With little to no fanfare, Nova Scotia Archives last month added provincial marriage records for 1949 and death records for 1975 to its online births, marriages and deaths collection.
We could possibly see birth records for 1924 in the next month or two. Last year, the births for 1923 were added at the beginning of July.
Good things continue to happen for Newspapers.com subscribers who are researching their relatives who lived in Ontario.
Yesterday, five more newspapers from Canada’s most populated province were added to the online database.
The North Star, Parry Sound, 1879-1996
New Hamburg Independent, New Hamburg, 2012-2023
The Banner, Aurora, 2012-2013
The Era, Newmarket edition, 2012-2023
The Era, East Gwillimbury edition, 2012-2023
There are now 654 Canadian newspapers on the site. Anyone can look at which papers are available by country, but only subscribers can search within each publication.
Both Ancestry.ca and MyHeritage have put their DNA kits on sale for Father’s Day, although I doubt they can be mailed to arrive by Friday. If interested as giving a kit as a gift this Sunday, you may want to consider including an IOU note in your card.
Ancestry’s DNA kit is on sale for CDN$79, down from $129, and for an extra dollar you can add a three-month World Deluxe membership. These offers end June 15.
The sale price for MyHeritage’s DNA kit is CDN$53, down from $139. The discounted price ends soon.
Shipping is extra for both companies’ kits.
The Kelowna & District Genealogical Society (KDGS) in British Columbia has now made the Central Okanagan Obituaries database available for anyone to search online, thanks to a City of Kelowna Cultural Grant.
You can now search and download obituaries from the 24,000-plus collection of people who passed away in the Central Okanagan (Peachland to Oyama including Kelowna, West Kelowna and Lake Country, BC). Some of the obituaries date back to 1913.
Anyone can search and download
If you find an obituary you would like to view, simply proceed to the shopping cart.
KDGS members can download the obituaries for free.
Non-members can purchase downloads for $10 plus a handling fee. (If you plan to download several obituaries, you may want to consider joining the society for $50.)
Only downloads of those with images of the obituary are allowed. So, if you encounter one without an image, a pop-up form will allow you to request the society find and upload the image. They will let you know when the image is available for downloading.
This project began in 2010. The grant allowed KDGS to purchase equipment and supplies to assist the Obituary Committee in processing items for the database, from collecting, preparing and indexing, scanning/uploading and proofreading to the filing of the originals.
The initial KDGS database was created by Geoff Dawson, a member of KDGS, and volunteers made tens of thousands of entries over the years. In 2023, a redesign of the database on a more robust program was started with Programmer/Developer Javier Gongora of Vyoniq Technologies, who worked in collaboration with Xenia Stanford, KDGS Obituary Committee Chair and the Project Manager, Central Okanagan Obituary Project, to complete the database and offer the public search.
The Ontario Genealogical Society will host three virtual presentations this week, including one that is hybrid. As usual, all are free and open to the public.
The following times are in Eastern time.
Tuesday, June 10, 1:00 p.m. — Irish Special Interest Group
Irish Records from the Penal Period 1692-1829 by Fintan Mullan
Fintan Mullan has been Executive Director of Ulster Historical Foundation since 2001. Register to watch online.
Wednesday, June 11, 7:00 p.m. — York Region Branch
The Toronto Book of the Dead and the City’s Morbid Past by Adam Bunch
With grisly tales of war and plague, duels and executions, you can learn a lot about Toronto through stories whose endings were anything but peaceful. Register to watch online.
Saturday, June 14, 10:30 a.m. – Simcoe County Branch
The British Home Children: Canada’s Forgotten Legacy by Lori Oschefski
Discover the challenges these child migrants faced, the hardships of indentured service, and the resilience that led to their success. Learn about key resources for research and explore the vast contribution Home Children made to Canada’s development and war efforts. Through compelling stories and historical insights, this presentation sheds light on an overlooked chapter of Canadian history and honours the legacy of over 100,000 British Home Children who helped shape the nation.
This is a hybrid meeting. Attend in person at the Penetanguishene Centennial Museum and Archives, 13 Burke Street, Penetanguishene, or register to watch online.
Some of the bijoux I discovered this week.
Blog posts
Western Canada Online Genealogy Chats June 2025 by Penny Allen on UK to Canada Genealogy.
Understanding Day School Records at Library and Archives Canada by Marc St. Denis on Library and Archives Canada Blog.
Canadiana Updates and Sunday Sundries: Talks from the Irish Genealogical Research Society by John Reid on Anglo-Celtic Connections.
Digitisation of Church of Ireland records by Claire Bradley on Claire Bradley.
Update coming to the free newspapers on Chronicling America by Paula Stuart-Warren on Genealogy by Paula.
Free California digital newspaper archive by Janine Adams on Organize Your Family History.
FamilySearch Catalog marks Full-Text search collections and Major update to FamilySearch England Jurisdictions 1851 Map by James Tanner on Genealogy’s Star.
When the Index Is Wrong – A Search Tip by Nancy on My Ancestors and Me.
Building a FAN club from a will . . . by Teresa Basińska Eckford on Writing my past.
Don’t Forget Your Records! Archival Records in Your Emergency Planning on South Peace Regional Archives.
My First Dive into Exploring the New FamilySearch Community Page and Book Review of “Storytelling for Genealogists: Turning Family Lineage into Family History” by Doug Tattershall by Jon Marie Pearson on The Simple Living Genealogist.
For Genealogists: Cemetery Photo Tips by Gena Philibert-Ortega on GenealogyBank Blog.
Forgotten Ancestors: Remembering James Hallsey by Paul Chiddicks on The Chiddicks Family Tree.
Increase Your Ancestor’s DNA Coverage and Expand Your Opportunity for Discovery by Rick T. Wilson, PhD on MyFamilyPattern.
The Truth About DNA and Famous Connections by Paul Woodbury on Legacy Tree Genealogists.
The End of an Era: Uploads at MyHeritage by Dr. Leah Larkin on The DNA Geek.
Articles
Searching Records on FamilySearch: Your Complete Guide by Rick Crume, Family Tree Magazine, Dublin, New Hampshire.
How to Interview Your Family Members Like an Oral Historian by Nisa Khan, KQED, San Francisco, California.
UK Government launches newly digitised historic editions of world’s oldest English language daily newspaper, Northern Ireland.
23andMe back on the auction block after former CEO makes 11th-hour bid by Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian, London, England.
For more gems like these throughout the week, join the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group. When you submit your request to join, you will be asked to answer two quick questions about your family history research.
After publishing more than a couple of dozen Ontario newspapers during the past several weeks, Newspapers.com has looked to Canada’s west coast for its latest addition.
This week, issues of the Vancouver Morning Sun, from May 1924 to January 1926, have joined the popular online collection of newspapers.
In honour of both Danish Constitution Day and Swedish National Day, MyHeritage is opening up every Danish and Swedish historical record — over 350 million in total — for free, from June 5 to 8.
The Danish records include 31 collections that include church books, censuses, and newspapers from 1787.
The Swedish collections span from the 1600s onward, featuring household examination rolls, birth and death records, and military lists. Last month, MyHeritage added a collection of Swedish passenger lists documenting the names, birthplaces, residences, and destinations of Swedes who left the country between 1869 and 1951.
This year, archives, museums and documentary heritage institutions will share $1.425 million to carry out 37 projects selected under Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
The projects were selected for the impact they will have on documentary heritage preservation and access.
Librarian and Archivist of Canada Leslie Weir said in a news release, “My heartfelt congratulations to all the recipients. Your dedication to documenting and preserving your community’s history is truly commendable. It brings me much joy to see how LAC is able to support amazing projects like yours through yearly funding. Now, more than ever, it’s essential for LAC and communities across Canada to stay committed to making our shared stories accessible to everyone.”
While there are no genealogical societies among the recipients, there are a few projects that could help with family history research. These projects include oral histories, scrapbooks, school records, photographic archives, migration database, and a county newspaper digitization project.
The list of documentary heritage organizations that received funding for the 2025-2026 cycle of the Documentary Heritage Communities Program is available on LAC’s website.
MyHeritage has just released a collection of 731 million records extracted from historical French newspapers, thanks to their in-house AI technology.
Called France, Names & Stories in Newspapers collection, this is MyHeritage’s first “Names & Stories” collection in a language other than English. The source of these newspapers appears to be is France’s national library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The records delve beyond names and dates. They capture relationships, occupations, addresses, and more, all linked to original newspaper pages.
The full announcement can be found on the MyHeritage Blog.
Additional languages will be added soon.
In 2024, MyHeritage developed specialized AI technology to extract structured records from newspaper pages published on OldNews.com. MyHeritage started publishing these collections, initially for English newspapers only, in December 2024, and they included newspapers from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
If you have a family tree on MyHeritage, you will soon begin receiving automatic Record Matches to articles in this collection that mention people in your tree. This will help you discover articles about your relatives without needing to search manually.
