This post is also available in: Français
In Quebec, the practice of sharing the passing of an individual on a public platform started with the publication of obituaries in newspapers. In the 1960s, obituaries were not only shared in paper media but also on the radio.
Today, Quebec obituaries are still shared in the papers but are more easily accessed on the internet.
Finding Quebec obituaries on the internet
Numerous websites exist for the purpose of aggregating and sharing obituaries. These websites are indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing, which makes it extremely easy to find an obituary on the internet.
In most cases, a simple search for the deceased name in your favorite search engine will bring you to their obituary. It may be necessary to add “obituary” or “death notice” to the research for more common names. If the obituary is present on one or many of these aggregating websites, you will usually find it within the first few results of your research.
It is possible for an obituary to be available on a website without having been indexed by the search engines. If the notice you are looking for belongs to a recently deceased person, it may be a good idea to search for it on the aggregating websites directly, as search engines may take a few days to index it.
Note that these websites are usually limited to obituaries that have been published within the last few years. For obituaries from before 2000, you will have to look into specialized genealogy websites such as Genealogy Quebec.
Quebec obituaries collections on Genealogy Quebec
Obituary section – Tombstones, obituaries, death cards (subscription required)
GenealogyQuebec.com, a subscription based genealogical research website, offers a section dedicated to documents and pictures pertaining to the deceased.
It contains 1,350,000 newspaper obituaries published in Quebec and Ontario between 1860 and today, 739,000 headstones from cemeteries in Quebec and Ontario, as well as 100,800 memorial cards. You will find more information about this section here.
Online obituaries
GenealogyQuebec.com also offers its subscribers a section containing more than 2,900,000 obituaries from everywhere in Canada. These obituaries are dated from 1999 to today.
This section is equipped with a search engine as well as navigation categories. The search engine allows for a first name, last name and date search as well as a search for words contained in the notice.
The obituaries are sorted by province, city and publication to provide a more fluid navigation experience. You can browse this section at this address. (Genealogy Quebec subscription required)
