A Gotcha When Searching the LAFRANCE Collection

Every second Tuesday afternoon the Ottawa Public Library and the Ottawa Branch of Ontario Ancestors hosts a one hour in-person Genealogy Drop-In session where we have folks popping by looking for help in their family history and genealogy research. Most of the times the questions are answered right then and there. However, in a few cases it can take a bit of time to actually figure out the right answer or solution to a genealogical mystery. Such was the case from a few weeks ago.

One benefit for genealogy and family history researchers who have an Ottawa Public Library card is that we have access to Généalogie Québec via the library site from the comfort of one's home. One of our patrons had been exploring the Généalogie Québec site but they were having problems locating records they thought should be there. They had already discovered the images they were seeking in the "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968" collection on Ancestry. However, they wanted to replicate finding those same records on Généalogie Québec as a test of that site.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search page from Généalogie Québec.

Going through the Ottawa Public Library portal and agreeing to the terms and condition of the Généalogie Québec site we are presented with "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search screen. There we can search by individual, couple, or parish. That is what the patron had been doing when trying to locate the baptism record for Nelson Deschamps from 1918. Yet no baptisms were appearing.

I knew we were missing something but there wasn't enough time to figure it out at that time.

Fast forward two weeks and it happens that both the patron and I were there early for the drop-in. So I asked for the details again. This time, without the pressure of doing real-time searching, I was taking my time and actually paying attention and reading to what is on the screen.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of "About the LAFRANCE" section from "The LAFRANCE (Baptisms, burials and marriages)" search page from Généalogie Québec.

That is when I noticed this very important line from the "About the LAFRANCE" section:

Every Catholic baptism and burial from Quebec between 1621 and 1861

Of course we couldn't find a baptism from 1918 since the collection for Catholic baptisms only goes to 1861 in LAFRANCE.

I had forgotten to do what I constantly remind others to do: learn what a collection actually covers. I felt so silly!

I knew I could browse the Drouin Collection records but that can be very time consuming, especially if you don't have an exact year or know the parish where the baptism took place. Also, even though many parish registers have a name index either at the front or back of the year's register, quite a few don't.

So I went to the "NBMDS (BMD Index)" page on Généalogie Québec. Of course, this time I checked the "About the NBMDS tool" section first. There we find that it is an index of about 1.2 million records of  Catholic and Protestant baptism, marriage and burial records, most of which are from the province of Quebec. It even states the years and regions covered.

In this specific research case, the record found on Ancestry stated the baptism place was "Thurso, Québec (Quebec), Canada". Thurso is in the Outaouais region of Quebec and is one of the regions that the NBMDS index covers. So in theory we should be good.

Screen capture from 3 Feb 2024 of item 2 returned of a search using the NBMDS tool on Généalogie Québec looking for Nelson Deschamps.

There he was, just like I had hoped. Even better, the transcribed information actually made sense.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the transcription for the baptism record for Joseph Alfred Nelson Deschamps from the "Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968" on Ancestry.ca.

As you can see above, the transcriber of the entry for Nelson's baptism record on Ancestry has Nelson being baptized before he was born. That's not going to happen in the Catholic church.

Yet the NBMDS index entry for Nelson's baptism on Généalogie Québec doesn't link to the image. So we have to do a little bit more work.

We need to go to the Drouin Collection records on Généalogie Québec and browse the parish registers.

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the Drouin Collection records landing page on Généalogie Québec.

In this specific case I drilled down the folders via Quebec > Fonds Drouin > T > Thurso > 1910 > 1918

Screen capture taken 3 Feb 2024 of the Drouin Collection records browsing the folders to "Québec/Fonds Drouin/T/Thurso/1910/1918/" on Généalogie Québec.

Now all we have to do is look at the various images from 1918 to locate the baptism of Nelson Deschamps that, according the Généalogie Québec index entry, took place on 25 Apr 1918. Very quickly I came across the same image found in the Ancestry collection.

Genealogy Quebec, https://www-genealogiequebec-com.ezproxy.biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/tools/drouin-collection, Drouin Genealogical Institute, 2024, Drouin Collection - Québec/Fonds Drouin/T/Thurso/1910/1918/, d1p_00170648.jpg; image of page with baptism of Joseph Alfred Nelson Deschamps, B. 15.

 

So why would one want to use Généalogie Québec since it can take a bit more effort to see this sort of image when compared to the Drouin collections on Ancestry? 

The first reason is that the Drouin Institute keeps adding more records to their collections on Généalogie Québec. These new record may not make it on to Ancestry or any other genealogy site for quite some time. 

Additionally I've found the transcriptions of the records on Généalogie Québec are of higher quality than what I've come across on Ancestry. If I can't find a record I know should be in the various Drouin collections on Ancestry I will always come to Généalogie Québec to search through their collections. Quite often I will find that "missing" record there. Then when I look at the images on Ancestry for that specific parish and year I will find the name has been horribly transcribed in the Ancestry index.

Finally, although it didn't apply in this specific case, for those with deep roots in Quebec, the LAFRANCE collection is an amazing resource that can save you considerable time in your research.

Lessons Learned

The first lesson is always, always read the about section for any collection. That way you will know what should be covered in any collection. More importantly, you will also learn what isn't in the collection you are using.

The second lesson is to take the time to explore the various tools and collections on a site. If one collection doesn't have what you are seeking, quite possibly another collection will provide you will the answers.

Etienne Campeau and his Confirmation in 1664

A week or so ago, I came across this question on the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group hosted by Gail Dever:

"I have found references to my 7th g-grandfather Etienne Campeau being confirmed in Montreal on 11 May, 1664 and July 11th of that year. I can't find it in the regular parish book for Basilique Notre-Dame.  The trick fellow group members taught me of looking under Not Stated didn't work as in the Quebec City records on Ancestry.  Any ideas?"

It got my attention since it is what I call a "good question". A name, several dates, and a place is specified along with where the person looked and even how they searched for possible leads. So I figured I'd take a look at what could be found since I'm always wanting to expand my research horizons when it comes to Quebéc records. This is always a challenge for me since my comprehension of the French language is not exactly great.

The first step was to see if I could find any references to the confirmation of Etienne Campeau in Montreal in 1664. So I plunked the terms "etienne campeau montreal confirmation 1664" (without the quotes) into my favourite search engine. The result which initially looked most promising was one on Geni, a site which operates on the "single world family tree model". On the profile page for "Étienne Campeau dit Limousin" managed by Gisèle J.M. Fiola there it is written in a history prepared by Hélène-Andrée Bizier:

"Nothing significant happens in 1664, safe the confirmation of Étienne Campeau whose name appears on two lists of confirmations, one in May and the other dated July 11th"

along with the following noted event found in a bullet list in the same profile:

"Confirmation: 11 Jul 1664, Montréal, Île-de-Montréal, Québec, Canada."

So I continued my searching since the profile page didn't have any sources for those statements.

The next search result which got my attention was "116 – Confirmations à Québec, Trois-Rivières et Montréal en 1664" posted on 28 Feb 2016 in Le blogue de Guy Perron. That post has transcriptions of the various confirmations in Quebéc in a list format. Indeed, there is the name of Étienne Campeau recorded as being confirmed on May 1644 in Montréal. Even better, at the bottom of the list is the source: "Fonds Drouin en ligne. Registre des confirmations. Archives de l’Archidiocèse de Québec. 1659-1725. p. 29-30)."

Next it was off to the online presence of the Archives de l’Archidiocèse de Québec. It took a little bit of browsing on that site to find references to the possible confirmation records. I found a mention at the bottom of their Généalogie : ressources internes page where it stated "Registres de confirmations, 1659-" I also came across the digitization project page where it would appear that the "Registre des confirmations, vol. I, 1659-" was digitized in 2014. However, it seems like they are only available at the archives in person and not online.

I figured I'd also check the PRDH-IGD site for any other clues. In Ottawa, ever since the pandemic, we are fortunate that PRDH-IGD has been made available to us to free via the Ottawa Public Library and our library card. There I found the two entries for a confirmation of Etienne Campeau at Montréal (Notre-Dame-de-Montréal). The first had the date of 1664-05 and the second entry included the day: 1664-05-11. 

The source for the 1664-05 entry is recorded as "LE QUANTIEME DE LA DATE DE LA LISTE DE CONFIRMES A ETE OMIS, ELLE EST SITUEE ENTRE LA LISTE DE CONFIRMES DE TROIS-RIVIERES DU 01-05-1664 ET CELLE DE TROIS-RIVIERES DU 22-05-1664" and Etienne's name is written as "Etinne Campot". However, there is no source specified for the second entry. Both entries also didn't have links to the original documents on GénéalogieQuébec.com so I needed to keep looking.

I revised my search to use the information I'd found and I used the search term "notre dame montreal confirmation 1600..1700 registre" (without the quotes). For those unfamiliar with number searches on Google, the double dots, "..", instruct Google to search a range of numbers. In this case, I'm looking for web pages and documents with the year 1600 to 1700 specified. Of course, Google doesn't know they are years, but a number is still a number.

With that search term I came across the PDF "Register of Abjurations Drouin-Pépin Collection - From 1662" on the Genealogy Ensemble site. The PDF is from their "Register of Abjurations" post from 3 Feb 2015 and within the PDF it mentions "Microfilm #3140 - Diocèse de Québec - Registre des abjurations - From 1662 to 1757". But I'm looking for confirmations so why did Google highlight this PDF? It was this paragraph which helped explain what else might be found on the microfilm:

"Please note, the above microfilms does contain both acts of abjuration and acts of confirmation, for under the leadership of Monsignor François de Montmorency de Laval, Bishop of Nouvelle France from 1659 to 1708, acts of confirmation and abjuration were recorded together within the same parish registers. It does create confusion in trying to decipher if an adult who was confirmed was previously a protestant or simply a non-believer. Some of the acts of confirmations contained within this microfilm also list young people, or it appears to be so - Finally, do not expect an index of people, it does not exist - One must review each document one by one."

I now had a new search term to possibly follow: "Registre des abjurations". So, back to Google for yet another search and I put those words into the search box (without the quotes) and the third result was for a page in the FamilySearch catalogue. FamilySearch catalogue entries are often good since the material may be available online and for free.

That brought me to "Registres paroissiaux, 1662-1848". In reading the notes for the catalogue page two points got my attention:

• Microfilm des originaux dans l'Archives de l'Archidiocèse de Québec.
• Confirmations de l'eglise de Notre-Dame de Québec et autres de la diocèse, 1659-1771 et abjurations, 1662-1757
  

I was just at the  l'Archives de l'Archidiocèse de Québec web site and the confirmations and abjurations line described what I was wanting to find and in the time period I was searching.

So after signing in with my free FamilySearch account I could look at the digitized microfilm DGS 5471926. With 668 images to review I was not looking forward to looking at each page. However, this is where the microfilm information cards come in handing. These cards indicate where one item or volume placed on a microfilm starts and ends and they generally stand out when looking at the page of digitized microfilm images.

Fairly quickly I got to image 524. This is the start of  item 14,"Confirmations" for the Eglise du Canada, Quebec, Canada which was microfilmed on 10 Sep 1981 by the Genealogical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah at the Archeveche de Quebec.

"Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621-1979," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L99W-6DG9 : 16 July 2014), Localités multiples > Localités multiples > Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1662-1848 > image 1545 of 1689; microfilm title card for Confirmations, Eglise du Canada; Archives Nationales du Quebec (National Archives of Quebec), Montreal.

I slowly worked my way through the images taking the time to read, and in some cases transcribe into Google Translate to help me with my very rusty French, the various introductory pages.

There on page 29, just like the "116 – Confirmations à Québec, Trois-Rivières et Montréal en 1664" post stated, I found the name Etienne Campot confirmed in Montréal on May 1664.

"Canada, Québec, registres paroissiaux catholiques, 1621-1979," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G99W-66KZ : 16 July 2014), Localités multiples > Localités multiples > Baptêmes, mariages, sépultures 1662-1848 > image 1563 of 1689; Etienne Compot, Confirmer à Montréal le May 1664; Archives Nationales du Quebec (National Archives of Quebec), Montreal.

Another digitized microfilm copy of the same page can be found in the "Registres paroissiaux, 1662-1848" on DGS 5468668. Yes, I know that this is the same name as the other catalogue on FamilySearch but it appears to be a different filming of the same documents. But it never hurts to always double check since different filmings may include other information or the images might be clearer.

That second confirmation date of 11 Jul 1664 took a bit more work. However, since I was already on FamilySearch I looked for church records for "Canada, Québec, Île-de-Montréal, Montréal". In the catalogue entry for "Registres paroissiaux, 1642-1680", which is for the Catholic church of Notre-Dame, I saw that the description of DGS 8633229 is "Baptêmes, 1642-1680 (comprend des confirmations, 1664, 1676 et 1678); Mariages, 1643, 1647-1650"

"Registres paroissiaux, 1642-1680," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3HC-Y3DM-6 : 13 July 2021), image 194 of 524; Etienne Compot, confirmation 11 Jul May 1664; Library and Archives Canada, Registre de la pariosse Notre-Dame, Montréal, 1642-1669, MG-8, G-19, volume 1.

This is the same list of names found in l'Archives de l'Archidiocèse de Québec but now found in the registers for Notre-Dame in Montréal but with a different date.

You never know what you will find as you work through the records and follow the clues found within.

An Anglophone's Tips for Searching Ancestry's The Drouin Collection: Quebec Vital & Church Records

Recently I spent a week delving into the "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within The Drouin Church and Vital Records collection on Ancestry. This collection was originally created by the Institut Généalogique Drouin and has been made available to Ancestry subscribers. It can also be found at GenealogyQuébec. Some archives and libraries may have free access to the GenealogyQuébec site. However, owning to the fact that I don't have a subscription to GenealogyQuébec¹ and since libraries frown upon you staying until the wee hours of the night I've been using the Ancestry collection since I already have a subscription with them.

This was part of a personal research project to learn more about my late uncle's life partner's family. This paternal branch of her family lines of the Shirlow and Rapple/Rappel/Rappell was my first real deep dive into these records and it has been quite a learning experience. As an Anglophone with just a barely passing knowledge of French it has been interesting, frustrating, and yes, fun. Here are some of the lessons I can pass on to you to hopefully make searching these records a bit less painful.

Screen capture from the image presented by Ancestry for Saint Edward Anglican Church (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1916 Parish Register,"  marriage of James Shirlow and Sarah Rappell, 22 Feb 1916; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

The Records

Keep in mind that these are church records. The majority of the records deal with recording church rites such as baptisms, marriages, and burials. In some cases they will also record the date of birth and death but there are no guarantees. In many of the records I've been looking at they also give the name of the parents, the father's occupation, and the mother's maiden surname. Burial records may also provide you with the spouse's name to help you figure out if this is the right person in your tree, and their age at death. Burial records for the women will often be recorded under their maiden surname along with their husband's name.

Language Challenges

Although the Shirlow and Rapple lines are of English speaking Irish descent some of the parish records were in French. As I was reading through some of the records the stuff I learned in my primary and high school French classes slowly came back to me. If your French language skills are as rust as mine (or worse) here are a few tips.

1. Google Translate is a helpful resource in figuring out some of the words. It is not perfect though and will have some challenges but it will often give you the gist of what is written.
2. Write down on a piece of paper the numbers 1 through to 31 with the words of their French equivalents. You will be seeing these words often. If possible, write it out in cursive so that you can see how they look.
3. Write down the names of the months. For me "avril" and "août" kept messing me up when I was looking at some of the writing due to the poor quality of some of the scanned documents.
4. Learn some of the key words and phrases (and approximate translations) found in the records. There will be other phrases and words that you will come across but this list is a starting point:
• née: born
• hier: yesterday
• la même: the same
• ce jour: this day
• courrant: current (often used like "instant" for the current month and year)
• veuve: widow (sometimes abbreviated as "vve" in the margin index)
• veuf: widower
• épouse: wife (sometimes abbreviated as "espe" the margin index)
• époux: husband
• fils: son
• fille: daughter
• décédés: died
• cimetière: cemetery
• cette Paroisse: this Parish
• mil neuf cent: 1900
• mil huit cent: 1800
• nous, Prêtre soussigné: we, the undersigned priest

Church Shopping

OK, this is my own phrase for it but your ancestors may not have stuck with the same church or even religion throughout their lives. If they were of the Presbyterian faith, don't discount the Church of England or Anglican churches in the area when looking for records. You might also find them in the Roman Catholic parish registers in that area.

In Canada we are fortunate in that our census records will indicate which religion the person was practising. If you see someone listed as Roman Catholic but their spouse is Church of England or other Protestant faith you might find the marriage in a Roman Catholic church with a comment along the lines of "...the law of the Church which forbids mixed marriages..."

Cathedrale St-Jacque-le-Mineur (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1915 Parish Register,"  marriage of Chester Robert Shirlow and (Dora) Margaret Elvert, 30 Aug 1915; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 27 Jul 2019).

Additionally, there may have only been a few cemeteries in the area so those records may be held in different church than the one your ancestors regularly attended. Since I was dealing with folks that lived in Montreal I would often find their burial register entry in the collection for "Basilique Notre Dame" if they were buried in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.

If you can find the family either in the Lovell's Montreal Directory or in the later census enumerations that included the street address where they lived then Google Maps might help you figure out what churches they may have attended. However, some churches in large communities like Montreal no longer exist today so you might not be able to find them with today's maps.

Parish Registers

Depending on the community the church served, some of the parish registers for a year may be hundreds of pages in size. Even a parish with a register of 20 pages, depending on the quality of the document and writing, can be a chore to look though. Fortunately, the parish priest also didn't want to have to read every page when looking for an entry in their own register. Often you will find an index of surnames at the end of the register along with the folio number in the register where the entry can be found.

Lost Children

I consider the lost children to be those that were born and died, or in the case of parish records, baptized and buried, between census enumerations. If I find a entry for a known child in the register of a church I will often look up to ten years before and after that date for any additional children of the family.

Document Quality

If you have had any dealing with the scanned images of census documents the same rules apply with these images. Keep in mind that some of the documents you are looking at may be over two hundred years old or even older. That they have survived to this day and you can look at them from the comfort of your home can't be taken for granted. That said, some of them are really hard to read for several reasons:

• The ink has faded over time
• The documents have been damaged due to water, fire, and creatures
• The handwriting may not be the greatest (almost as bad as my own...which is horrible²)
• Pour quality of the microfilming. The contrast may be great for some parts but not for the remainder.

Transcriptions and Indexes

I really do appreciate the time, effort, and in some cases, money spent by the various commercial companies, churches, and societies to transcribe and index records. However, as any researcher knows, these transcriptions and indexes can also be the bane of our existence. The "Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection is no different. In some cases, it is almost worse than some of the census transcriptions and indexes I've used to locate family members in the digitized records.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not faulting the transcribers and indexers for all of the issues. The quality of the documents and scans they are working from would challenge anyone. So make use of wildcards like "?" and "*" in your searching of last names. I thought "Shirlow" should be easy to find but I was wrong. I had to search using "sh?rl?w" and then just "sh*w" plus restricting the location to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in my search query. I could then quickly scan the list of 100 to 200 returned names for possible matches like "Sherlow", "Sherlaw", and even "Shilow" to help me locate the key baptism, marriage, and burial records.

However, coming across many index entries of burials for people with the forename of "Epse" might throw you for a loop. In these cases the indexers wrote exactly what was written without understanding the context. Here is an example taken from the margin of a record:

Basilique Notre-Dame (Montréal, Quebec, Canada), Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, "1892 Parish Register,"  burial of Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Henry George Tibby, 5 Sep 1892; digital images, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 Jul 2019).

The indexer wrote: "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret Daniels" for the name. This loosely translates in the document to be "Mary Margaret Daniels wife of Tibby". Her forenames are not "Epse Tibby Mary Margaret". If you have the time, take a moment to correct a few of these index issues to help out other genealogy and family history researchers in their own journey of documenting their family tree.

Also, the indexers are using the margin index entries created by the parish priest. The spelling there might not be correct for your family name at that time. However, baptism and marriage records will often have the signature, if the people could sign their name, at the end of the register entry. That is how your ancestor thought their name was spelled. Don't be surprised if the spelling is not how you spell it now! Here is an example for Rapple/Rappel/Rappell family and the changes in spelling over time and by family members based on signatures in the registers:

 

I hope that this post helps you navigate "Quebec Vital & Church Records" within "The Drouin Church and Vital Records" collection on Ancestry. I'm next off to look at the Legér branch of this family and they are all French Roman Catholics in Québec so my French language skills will be pretty much stretched to the limit! Wish me luck!

---

1. 24 hours access is $5 and allows you to look at 75 images. Monthly subscription is $13 and you can view 75 images per day. An annual subscription is $100 with access to 1050 images per week. See https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/subscription for the details.

2. No fault of my primary school teachers, especially Mrs. Currie.

Overview of Canadian On-line Civil Vital Records (BMDs)

One of the common questions I see being asked by new researchers is where do they find birth, marriage or death registration for their ancestors. What many fail to realize is that the concept of a civil registration document for the birth, marriage and death of a person is a fairly modern concept so we need to know when the governments started keeping those vital records. Of course, even though the government says they started requiring civil registrations commencing on a given date it may have taken several years (or even a decade or two) before all areas of the province actually started to comply with the law. A researcher also needs to keep in mind the privacy restrictions imposed on the records. Any records after a certain date may only be available to the person named in the document OR their direct next-of-kin.

But all is not lost if an event occurred before the province kept civil vital records. During the time before civil registration we can look for church records (baptisms, marriages and burials), newspaper announcements, military records and family bibles.

Below are some of the various online sources for finding the Canadian civil birth, marriage and death documents for your ancestors. Some sites are just indexes, others have the images available but you can't easily download them, some cost money to access the images, and finally some provinces have made the images available for download for free.



Newfoundland and Labrador - Newfoundland's Grand Banks Vital Statistics

Although vital records for Newfoundland and Labrador have been kept since 1891, a majority of records prior to 1948 were copies of church registers. The Newfoundland's Grand Banks Vital Statistics page has transcriptions from many of those church registers.

Prince Edward Island - Public Archives and Records Office

• Births: Civil registration didn't start until 1906 and the birth registrations are under a 120 year privacy restriction so birth certificates are not online.
• Baptisms: up to about 1923
• Marriages: Licenses 1787-1933 and Marriage Bonds 1849-1902
• Deaths: prior to 1906

Nova Scotia - Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics

• Births: 1864-1877, 1908-1913 plus delayed registrations for births between 1830-1913
• Marriages: bonds from 1763-1864 and registrations 1864-1938 
• Deaths: 1864-1877, 1908-1963 plus the City of Halifax for between 1890-1908

New Brunswick - Vital Statistics from Government Records

• Births
• Late Registration of Births: County Series: 1869-1901
• Late Registration of Births: 1810-1918
• County Birth Registers: 1800-1913
• Provincial Registrations of Births: 1898-1918
• Marriages: 1847-1964
• Deaths
• County Death Registers: 1885-1921 
• Provincial Returns of Deaths: 1815-1919
• Death Certificates: 1920-1964

 Quebec

Quebec is unusual in the sense that there was no separation between church and state until fairly recently when it came to registrations. It wasn't until 1994 that the government of Quebec kept separate vital records. Prior to then, the province had the churches send copies of the registers to the government archives. The Drouin collection is the best source for baptisms, marriages and burials. This collection is available on Ancestry in "Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967" or via Institut généalogique Drouin.

Ontario - Ancestry's Ontario, Canada Vital Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths collection

• Births: 1869-1913
• Marriages: 1801-1928 (with gaps prior to July 1, 1869)
• Deaths: 1869-1938, deaths overseas from 1939-1947 

Manitoba - Genealogy Searches for Unrestricted Records

• Births: 1882-1913
• Marriages: 1882-1933
• Deaths: 1882- 1943

Saskatchewan - Genealogy Index Searches

• Births: 1878-1913
• Deaths: 1878-1917

Alberta

Alberta is another special case. Prior to 1905 Alberta was part of the Northwest Territories. Some of these records may be available though the Alberta Family Histories Society Resources page.

British Columbia - BC Archives - Genealogy

• Births: 1854-1903, baptisms between 1836-1888
• Marriages: 1872-1934, colonial marriages between 1859-1872
• Deaths: 1872-1991

Tip: Know when records were started to be kept by governments so you don't search for documents that don't exist.

More LAC Parish Register Microfilms

As part of the partnership between Library and Archives Canada and Canadiana.org various microfilms held by Library and Archives Canada have been digitized and placed online on the Hertiage site for all to peruse. See the latest announcement at the LAC blog.

Several of the microfilms that have been digitized contain the parish registers and township books for places across Canada. To see a list of these collections you can search for "parish registers" on the Heritage site. Under each collection set there is a count of the number of microfilms that have been digitized.

To find out what is on each microfilm you need to click the "About" tab after you click on the "Reel ID".

Unfortunately the descriptions of what is on each microfilm is very brief and usually only from the first record set ... and there may be MANY record sets on a single microfilms. Additionally, some of the microfilms are misfiled in the wrong collection which just aggravates the issue. This makes it a challenge to know if the parish register you are looking for is in the collection or not.

For example, on microfilm H-1812 in the Manitoba Parish Registers collection the About tab states, "Holy Ghost Parish fonds [Winnipeg, Man.]". But if you go to the end of that film you will come across "SIMS, Rev. Jabez (1831-1869). Church of England Missionary" which is Shelley Pearen's biographical sketch of Rev. Jabez Sims that includes a hand drawn picture of his family tree.

Hopefully, one day, the Parish Registers finding aid book that is on the shelf on the second floor at the Library and Archives Canada building at 395 Wellington Street will be digitized and the searching will be made just a little bit easier.