I have good news and more good news.
First the good news. The Drouin Institute announced it has added more than 20,000 obituaries from the 1940s to the 1980s to its website, GenealogieQuebec.com.
The obituaries are from Quebec newspapers, mostly from La Presse, Le Devoir, and other Montreal region newspapers.
There are now almost 600,000 obituaries in this collection that is available to subscribers only. But don’t despair. Subscriptions to the bilingual website are not expensive: one day is $5 and one month is $13. A yearly subscription is $100. (I have friends who spend more than $5 for a coffee. My close friends spend more than $13 on wine for lunch or dinner.)
The Drouin Institute is currently scanning many more obituaries that it plans to add online in the new few months.
More good news
The other good news is that since July the Drouin Institute has added more than 150,000 obituaries to its free obituaries database. Now you have free access to more than 1.7 million obituaries published in newspapers across Canada from 1999 to present.
New design
Take note in the free-access database of the new design that makes it easier to find the obituaries most relevant to your research after you enter a name in the search box.
Search by maiden name
I did notice, however, what I thought was a quirk in the search function when looking for women in my family using their married name. I couldn’t find them. To work around this, I entered their maiden name in the last name field, and their obituaries appeared in the results.
Then the good folks at the Drouin Institute explained how to search using a woman’s married name.
Use the advanced search
To search for a woman by her married name, use the Advanced search. Enter her married name in the Text box. You can also use the Text box to search for other family names or any other words that may have appeared in the obituary.
In the advanced search feature in the free-access Canadian obituaries on GenealogieQuebec.com, enter women’s married names, other family names, or key words to help find obituaries.
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