Through the Prairies to the Rocky Mountains: Records of Western Canada

This session will show how MyHeritage can help you find your Canadian ancestors through filters while searching through the records. A list of which Canadian records are available will be provided.

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.

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.

This session will start with websites that are for all of Canada and then go from East to West on where to find records and resources in each province and territory.

In the 1980s, my grandmother gave me her parents’ names, their wedding date and the names of her 15 siblings. From that information I researched from the early 1900s in Northwest Ontario back to the first European landowner in Canada. I will explain each step I took along the way…

With the right tools, searching for your French Canadian ancestors in Quebec has never been easier. French Canadians are passionate about their ancestral lineage, consequently a large number of repositories exist, both public and private, to help trace your French Canadian ancestors. Although the well known Drouin Collection is a wonderful source of genealogical data, many more databases exist on French Canadian ancestry. This presentation will focus on lesser known databases and websites to help you find your elusive French Canadian ancestors or to add valuable information to your ancestors’ lives.

The landscape of Canada is extensive, and so are our genealogy resources! In this presentation we'll take a look at accessing some of the most common Canadian genealogy documents available online including census, immigration, military, and vital records. We'll also explore the abundant number of Canadian Jewish specific resources including archives and heritage organizations, newspapers, and digitized books.

Did you know that the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives is the largest private archives in the world? Let me show you one very special resource this archive has made available online: the Biographical Information Sheet. These goldmines provide a window into the HBCA’s records pertaining to 1000s of historical employees.

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.