Canada Archives - OnGenealogy

Family History Month – Héritage for Canadian Genealogy

If you're doing Canadian family history research, Héritage is a great digital resource.

Héritage is a free database at Canadiana and contains some of Canada’s primary source documents. Héritage searches the archival material of Library and Archives Canada, “Chronicling the country and its people from the 1600s to the mid-1900s, this collection represents a vast and unique resource for Canadian historians, students, and genealogists.” The free service will search the database for you and return the collections where your ancestor's name is recorded. Then you will need to go page by page, looking for your ancestor's name. In the image below I searched for an ancestor, Jehiel Cass, and Héritage found nine results. With the free service, I would then need to go through each collection, image by image, looking for Jehiel Cass (not knowing if he appears more than once in that collection).

The subscription service will search the database for you, return t…

Canadiana Discovery Portal for Genealogy

Candiana.ca has a free search engine for its digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives throughout Canada. Unlike Héritage which searches specific collections held at Library and Archives Canada, the Canadiana Discovery Portal searches over 40 partnering institutions with over 65 million pages. The Portal provides a wealth of free Canadian history online, including: books, journals, directories, newspapers, government documents, photographs, maps, and postcards. Canadiana Discovery Portal is a great resource for genealogists and family historians looking for primary source material and images related to Canadian history and many of the images are in the public domain and can be used freely. There will be a paywall for some of the search returns and after viewing the initial few pages of a document you may need to subscribe to Early Canadiana Online to have full access to the document, including the ability to download copies in PDF format. Subscrip…

Héritage for free Canadian Genealogy

Update: As of January 1, 2019, all Canadiana content included in Early Canadiana Online, Héritage, and Canadiana Online will be available at no charge to users. Heritage is a free database at Canadiana of some of Canada’s primary source documents. Héritage searches the archival material of Library and Archives Canada, “Chronicling the country and its people from the 1600s to the mid-1900s, this collection represents a vast and unique resource for Canadian historians, students, and genealogists.” Search the entire database or check out their featured collection of Genealogy records. Canadiana used to be partly by subscription with the money going to support their digitization efforts allowing full access to view all images and download PDFs and subscription rates were $10 (Canadian dollars) for one month's access or $100 (Canadian dollars) for one year's access. Happy Hunting! #FamilyHistoryMonth