Genealogy Chat

Has anyone any experience of obtaining Canadian bmd certificates? My GG Grandfather was English but married a Canadian girl in Quebec in 1867. They had a child in Montreal in 1868 and another in Halifax Nova Scotia in 1869. I thought I'd write to the relevant districts in Canada but wondered if anyone on GR had any help to offer.

Some Canadian provinces have BMD's online but, just your luck, Quebec and Nova Scotia don't!

Hello Frances
Try
http://tinyurl.com/d6fug4
Hopefully the tinyurl link should work
Paul

Nova Scotia do have some BMDs online. Think they've only recently been put up, as I couldn't get them last year but I've had a wonderful time finding all sorts of information in the past month. What's even better is that you can preview the certs for free to make sure they're the ones you want before ordering! Try this link:

https://www.novascotiagenealogy.com/

I have to say I've been VERY impressed with what I've found - hope it proves useful for you too.

Thanks for those links. I'm going to take a look now.

For this sort of date (pre-1900) in Quebec, it's worth accessing the Drouin collection. From
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp
select Search records - Record search pilot

You can also check out the 1881 census - transcritions only at:
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

The 1891 census (with images) at:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1891/index-e.html

The 1901/1911 (with images - also the prairie 1906, but that's prob irrelevant to you) at:
http://automatedgenealogy.com/census/

Poppybat, thank you so much for that link to Nova Scotia Vital Statistics. I didn't know about that one. Being in Canada, I consider myself one of the experts in Canadian research. Guess I'm not as expert as I thought I was!

mgnv - thanks for the census links. Unfortunately the family had returned to the UK by 1872.
Margaret - you say you are in Canada, how would I go about tracking down the certs if I only have the year of the event and the province to go on, ie I have no reference numbers. If I wrote to the relevant district offices do you think they would they be able to help ?

Margaret, sorry I should have also said that I have names of the wife and children too (just in case you were wondering!).

Sorry, Frances, once again I'm not much help,
I think registration of births didn't start until 1869 in Ontario, where I live, and even then it wasn't compulsary.
I don't know about Quebec. It seems very difficult to access any records there.
Did you try the site for Nova Scotia that Poppybat posted? Evidently you can order certificates there.

Yes, Margaret, I did but with no luck. I also tried the other links suggested but haven't come up with anything yet. Not to worry, I'll keep trying. Thanks everyone for your help.

Starting at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/index-e.html
we can drill down to Quebec civil registration of vital events and read:

In Quebec, the civil registers of births (baptisms), marriages and deaths (burials), which date from 1621, were duplicate copies of the church registers. All of the pre-1900 records can be consulted at each of the nine regional offices of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Those registers were microfilmed by the Family History LibraryTM and are available through that institution.

Records dating from 1900 are in the custody of the under-noted office:

Ministère de la Justice
Directeur de l'état civil [www.etatcivil.gouv.qc.ca/en/default.html]
2535, boulevard Laurier
Sainte-Foy, QC
G1V 5C5

A general index for marriages and deaths that occurred in the province of Quebec between 1926 and 1994 was prepared by the Société de généalogie de Québec. It is available on CD-ROM and can be consulted in many genealogical societies and libraries.



Ancestry also has these records, but I don't have the right subscription, so can only access the LDS online collection thru 1900.
Here's what Ancestry says:

About Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967
Until the late 1900s, church registers in Quebec served as civil and vital records in that province. Throughout the years a second copy of church records, from all denominations, was sent annually to the appropriate courthouse. During the 1940s the vital record collections in courthouses throughout Quebec were filmed by the Institut Généalogique Drouin.* The filming of vital records continued for some areas up through the 1960s. Consequently, this filmed set of records became known as the Drouin Collection. The majority of the records in this database cover the time period 1621-1947, as most of the filming was done in the 1940s.

mgnv, thank you so much for all that information.