A few days ago, the Archives of Ontario posted a message to genealogists on social media. I suspect they knew their post would generate excitement among those of us with relatives from Canada’s biggest province, and it did.
Here’s what they had to say:
“#Genealogists! Ontario registrations for 1918 births, 1943 marriages and 1953 deaths have now been transferred to us. These records are currently closed for digitization, but you can request copies for legal or humanitarian purposes.”
Woo hoo, we all thought, until the wisest among us started to question the information.
Where are the 1941 and 1942 marriage registrations and the 1951 and 1952 death registrations, some asked, that the provincial archives received more than a year ago?
When will they be made available on the partner websites, such as Ancestry and FamilySearch?
Why weren’t they digitized and released two years ago?
The Archives of Ontario replied the next day to Ken McKinlay’s question about the previous years. They wrote, “While we’re unfortunately not able to provide specific release dates at this point, we can confirm that the Ontario registrations for 1918 births, 1941-1943 marriages and 1951-1953 deaths are actively being digitized and processed for online release.”
One can blame the pandemic for delays, but after a couple of years, that excuse starts to wear thin, especially among impatient family historians. In 2020, Ancestry published the digitized 1938 Ontario marriage records. It wasn’t until two years later, in July 2023, when we could finally look at the province’s 1939 marriages.
It seems odd that the archives is unable to provide an approximate release date, such as “by the end of this year” or “early next year.” If the release date is determined by their partner(s), surely they must have an idea about when it will occur.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, genealogists are used to waiting. So, we’ll just have to move on to another part of our research for now.
In the meantime, let’s sing Carly Simon’s hit song, Anticipation.
