Record Atlas
Canada · 11 volumes · 1760–1948

Ontario

Ontario in Canada, also written Ontario, Canada. 11 record volumes covering 1760–1948, and who holds them.

Last changed 2026-09-27 · first mapped 2026-09-23 Follow what changes.

Comes out as a sheet for the reading room — what to ask for, who holds it, and every link written out in full.

This is a province, not a town — the marker sits at its centre, not at a building. Records filed at this level are usually held for the whole province.

This place

Where to begin

You know your family came from Ontario. Here is the order I would work in, cheapest and easiest first — and what to do when that runs out.

  1. Search both names, not one

    This place has been written down as Ontario, Ontario, Canada. A catalogue indexed under the old name will not answer to the new one, and most people never find out they were searching the wrong word.

    Do this: search each name separately on every site below. Write the list down; you will need it every time.

  2. Start here — Images, free, but you must make an account first

  3. When you run out — and you will

    Everything above is what this atlas knows. It is not everything there is. Nine places in ten on this map have never been surveyed by anybody, so a gap here is usually our silence rather than the record's absence.

    Do this: write to the archive named in the era table for your year, even if we hold nothing for it. Then tell us what you found — a gap somebody has personally closed is the most useful thing a stranger can give this map.

Also written

Ontario, Canada

If the document in your hand says one of these, this is the place it means.

Whose archive this ground was

Not yet mapped. The record regions cover Istria, the Kvarner, Carnia and Dalmatia so far, and Ontario is outside them. That is a gap in this map rather than a gap in the record — and the most useful thing anyone could fill in.

The volumes

Grouped by what it costs to look, most open first — which is the order worth trying them in.

Images, free, account needed — 11

12 volumes catalogued here

The level below «a collection covers this place»: which book, for which years, and the link that opens its images. From FamilySearch's own catalogue. Nobody here has opened any of them. You can, though — mark the pages you have searched on any row below and this browser will remember where you stopped.

Other — 12

National sources for Canada, unverified

From Wikidata, CC0 — the national archive and the national library where the country has one. Nobody here has opened these. The link answered when it was asked and that is the whole of what this map knows about them. They are listed because a country with no named source at all is the worse answer: 199 of the 237 countries here had nothing but the worldwide services, which cover everywhere and therefore say nothing about anywhere.

The sources for Canada

National and regional sources that cover this ground whether or not anybody has walked it here — which makes them the answer, not the consolation, for a place with no volumes recorded on it.

  • BAnQ numérique — Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Images, free, no account Montréal, Canada
    Quebec's civil-registration registers — the parish registers that WERE the civil registration, kept in duplicate from 1621 and among the most complete continuous records anywhere in the Americas. Free.
  • Library and Archives Canada Images, free, no account Ottawa, Canada
    Canadian censuses, immigration and military service records, free.
  • Généalogie Québec / the Drouin Collection Images, behind a paywall Québec, Canada
    The Drouin microfilms indexed — Quebec and francophone North America, including the Acadian and New England parishes the deportations and the mill towns scattered people into.

Sources that cover everywhere

Not about Canada in particular — these reach most of the world, which includes here. They are listed after the local sources because a body that holds this ground's own paper is a better first stop than one that holds a little of everywhere's. Worth knowing they exist all the same.

  • Internet Archive Images, free, no account
    Full-text search across millions of digitised books, including parish histories, nobiliaries and local monographs that name ordinary people.
  • Arolsen Archives Images, free, no account
    The former International Tracing Service. Concentration camp, forced labour and displaced-persons records for some seventeen and a half million people, free and fully indexed.
  • BillionGraves Images, free, no account
    GPS-tagged headstone photographs. Smaller than Find a Grave but its coordinates are per-stone, which Find a Grave's often are not.
  • Find a Grave Images, free, no account
    Volunteer-photographed headstones and cemetery indexes, worldwide, with very uneven coverage. Owned by Ancestry but free to read.
  • WikiTree Images, free, no account
    A free, single shared tree with an unusually strong sourcing culture. Not a record source.
  • Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names Images, free, no account
    Names and testimony pages for victims of the Shoah, free.
  • FamilySearch Images, free, account needed
    The largest free collection of record images and indexes in the world. A free account is required, and a minority of images are restricted to Family History Centres and affiliate libraries.
  • Geni Images, free, account needed
    One shared world tree. Useful for finding other researchers on the same line; not a record source, and its assertions are only as good as their citations.
  • JewishGen Images, free, account needed
    The central Jewish genealogy resource — town-level KehilaLinks, burial and Holocaust databases, and revision lists for eastern Europe.
  • Geneanet Partly free, partly paid
    Member-contributed trees and transcriptions, strongest in France. Much is free; a Premium tier gates some search and images.
  • Ancestry Images, behind a paywall
    The largest commercial collection. Strong on the English-speaking world, censuses and immigration; weak on continental parish registers.
  • MyHeritage Images, behind a paywall
    Commercial, with a large tree network and good European newspaper and directory coverage. Search is free; opening a record is not.

FamilySearch collections that reach here

A collection is a claim over an area, not a book standing in this town — so these are ranked by how specifically they reach Ontario. A free account is needed to open the images, and some are restricted to a Family History Centre.

Named for this place — 17

Catalogued under this place by name — the closest thing to a direct hit.

Elsewhere in the same country — 43

Narrower than the country but catalogued under some other district. Listed because a collection's title is not always where its records end, and never because it covers this ground.

…and 18 more.

See Ontario on the map →

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