North America’s third-largest cemetery and Canada’s largest, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal, launched a new search app that makes it easy to locate burial sites and learn about the deceased.
Almost one million people are buried in this cemetery on top of Mount Royal. Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery was historically a Catholic cemetery built next to Mount Royal Cemetery, which was originally Protestant.
Launched at the end of January, the search app — in English and French — is located in the Genealogy section of the cemetery’s website.
In addition to finding where a person is buried, genealogists can open and save a PDF document to learn who else is buried in the same plot. In the case of an aunt, I discovered about 40 members of her husband’s extended family buried in one location.
Features in English and French
Start your search by selecting the language of choice. Click on the French or British flag. If searching in English, click on the British flag which will reveal a pop-up window. Then, click on Disponible en anglais (Available in English).
When you enter a last name in the search box, a drop-down menu appears with a list of names to select.
Click on a name in the drop-down menu to produce a pop-up that displays information about the deceased. Right now, the labels are in French, and this may remain that way. (See below.)
Défunt: Name of deceased
Concession: Plot number
Décès: Date of death
Naissance: Date of birth
Réception: Date of burial
Conjoint: Name of spouse (Note the absence of a name does not indicate there was no spouse.)
Liste défunts: List of deceased people
How to find the details
The genealogy goldmine is in the PDF under Attachments in the pop-up window. Click on it to see a list of deceased buried in the same plot, and in some cases, you will see the family relationships. At the very least, the PDF gives you a list of people to research and explore.
In the sample PDF below, Bridget Melody’s date of death is listed as 1100-01-01. But don’t give up. A separate search of Bridget Melody, however, provides the exact date in the pop-up window. In the case of the other two women, the pop-up window displays burial date only.
In response to my inquiry about the unusual 1100-01-01 dates, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery said, “Our cemetery goes back a long way to 1854. The first burial took place in 1855. So, our records, although very complete, miss some information.
“When we modernized our systems at the turn of the century, we had to ‘fill in the blanks’ with a generic date, and we chose 1100-01-01. We do our best to update the information whenever we can, but we realize that we will never be able to recuperate some missing information.”
Maurice Richard
One of the most complete records is that of hockey great, Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, who died in 2000.
Let’s hope neighbouring Mount Royal Cemetery will soon adopt a similar search engine for its website.
Good morning Gail, I was at RootsTech last week so naturally I made my way to the library on Monday and Tuesday before registration. While in there I was searching for Italian Ancestors. I had one rather elusive relative of my husbands grandmothers family I could not find a death record on. My husbands grandfather and this fellow had come to Canada several times before my husbands grandfather came back with a wife and child and stayed. All the rest of the family stayed in Italy, or so I thought. I had found records for all of them including death records but no death records for Domenico in Italy. This trip I found that he was married and I had a name. Whoo hoo. Progress, so I thought. Still no death record added to his file. In Italy they have a birth record, then write in the marriage date and name and then they add the death date. Still no death date for him. Because he had come back and forth so many times I wondered if he had come back again after he had married. I decided to run his name on Ancestry and see if anything turned up. Amazingly up comes a death record for him buried in Montreal, Quebec at none other than Nortre- Dame Cemetery. His good buddy my husbands grandfather and grandmother are also buried there. Imagine my surprise when I found that record. I imediately went to the site you just talked about before this article and found his entire family, including his parents and several others of the same last name. It was like finding gold. The family never spoke of this time as his grandfather died several months before my husband was born. My husbands family that was left were very silent about the family left in Italy.
I have been to this cemetery and will be making another visit this summer to visit the new found graves. I have been on Norte-Dame cite before but never saw this information you can now access. This was a great article you wrote on this, just a week to late for me. Anyone searching for deceased people in Montreal, look here as this cemetery is huge. As Gail mentioned its sister cemetery is right next store for non Catholic’s. We have relatives there as well.
Thanks Gail.
Hi Gail, Great article on Notre-Dame des Neiges – BUT I finally checked it out – my family has a lot and roughly a decade ago I went to visit and the people in the office kindly gave me a print out of the lot from their computer system. In comparison to what is provided in the online system it does not agree – there are 12 ancestors in the lot with only 2 showing burial dates. Which is unusual as their dates were all provided on the original extract from the office. Also back when I visited I gave the office corrections on other data so they could update their files but nothing seems to be corrected on the online file. So I do not know the source for the online.
The source is the cemetery, and I have corresponded a couple of times with them about it. It is, however, something they are still working on. I agree that it is odd all the dates do not appear on the online PDF. I did find most of my dates by entering the individual’s name and looking at the pop-up box of info.