O Canada

We often hear of the California Gold Rush but the Klondike Gold Rush pulled the US out of a deep depression yet you do not hear much about it. We will outline the importance of this very short Rush, plot the routes and identify locations where you can find the records of your ancestor in the Canadian Rockies.

If you watch TV, you might be forgiven for thinking that you need to pay hefty subscription fees to big genealogy companies to research your ancestors. But some of my most exciting finds were found on six free websites. In this webinar I will introduce you to my favourite online sources for Ontario family history.

Canadian land records contain valuable genealogy information but can be tricky to find. This practical presentation will give you instructions for finding these records. Using case studies, you’ll learn where to look for land records in Canada, the intricacies in finding them, and what information they may contain.

The Filles du roi (King’s daughters) were around 800 young ladies who were brought to New France by the king to help with the population. They succeeded as the population of New France doubled in a decade. Two-thirds of French Canadians are related to one of these daughters as well many Americans including Hillary Clinton, Madonna and Angelina Jolie. This session will be share their history along with other smaller groups that the French Sun King, Louis XIV and Jean Talon brought to New France. Along with their history and their children’s history, we will share why are they so special and what they all did to survive, and the problems and hardships they endured. Also, how this endogenous DNA affects your results. The session will touch on the DNA results based on this endogenous beginning that affects your DNA, share where the records are available, and projects that are available online to help you find out if you are a descendant of these wonderful daughters of the king.

Most Canadians have connections to the three Prairie provinces, through cousins if not through ancestors. Researching those Prairie families can be rewarding, although it is important to note which sources are common to all three provinces, and which ones are unique to each province. Using examples from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, this session looks at a variety of resources, and offers tips to help you learn more about your families on the Prairies.

The Canadian west was not won by cowboys and guns. The west was won by homesteaders, NWMP (RCMP), and railways. For a $10 registration fee and a lot of hard work a male farmer could have 160 acres of land. Farmers or want-to-be-farmers came from all over. We will use a couple of case studies, search for homestead records, review all the components to understand what the records indicate, convert the data to enter and locate it on Google Maps, and view what the area looks like today. Other records such as Hudson’s Bay Company and RCMP records will be shown.

The Archives of Ontario (AO) is the foremost repository for Ontario records. It houses all non-active provincial-level government records, many municipal-level government records, and reams of corporate, organizational and private papers. If you haven’t spent many hours at the AO, you haven’t thoroughly researched your Ontario ancestor. This class will introduce you to the AO’s MVRs (most valuable records), and show you how to use the website of the AO to identify relevant records, research historical background and find maps and images for your family history.

Alberta is unique among the 10 Canadian provinces. It was the last of the three Prairie provinces to be opened to homesteading, which meant land in that province was available just as quality homesteading land dried up in the United States. That brought a rush from south of the border, and the American influence is still felt today. There has been another mass influx of people eager to work in the energy industry. Many of the key sources used in researching your ancestors or cousins in Alberta are also unique, so local knowledge is essential. This session identifies those sources for you, and will help you get results in your searches.

This is a case study based on five years worth of research into the family of Lorenzo White of Pickering, Ontario. Janice will walk the audience step by step through a very difficult research project that ultimately revealed both a fascinating story and important lessons learned. Audience members will learn about a wide range of Ontario records and strategies for overcoming seemingly impossible research roadblocks.

In 1750 nearly 7000 Acadian settlers of Nova Scotia were summarily rounded up, boarded onto ships and sent southward to the American Colonies. The colonies to which they were sent had little or no warning of the refugees imminent arrival. This webinar reviews the unique political and social environments of each receiving colony, the fate of the Acadians once landed, and describes where the researcher can find clues about their ancestor in the records of each colony.

The land now known as British Columbia has been inhabited for many centuries, but most genealogical records started after the 1858 Gold Rush, which prompted many arrivals from California. Today, the province leads the rest of Canada in its commitment to making available a comprehensive collection of valuable resources. This session will enable researchers to make the most of those sources, and build a better understanding of your family’s connections to British Columbia.

Learn how to effectively use the research tools, indexes and catalogs on this large website to find your ancestors and to put them into their correct historical context.