2019: A year of Canadian genealogy in review

While 2019 was not a stellar year for genealogists researching their ancestors in Canada, there were a number of announcements and releases of online collections that made hearts skip a beat.

By far the most anticipated event in Canadian genealogy this year was the public release of the 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces, and it didn’t disappoint.

The second most-anticipated event happened on January 1 when the Canadian Research Knowledge Network made the Canadiana website entirely free. Now if only the entire site was keyword searchable, family historians would be in heaven.

The annual online release of civil birth, marriage and death records in British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island was also welcome news for many. Genealogists with ancestors who lived elsewhere in Canada, however, continue to wonder why the other provinces and territories don’t release any of their vital statistics online.

2019 highlights
Here’s a run-down of Canadian genealogy news throughout 2019, followed by a list of the most popular Genealogy à la carte blog posts. Both lists serve as a reminder of resources worth exploring.

January
Canadiana‘s 60 million pages became available for free to the public.

The Archives de Montréal moved out of city hall in Old Montreal to a temporary location for three years.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick added births from 1923 to its website.

The Quebec Official Gazette marked its 150th anniversary. First published on January 16, 1869, it is the official newspaper of the provincial government where people can find legal notices, such as laws, regulations, insolvencies/bankruptcies, property auctions, marriage separations, and decrees. I explained how to search for ancestors’ names in this resource that is available in French and English.

BuzzFeed reported FamilyTreeDNA was working with the FBI, causing an uproar in the international genetic genealogy community. In March, FamilyTreeDNA issued a new privacy statement and said it now “requires all law enforcement authorities to register accounts under a special process” and that people whose DNA results were on the site could opt out of law-enforcement matching.

February
Library and Archives Canada and FamilySearch released a browsable version of the 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces. By March, it was searchable by keyword on the websites of both organizations.

Ancestry added almost 180,000 Ontario marriage registrations for 1937 and about 147,000 new death records from 1939-1942 and 1947. It appears no new birth records were added in 2019.

The University of Toronto received a $4-million donation to create a Chinese-Canadian archive.

The Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan and Société historique de la Saskatchewan signed a long-term agreement for the development of French-language archival services.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick added digitized images of marriage records from 1967 to its website.

The Ontario Genealogical Society, Library and Archives Canada, and FamilySearch announced plans to digitize more than 120 years of Ontario directories.

FamilySearch (re-)launched and re-designed its digital library of the largest genealogy book collection.

The Manitoba Genealogical Society announced the four keynote speakers for its first provincial conference to be held in 2020, coinciding with the province’s 150th anniversary. Later, in the fall, the society cancelled the conference.

The Ontario Genealogical Society re-branded itself with a new name, Ontario Ancestors, and logo, in part to attract new members from the United States.

March
Hudson’s Bay Company Archives announced its plans to digitize pre-1870 trading post records for Manitoba’s 150 anniversary.

The Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan began its move to a new location in Regina to consolidate holdings from five locations in Regina and Saskatoon. The provincial archives expects to open the new location in 2020, but no specific date or month has been announced.

The Société de recherche historique Archiv-Histo launched a free database of almost 15,000 marriages of early settlers in Quebec, from 1617 to 1825, with plans to update it yearly. At the time of the launch, the database included Catholic marriages from the beginning of New France in 1617 to 1825 and Protestant marriages between 1760 and 1800.

April
The Timmins Public Library in Ontario digitized the Porcupine Advance newspaper from 1912 to 1950.

A federal judge ordered obituary piracy website, Afterlife, to pay $20 million to grieving families after it published more than a million obits and photos online without permission. The intent of the site was to invite visitors to buy flowers. The website’s owner continues to operate a similar website, Everhere, where he takes basic info from obits and rewrites them, which still distresses family members.

May
The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec announced it now allows the free and unrestricted use of more than 100,000 public-domain historical documents and images that have been digitized and made available on its website. By November, the number of items had reached 200,000.

The FamilySearch website reached its 20th anniversary. When first launched, traffic was so high, they had to limit user access to 30 minutes at a time.

June
The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick added more than 22,000 newspaper articles to its Great War Project.

BC Archives added about 9,400 registrations of marriages from 1943 and more than 28,000 death registrations from 1998.

The University of Victoria and the Times Colonist in British Columbia digitized 122 years of the British Colonist newspaper, from 1858 to 1980. The newspaper can be searched online by keyword and browsed by date.

July
The Drouin Institute added the 1741 Montreal census of more than 500 people to PRDH (Programme de recherche en démographie historique / Research Programme in Historical Demography).

MyHeritage added more than 27 million Quebec Marriage Returns, from 1926 to 1997, that contain the names of the bride and groom, their birth dates, date and place of the marriage, religion, and often a number of other useful facts, such as the address before and after marriage, occupation, and fathers’ place of birth.

Dalhousie University in Halifax launched the website, Africville Story Map, that uses text, maps, video, audio, and links to external resources to tell the story of Africville.

The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec began digitizing and posting online a collection of historic Montreal postcards.

The Quebec City municipal archives added more than 70,000 historical records online, including maps, illustrations, architectural drawings, and 30,000 photos.

August
As part of Ancestry’s philanthropic initiative to make culturally important records available to everyone, the genealogy company digitized millions of Holocaust and Nazi persecution-related archives and made them available to the public on a permanent basis.

As promised in 2018, Newspapers.com added more Canadian titles, almost doubling the list from 45 newspapers to 87. There are still no newspapers from Atlantic Canada on the website, and wishful genealogists hope the Toronto Star and Montreal Star will one day be added.

The Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan began digitizing WWII-era newspapers to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

After five years at Library and Archives Canada, Guy Berthiaume stepped down as the Librarian and Archivist of Canada on August 29.

Leslie Weir became the first female Librarian and Archivist of Canada on August 30.

September
The Alberta Genealogical Society’s Edmonton branch launched its free name index of Alberta residents, using sources such as probates, local histories, obituaries, coroner records, and land records.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick added death certificates from 1968, late birth registrations from 1923, and marriage records from 1968 to its website.

The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec announced it will partner with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and contribute to the development of Canadiana website.

The Public Archives and Record Office of Prince Edward Island made available online thousands of death registrations for the years 1965 to 1968.

The Nova Scotia Archives added to its website registrations for births in 1918, marriages in 1943, and deaths in 1968.

Communities in Canada and the United Kingdom commemorated the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first British Home Children to Canada.

October
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation released the names of 2,800 Indigenous children who died in residential schools.

November
The Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island closed to begin its move to a nearby location.

The Government of Nova Scotia launched an online survey about open adoption records.

December
Eleven months after the initial announcement about the project, the number of Ontario Vernon city directories made available on FamilySearch, and digitized by Ontario Ancestors volunteers, reached 519.

The GEDmatch saga continued. The website/database was acquired by Verogen, a forensic firm linked to law enforcement. News about the purchase divided the genealogy community about whether to stay with the site or delete their DNA results.

Top Genealogy à la carte blog posts
It may come as no surprise that the most widely read blog posts on Genealogy à la carte were about online resources.

The number one most popular post was about the much-anticipated 1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces, closely followed by news about the 60 million pages on the Canadiana website being made available entirely for free.

There must be a lot of genealogists who have ancestors who lived in Hastings County, Ontario in the 1800s and early 1900s, because many of you read the blog post about the thousands of photos the Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County posted and continues to post on its Flickr account. In January 2019, there were more 9,000 photos. Now there are more than 12,000 photos.

A number of you read the blog post about the 150th anniversary of the Quebec Official Gazette where I explained and showed how to search it. The response to this post will motivate me in 2020 to write other how-to articles about collections on the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec website.

Another how-to blog post that attracted many readers was about FamilySearch’s re-designed and re-named family history books section, FamilySearch Digital Library.

Rounding out the list of top blog posts was the new free database about the marriages of early settlers in Quebec, launched by the Société de recherche historique Archiv-Histo.

The most frequently visited page on the Genealogy à la carte website, beating out all blog posts, was Facebook for Canadian Genealogy.

It lists more than 1,000 Facebook groups and pages that can help genealogists research their ancestors who lived in Canada. An update will be posted in the new year.

Many thanks to all of you who have read and commented on my blog posts throughout the year and to those who shared posts with their friends, genealogical society, and on social media.

All the best to you in 2020.

May you make many exciting discoveries — and break down a brick wall or two.