since I deal with Ontario genealogy the most, although I am familiar with other provinces, I'm going to focus on those who are seeking to use Canadian citizenship through descent where their ancestors were born in Ontario. Although similar challenges exist for all the provinces when it comes to civil birth registrations.

The key thing to know about Ontario civil birth registrations is that it didn't start until 1 Jul 1869. What is frustrating to many is even then it took many years before there was full compliance with the law. As an example of that lack of compliance with registering births, it is estimated that the birth returns for 1898 were only 80% complete. It's no wonder we sometimes have challenges looking for an Ontario birth registration prior to the 1900s. I've written about finding Ontario civil birth registrations in my blog back in 2022 and I updated it in 2024. Please take a few minutes to read the post to understand what is available and where.

Also, don't just rely on transcriptions and indexes to find your ancestor's birth registration in Ontario. If you can't find the civil birth registration by using the computer aided search feature on the various sites, then take the effort to browse the digitized birth registration index created by the government of Ontario that is found digitized on FamilySearch in their "Births, stillbirths, and delayed registration with indexes, 1869-1912" collection. That digitized material is generally grouped by the first letter of the last name, and then by year. Within the those groupings, the names are order alphabetically.

If you do find the birth registration in the digitized material and you are wanting a certified copy, then read the "Birth, marriage and death registrations" page on the Archives of Ontario site in the section under "Order a certified copy of a registration".

However, if a birth registration can't be located, that means folks will be looking for church records in the hopes that a baptism was performed around the time the person was born.

The challenge then really begins since many of the parish registers are not online and name indexed for searching. If we are lucky, the ancestor might have been baptized by a Wesleyan Methodist minister. Why lucky? Wayne Bower has generously digitized and made available those Wesleyan Methodist baptism registers now held by the United Church of Canada on his page "Wesleyan Methodist Baptismal Registers
1825-1910". You might also come across some parish registers on FamilySearch and Ancestry. But those are more the exception than the rule.

Instead you will need to research the family to figure out the following from around the time of the birth:

• What religion was the family following?
• Did the denomination the family followed practice infant baptisms?
• Where was the family was residing?
• What churches may have been in existence in the area?
• Where are those records now held? 
• Have the records for that time period been made available online? 

You might have noticed I emphasized the word "research". That is because the answers to those questions require us to find other documents such as census and land records, read and understand what has been recorded in those other records, possibly use maps to find the family on the ground to identify nearby churches, reading local histories to figure out what churches were in existence at the time, and contacting existing churches or archives to find out where the records may have ended up. You might even have to research that religion to get some of those answers.

For example, the Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and about 70% of The Presbyterian Church in Canada came together to form The United Church of Canada in 1925. There have been other congregations brought into that union over the subsequent years. That means, for those congregations you might need to contact The United Church of Canada Archives to find the records. But what about the 30% of the Presbyterian Church in Canada that didn't join in that union? Then you might need to contact The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives. 

What if the family attended the Church of England? You will need to figure out the diocese that church was in and contact the appropriate diocesan archives in the hopes that they will be able to locate a baptism record. 

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to families who followed one of the various Protestant faiths that practiced infant baptism, you might actually find a baptism of a child performed by a clergyman of a different Protestant faith. In my own research I've come across families who stated they were Presbyterian in the censuses yet several of their children were baptized by Wesleyan Methodists circuit ministers. So keep an open mind as to where you might actually find a record of baptism.

If the family was Roman Catholic you might find the parish registers in the digitized material held by the Drouin Institute on their site Généalogie Québec. Ancestry also has many of those same registers in their copies of the Drouin collection in "Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1802-1967", "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968", and "Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1757-1946". Ancestry also has a "Ontario, Canada, Roman Catholic Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1923" collection that includes Ontario parishes not found in the Drouin collection. Don't forget that FamilySearch also has digitized copies of various Roman Catholic parish registers on their site. 

Even Library and Archives Canada has a number of parish registers either on microfilm or made available in an online digitized format courtesy of their partner CRKN's Héritage in their "Parish and related birth, marriage and death records" collection.

Just a word of caution — I have found that when dealing with any handwritten parish registers, transcriptions or indexes can be a bit iffy. So you quite often have to dive into the weeds and actually browse the images for the parish in the hopes of finding the baptism of your ancestor.

 

Please note that this blog post may be updated periodically as more information comes to light. I do stress that, in my opinion, before embarking on doing the paperwork to claim your Citizenship Certificate you consult with an immigration and citizenship lawyer who is well versed in the Canadian Citizenship Act and the changes the bill made.

I wish you best of luck in your efforts to find those sometimes hard to locate birth and baptism records. And, if it applies, I also wish you luck in your endeavours to establish your lost Canadian citizenship.

 

• [Update 3 Feb 2026: Added paragraph on baptisms by other Protestant clergymen]
• [Update 7 Feb 2026: Added link to "Guide for Paper Applications for a Citizenship Certificate for Adults and Minors (Proof of Citizenship) under Section 3 (CIT 0001)" that may clarify the 1,095 days requirement for parents residing in Canada.