Canadian Ships Passenger Lists 1865-1935 to be Digitized & Indexed

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Ancestry.ca will focus on indexing the Quebec City passenger lists from 1870 - 1900, which comprise more than 750,000 names. The digital images of these and other Canadian ships passenger lists are already available on the LAC website but can only be searched by ship name or date of arrival. There is currently no nominal index

The index for Quebec City will be available free of charge on LAC as well as on Ancestry.ca. LAC and Ancestry.ca will continue to work together to ensure that eventually the entire Canadian passenger list collection from 1865 to 1935, which includes ports in Halifax, St. John, Vancouver, Victoria and North Sydney, is digitized and indexed.

Canada has a rich heritage of immigration and ethnicities such as French, English, Irish, Scottish, Russian, Italian and Chinese. Passenger list records reveal significant information such as the name, age, country of origin, occupation and destination of each passenger, retelling remarkable stories of sacrifice and success that embody Canada's immigrant ancestors. The records also account for other travelers such as crew members, vacationers, business people and more.

In addition to the Canadian passenger list collection, later this year Ancestry.ca and LAC will also make available border crossings records from the United States to Canada that took place between 1908 and 1935, and other Canadian immigration forms later this year.

These additions will add to Ancestry.ca's current online Canadian Border Crossing Collection, which already includes more than 4 million names of individuals who crossed the Canadian-U.S. border between 1895 and 1956.

For more Canadian Passenger List Resources, visit Olive Tree Genealogyand Ships Lists Online