"O, Canada ..."

Manitoba Welcome Center

July 1 is Canada Day.  Because my grandparents lived in Canada, I grew up knowing about this holiday, hearing early on that it was much like the Fourth of July here in the USA.   At one point, Grandma Myren tried to teach me the words to "O, Canada", the national anthem.  Just check out the Canada Day at Canada Place web site for some of the activities planned to celebrate this holiday.  For me, today is an appropriate time to look at some of the online resources I have used to learn more about the Myren family and their life in Canada.

The first Canadian resource I turned to was the Library and Archives of Canada.  Its genealogy and family history section has links to census, land, immigration, and those other records we research to learn more about our family's history.  Through their digitized records, I've learned where Grandpa and Grandma Myren lived during the 1911 and 1916 censuses as well as information about my grandfather becoming a Canadian citizen.  I also stumbled upon the arrival date at the Port of Quebec for my Great Grandfather Peter Myren, after he left Norway and was heading to Wisconsin .  It is easy to see why I've listed this resource first as well as referring to it in two of my previous blog posts, Maybe There's Another Way and Coming to "Amerika".

For information about specific Canadian provinces, I've use Dave Obee's detailed list of links to provincial resources on CanGenealogy's web site.  Some of the links refer back to the Library and Archives of Canada web site, others to Ancestry.ca (paid subscription needed), when others are to various government agencies.  It is helpful to have links to all the provinces in one place.

One of my favorite web sites for browsing is Peel's Prairie Provinces, a project of the University of Alberta.  They have a great vintage postcard and photo collection online.  I love looking at the pictures of places I remember visiting in Manitoba as a child as well as comparing postcard images with things I saw on a trip to Manitoba several years ago.  Another great resource here is their digitized books and newspapers from the prairie provinces, some of which are in French.

The Manitoba Historical Society provides a number of helpful links on their web site.  Lately, I've been skimming through their collection of Manitoba History journals to learn more about the areas where my grandparents lived.

Maybe today will be the day the 1921 Canada census is released to the public as Lynn Palermo suggested in her recent blog.  If so, I'll have another resource to use for learning more about my family and their years in Canada.