Généalogie et histoire du Québec

Thanks to the efforts of the religious authorities and eventually the government, Quebec birth records have been documented for more than 400 years. Nowadays, most of these records can be consulted online easily. In this article, you will find a list of the best sources of Quebec birth records and baptisms available on the internet.

The LAFRANCE on Genealogy Quebec (Quebec birth records from 1621 to today)

The LAFRANCE is a database equipped with a search engine containing Ontario, Acadia and Quebec birth, marriage and death records. In addition to millions of marriage and burial records, the LAFRANCE contains ALL Catholic baptisms recorded in the province from the beginnings of the colony to 1861, as well as tens of thousands of birth records dating from 1862 to the present day.

Browse the LAFRANCE on Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Connolly File and NBMDS tool on Genealogy Quebec (Quebec birth records from 1621 to today)

The Connolly File and the NBMDS tool are databases equipped with a search engine containing Quebec birth, marriage and death records. Notably, it contains nearly 3 million Quebec birth records dating from the beginnings of the colony to the present day.

Browse the Connolly File on Genealogy Quebec ($)

Browse the NBMDS tool on Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Quebec Civil Registration (Quebec baptism records from 1621 to the 1940s)

The civil registration of Quebec available to the public consists of parish registers recorded between 1621 and the 1940s. This is a digitized version of the registers, but it should be noted that the various events are not individually indexed; you will have to browse the registers manually to find a specific event.

Browse Quebec’s civil registration up to the 1920s on the BANQ website (Free)

Browse Quebec’s civil registration up to the 1940s Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Quebec Parish Registres (1621 to 1979)

A second copy of Quebec’s civil registration exists, which was kept within the churches. This copy is available online with a partial index and stops in 1979 for Catholic records, and 1967 for Protestant records.

Browse Quebec’s Catholic Parish Registers on Family Search (Free)

Browse Quebec’s Protestant Parish Registers on Family Search (Free)

PRDH-IGD (Quebec baptisms from 1621 to 1849)

The PRDH-IGD contains all of Quebec’s Catholic baptism, marriage and burial records from 1621 to 1849. These records are presented on the site in the form of a certificate, but are also used to reconstruct the life of an individual or a family via detailed files. This process is called “family reconstruction” and results in an extremely detailed and accurate family tree of the entire French-Canadian population of Quebec up to 1849. This tree can be used to trace an entire lineage in the span of minutes.

Browse the PRDH-IGD ($)

PRDH-IGD subscription: starting at $19,99 CAD

NosOrigines

NosOrigines is a free site containing files pertaining to individuals and families of Quebec and Acadia. These files are based on vital events which mainly come from the parish registers. A link to the original document from which the information was sourced is sometimes included.

Browse NosOrigines (Free)

BMS2000

BMS2000 contains more than 16 million Quebec birth, marriage and death records. The database can be navigated with ease using a search engine. A link to the original source document is often included.

Browse BMS2000 ($)

BMS2000 subscription: starting at $20 CAD

Fichier Origine

The Fichier Origine is made up of individual files compiled from parish and notarial records. These files pertain to the first immigrants of families who settled on Quebec soil, from the origins of the colony until 1865. These individual files list, among other things, the place and date of birth of these pioneers.

Browse the Fichier Origine

In genealogy, the marriage record is key to tracing one’s ancestors. We are fortunate in Quebec to have access to the majority of marriages recorded in the province from the beginnings of the colony up to today, thanks to the archives kept by the church and the government. In this article, you will find a list of the best free and paid sources of Quebec marriage records available on the internet.

The LAFRANCE on Genealogy Quebec (Quebec marriage records 1621 to today)

The LAFRANCE is a database equipped with a search engine containing birth, death and marriage records from Quebec as well as from Ontario and Acadia. In addition to millions of baptisms and burials, it contains over 5 million religious and civil Quebec marriages, including every single Catholic marriage recorded in the province between 1621 and 1919.

Browse the LAFRANCE on Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Marriages and Deaths 1926-1997 on Genealogy Quebec

The Marriages and Deaths 1926-1997 tool contains most of the marriages and deaths recorded in Quebec by the government during that period.

The tool is equipped with a search engin and the original document can be viewed in many cases.

Browse the Marriages and Deaths 1926-1997 collection on Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Quebec Civil Registration (1621 to the 1940s)

The civil registration of Quebec is a collection comprising almost all the parish registers recorded in Quebec between 1621 and the 1940s. This collection includes a digitized version of every register, but the individual records they contain are not indexed; you will have to go through the register manually, year by year, to find the record you are looking for.

Browse Quebec’s civil registration up to the 1920s on the BANQ website (Free)

Browse Quebec’s civil registration up to the 1940s Genealogy Quebec ($)

Genealogy Quebec subscription: starting at $7 CAD

Quebec Parish Registres (1621 to 1979)

A second copy of Quebec’s civil registration exists. This one was kept within the churches themselves. This collection is available with a partial index up to 1979 for Catholic parishes, and 1967 for Protestant parishes.

Browse Quebec’s Catholic Parish Registers on Family Search (Free)

Browse Quebec’s Protestant Parish Registers on Family Search (Free)

PRDH-IGD (Quebec marriage records from 1621 to 1849)

The PRDH-IGD is a directory of ALL vital events recorded by the Catholic church in Quebec from 1621 to 1849, which represents over 2.5 million records.

Every individual mentioned in one of these records gets their own “individual file” in which the information available on the individual is centralized. Links to all records where the individual is mentioned are also included in the file.

In addition, every married couple from the database is assigned a “family file” which fulfills a similar role as the individual file, but in relation to an entire family. It lists all the couple’s children with redirections to their individual files and their vital records. The family file also contains additional information pertaining to the married couple.

To put it more simply, the PRDH-IGD database is a exhaustive family tree of the entire French Canadian population from the early days of the colony to 1849.

Browse the PRDH-IGD ($)

PRDH-IGD subscription: starting at $19,99 CAD

NosOrigines

NosOrigines is a free website with hundreds of thousands of files pertaining to Quebec families. These files usually refer to vital events from Quebec’s parish registers. A link to the original document available on Family Search is sometimes included.

Browse NosOrigines (Free)

BMS2000

BMS2000 is a research website containing over 16 million Quebec marriages, baptisms and burials. A search engine allows for easy browsing of the database. A link to the original document available on Family Search is sometimes included.

Browse BMS2000 ($)

BMS2000 subscription: starting at $20 CAD

Fichier Origine

The Fichier Origine contains individual files based on civil and notarial records relating to the first immigrants of families who settled on Quebec soil from the beginnings of the colony until 1865. These individual files contain information about the marriage of these pioneers, whether it took place in Quebec or in the country of origin.

Browse the Fichier Origine

(This article is a follow-up to Genealogy and care work)

As genealogists, we have access to little windows into the past. Our familial histories, the lives of our ancestors, all fit into the much larger context of the society in which they lived. If we pay enough attention, we can see traces of that in our research. These little pieces of the past can be very instructive, as they can help us better understand certain realities. In this sense, I believe genealogy can serve feminist emancipation : it can shed light on women’s history.

Genealogy can teach us a lot about the living conditions of women at different times. In our genealogical research, we can discover how many children our female ancestors had, at what interval, how many survived, how old they were when they got married and when they gave birth, if they became widows, how many times, at what age, etc. From these facts, we can rebuild their life stories, partially of course, since their lives cannot be summed up entirely to their familial context. However, because the social role of women has often been to take care of their families, these facts can teach us a lot about their daily lives, the major milestones of their lives and the challenges they faced.

We can also certainly see in this information the different ways in which patriarchy influenced women’s lives. Subtle social norms and very concrete laws concerning the injunction to marriage and motherhood or access to contraception and abortion are directly reflected in our family trees and in our family histories. When we connect the life stories of several generations, we can see how these influences changed over the decades, or even centuries.

Genealogy can also help us understand what roles women played in society. The documents we use in a genealogical research often mention the men’s occupations, but it’s a lot more rare for women, who were taking care of the children or helping with the family business in the shadows of their husbands. However, there is an exception : the midwives! Midwives who assisted the birth of a child are sometimes mentioned on baptismal records.

The roles women played in our societies were rarely recognized, let alone valued: and yet, they were crucial. Midwives often were essential local medical resources, especially in smaller or remote villages where access to a doctor was not always guaranteed (Laforce, 1983 :7 ; Bates et al, 2005 :18). House work and child rearing are also essential in any family, and it was often because women took care of it that men were able to devote themselves to more public and supposedly important activities (like politics, art, science, etc).

This devalorization continues to this day : women who choose to be stay-at-home-moms are often seen as ‘’not working’’ (we can think of the notorious play ‘’Môman travaille pas, a trop d’ouvrage’’  (mom doesn’t have a job, she has too much work) (Théâtre des cuisines, 1976)) and jobs typically done by women are significatively underpaid. Canadian Women’s Foundation underlines that ‘’jobs that conform to traditional gender roles tend to be undervalued because they parallel domestic work that women were expected to perform for free’’ (Canadian Women’s Foundation, 2021). By putting these roles forward in our genealogical research, we can participate in their revalorization, so that the contributions of women from the past and the present are more recognized.

This type of genealogical research can also bridge the gap between familial histories, personal to each genealogist, and the much more global history of a society. Genealogy can therefore link the public and private spheres even if they are presented as fundamentally opposed by the patriarchy (Bereni and Revillard, 2009). This opposition is directly linked to women’s oppression : because these spheres are seen as completely different, even incompatible, women’s assignment to the private sphere necessarily excludes them from the public sphere.

Feminists worked towards the deconstruction of this opposition : this idea is notoriously carried in the famous slogan of radical feminists ‘’the personal is political’’. We can therefore consider that particular genealogical practices which link these two spheres and blur the line that divide them participate to this deconstruction and to the feminist emancipation project.

Audrey Pepin

Bibliography

Bates, Christina, Dodd, Diane and Rousseau, Nicole (2005). Sans Frontières : quatre siècles de soins infirmiers canadiens. Ottawa : Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. 248 p.

Bereni, Laure and Revillard Anne. (2009). « La dichotomie “Public-Privé’’ à l’épreuve des critiques féministes: de la théorie à l’action publique ». In Genre et action publique : la frontière public-privé en questions, Muller, P. et Sénac-Slawinski, R (dir.). Paris : L’Harmattan. p. 27-55.

Canadian Women’s Foundation (2021). The Facts about the Gender Pay Gap in Canada  [Online]. https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-gender-pay-gap/ 

Laforce, Hélène (1983). L’évolution du rôle de la sage-femme dans la région de Québec de 1620 à 1840. (Master’s thesis). Québec : Université Laval, 368 p. https://corpus.ulaval.ca/jspui/handle/20.500.11794/28994 Théâtre des cuisines. (1976). Môman travaille pas, a trop d’ouvrage. Montréal : Les Éditions du Remue-Ménage, 78 p.