Two of Quebec’s largest genealogy societies, the Société généalogique canadienne-française (SGCF) in Montreal and the Société de généalogie de Québec in Quebec City have collaborated to produce an online index of articles published in 521 Canadian, American, and European genealogy, historical, and heraldry periodicals that are available in their libraries.
The research tool allows you to search more than 20,000 articles indexed by title (titre), author (auteur), periodical (périodique), and subject – key words (sujet – mots clés). You can narrow down your search by time period and category: all (tous) family, genealogy, history, and heraldry.
The research tool is available here. Don’t be daunted by the French text. You will easily figure it out.
To start, try entering one of your family names in the subject (sujet) line. For example, entering Gingras produces 16 results. Reading the columns left to right, each result provides the title of the article, author, name of the periodical, subject classification, year, volume, number, page, and which of the two societies holds a copy.
No need to limit your research to French-Canadian names. There are plenty of Browns, Frasers, Macdonalds, Smiths, Smithers, and Youngs who appear in genealogy periodicals.
Try looking for placenames. I entered Hampshire for New Hampshire and found six articles, including one called The Continuing Story: The French-Canadian Textile Worker 1938-1939 that appeared in a 2005 issue of Késsinnimek – Roots – Racines, a Canadian Aboriginal publication. You may possibly find the article online by Googling as I did in the case of this article.
When looking for an article about Scottish or Irish immigration, you need to keep in mind that you must use the French words, Ecossais and Irlandais. (Immigration is the same in both languages.) Google Translate can help you find find the French translation.
Learning the name of the publication in which the article appears may also help you find it locally.
So, give this index a try. You may be surprised at what you will discover.
It would be better if the records were digitized and on-line, but that may be wishing for too much. At least I can find more resources of information. Thanks.