Try the search engine for free at this address!
- About the search engine
- How to use the search engine
- Search filters
- Search results
- Search tips and tricks
- FAQ
About the search engine
Genealogy Quebec’s search engine is based on cutting-edge search technology, and contains over 65 million historical documents.
Search Engine Content Overview
You will find a detailed overview of the collections available in the search engine at this address.
Search engine features
A global search
The engine simultaneously searches through the entire website – over 65 million records – with a single query.
A smart search
The technology on which the search engine is based enables advanced logic to be incorporated into the various search functions, providing great flexibility when it comes to queries. Approximate date, alternative spelling or typo? No problem for the search engine; you’ll still find what you’re looking for.
Dynamic filters
The search results can be segmented using three categories of filters:
- Type of document
- Location
- Year
These filters allow you to refine the search results directly from the results page. For example, you can choose to only display a specific type of document or source collection, or you can limit the results to a particular location and/or time period.
Free search
Although Genealogy Quebec is a subscription-based site, a limited version of the search engine can be used free of charge. Simply go to the site and start your search.
When you perform a search without being subscribed, you will have access to the same results as members, but they will be partially redacted.
The free version of the result gives you the name of the document’s subject(s), some of the information contained in the index, and a preview of the original document.
Future developments for the search engine
The next stage of development of the engine is the addition of individuals to the search. This will allow you to add a father, a mother, or a spouse to your search. We are hoping to release this feature by the end of 2025.
How to use the search engine
The search engine is divided into two sections that operate independently, each with its own features: the Basic search and the Advanced search. By default, the Basic search is activated. To switch to the Advanced search, simply click on Advanced search to the right of the Search button.
Basic search
The basic search, with its 4 fields, works on a simple principle: you are searching for a specific individual, and the search engine provides you with every document on the site that mentions the individual. The results are ordered according to the probability that the document in question relates to the individual you’re looking for.
The more the information contained in a document matches your search parameters, the earlier it will appear in the results list.
First name(s) and last name(s)
This is where you enter the name of the person you’re looking for. This person can have any role in the document (subject, parent, spouse, godparent, or simply being mentioned anywhere within the document), but documents where the person is the subject are prioritized.
Accents, capital letters and hyphens may or may not be used in your search without affecting the results.
You can also enter several first and last names for the same individual; the engine will prioritize the documents where a maximum of these names are found, but you will also obtain results where the individual is identified under only one of the names.
Adjusting the search broadness
Under the first name and last name, you have the option of adjusting the broadness of your search, i.e. the level of difference between the name you entered, and the name found in the corresponding document.
There are three levels to this option:
- Exact search
- Similar search
- Extended search
The different search levels are explained at this address.
Year of birth
In the year of birth box, it is important to enter the exact or approximate year of birth, not the year of marriage or death. The engine performs a calculation based on the year of birth to show you results relevant to your search. If you enter a date other than the approximate year of birth, many relevant records will be excluded from the search results.
Location where your ancestor may have resided
The location is used to order and prioritize search results. For example, if two documents contain the name entered, but only one contains the location searched for, the document also containing the matched location will appear first in the results.
You can use the location search box freely, by entering a district, town, region, parish or even a country.
Please note that a match between the searched location and the location listed in the document is not necessary for the document to appear in the search results. The location is only used to prioritize results, not to exclude them.
Advanced search
The Advanced Search lets you refine your search with additional parameters. It includes two main components: adding events and adding individuals (coming soon).
The Advanced Search uses the concept of Target Individual.
The Target Individual is the person at the center of the search, whose name is entered in the First Names and Last Names boxes. All parameters added to the search pertain to the Target Individual, whether it’s an added event or individual.
In addition, the Target Individual can only have the role of subject in the document (e.g. the deceased in a burial, the spouses in a marriage, etc.). To search for an individual in another role (parents, ex-spouse, etc.), you can use the Basic Search.
When the addition of individuals to the search is released, you will be able to use it to search for individuals with secondary roles in the document.
First name(s) and last name(s)
This is where you enter the name of the person you’re looking for.
Accents, capital letters and hyphens may or may not be used in your search without affecting the results.
You can also enter several first and last names for the same individual; the engine will prioritize the documents where a maximum of these names are found, but you will also obtain results where the individual is identified under only one of the names.
Adjusting the search broadness
Under the first name and last name, you have the option of adjusting the broadness of your search, i.e. the level of difference between the name you entered, and the name found in the corresponding document.
There are three levels to this option:
- Exact search
- Similar search
- Extended search
The different search levels are explained at this address.
Adding events to the search
This feature lets you add the date and/or location of events related to the individual you’re looking for.
Available events
Birth: Add the year and place of birth or baptism of the person you’re looking for.
Marriage: Add a year and place of marriage for the person you’re looking for.
Death: Add the year and place of death or burial of the person you are looking for.
Residence: Add a year and place of residence for the person you’re looking for.
Publication: Add a year and place of publication that prioritizes documents published on that date and/or in that place.
Any event: Allows you to search for a year and/or place present in a document, regardless of which event that place or date is associated with. The year and place entered need not belong to the same event.
Events utilisation in search
When you add a year or place of event to your search parameters, the engine uses it to order your search results according to their relevance. The more a document matches the search parameters you’ve entered, the higher it will appear in the results list.
You can add as many parameters as you wish to your search; the engine will use them to evaluate the relevance of the documents, but does not require that the parameters you enter be present.
However, you can force the presence of a parameter by using the “Must match” checkbox. When this box is checked, only documents where this information is explicitly mentioned will appear in the search results.
Let’s use the following search as an example:
Here’s how the parameters entered in the search above are used to select and order the results:
- The name must match Joseph Tremblay, according to the parameters of the broadness selected for your search. The better the name match, the higher the document priority.
- If Joseph Tremblay‘s year of birth is 1922 in the document, it receives a high priority in the order of results.
- If Joseph Tremblay‘s place of birth is Montreal in the document, it receives a high priority in the order of results.
- If Joseph Tremblay‘s year of marriage is 1945 in the document, it receives a high priority in the order of results, AND, since the “Must match” box is checked, any document in which Joseph Tremblay‘s year of marriage is not explicitly stated to be 1945 is excluded from the results, even if the other search parameters match.
Adding individuals to the search (coming soon)
Under development.
Search filters
The new search engine provides filters to refine the search results. When you activate a filter, documents not matching the filter are removed from the results list.
As such, when using a filter, you are displaying a subset of your initial search results. A result that was not present in your initial search will not appear following the use of a filter.
Filtrer by collection / type of document
This filter allows you to only display results corresponding to a specific type of document. It also allows you to select the source collection of the documents displayed.
The filter generally operates on three levels.
- The document category, which encompasses several types of documents that relate to one another
Ex: Births, Marriages and Deaths - The document type, which is specific to a particular type of document
Ex: Marriages - The source collection, i.e. the database in which the document can be found
Ex: LaFrance Marriages
Filter by location
This filter allows you to remove any documents that do not match a specific location from the search results.
When a search is performed, all the locations mentioned in the search results are listed and sorted under the Location filter. When you select one of the filters under Location, you are in effect excluding all documents that do not contain that specific location.
The sorting of locations under the filter is as follows:
- Country
- Province / State
- Region
- City / Parish / Other geographical entities
- Region
- Province / State
Occasionally, a document may contain province and city information, but no region. In this case, the document will be found under the Other category in the list of regions:
- Country
- Province / State
- Other
- City / Parish / Other geographical entities
- Other
- Province / State
Please note that due to the large number of documents and sources in our databases, locations are not standardized. It is therefore possible for a place to be repeated several times in the filters, under different variations. For example, a document where the location is listed as “Ville de Québec” will not be sorted under the same filter as a document where the location is listed as “Québec”.
Filter by date
This filter allows you to select documents in which a specific year appears.
During your initial search, you are prompted to enter the year of birth of the person you are looking for. The date filter, on the other hand, is not necessarily based on the year of birth. Instead, it considers all the dates mentioned in the document.
For example, if you apply the date filter “1945” to your search, all documents containing the year 1945 will be displayed, whether it’s a year of birth, marriage, death or residence.
As a result, a document containing more than one date will appear under several different filters.
Search results
Search results on the new engine are ordered and presented according to a scoring system. When you perform a search, the engine scans all the documents in our databases, then presents you with the events that best match your search parameters. The more a document matches, the earlier it will appear in the results list.
Results – Snippet
On the new engine, search results are first presented as snippets.
This snippet starts with the names of the subject(s), below which the type of document and the source collection are given.
An extract of the information contained in the document is then presented. The content of this preview varies according to the type of document. To the right of the preview, a thumbnail of the original document is displayed.
To view the complete information and the original document (where available), click on the thumbnail or “View” button.
At the bottom left, a note informs you of the last time you consulted this document.
Results – Details page
After clicking on the thumbnail or the “View” button, you are redirected to the details page.
Original document
When available, the original document is displayed on the left. Click on it to view it in full size.
Details tab
This is where you’ll find all the information available for this event.
Source tab
This tab contains three sections.
- Information: Contains information about the collection to which the document belongs.
- Original source: Indicates where the document originally came from.
- Citation: The source to include when sharing this document outside our site. You can copy and paste it as is.
Back to search results
Clicking on this button takes you back to your search results. Please note that the button doesn’t work if you’ve opened the details page in a new tab, or if you’ve arrived at the details page via a direct link rather than via the results page.
Search tips and tricks
Prioritizing sources in the event of conflicting information
Genealogy Quebec’s new search engine has the advantage of searching through all the site’s databases. As a result, events may sometimes be listed in several databases, or even several times in the same database. This is generally an advantage, since it’s not uncommon for one source to contain information not present in the others. But what if two sources contradict each other?
First of all, check whether a source is accompanied by an original document. If this is the case, you should always give it priority, and make sure you check the information in the original document.
If the original document is not available, you can prioritize documents based on their source collection. In the case of birth, marriage and death records, the sources to prioritize are the LaFrance first, then the NBMDS, as these are databases containing transcriptions of original documents.
The records in the ABCD databases, on the other hand, are aggregations of various informations and sources, but are not direct transcriptions of original records. Therefore, in the event of a contradiction, you must give precedence to the LaFrance and NBMDS records.
Finding the original document associated with a birth, marriage or death
Many of the sources listed in the new search engine contain events taken from parish registers, but do not offer a direct link to the source document.
However, your subscription to Genealogy Quebec gives you access to the Drouin Collection Records, which contains all of Quebec parish registers from 1621 to the 1940s, as well as numerous parish registers from Ontario, Acadia and the northeastern United States.
It is therefore often possible to find the source document associated with a BMD record by referring to the Drouin Collection Records
Take, for example, this birth found in the NBMDS collection.
Marie Laure Jeannette Tremblay is said to have been born in Bagotville and baptized in the St-Alphonse-de-Liguori parish in 1923. Thus, we should be able to find the original entry for her baptism in the parish’s register under the year 1923.
First, let’s go to the Drouin Collection Records.
Once in the Drouin Collection, you’ll notice that the various registers are arranged in a tree structure. Since the document we’re looking for was recorded in Quebec, we will open the Quebec folder. The registers we’re interested in are then found under the Fonds Drouin folder. Now we need to find the parish.
Some parishes are listed under the name of the city or region they serve, while others will be found under the parish name itself. In the case of St-Alphonse-de-Liguori parish, it is listed under the Bagotville folder.
Once this folder has been opened, you need to navigate to the year you are looking for, in order to reach the list of images contained in the register for that year. It is important to note that in most cases, images are arranged in chronological order.
The first image in the folder will therefore contain the first events recorded in that year, i.e. records from the beginning of January, while events from the end of December will be found among the last images.
As Marie Laure’s birth took place in August, we can deduce that the record will be found towards the middle of the series of images.
After browsing through a few images, we find the baptism we’re looking for.
Using the date filters to find a specific event
The basic search, with its “year of birth” field, allows you to find all documents pertaining to the person you’re looking for.
However, if you are looking for a particular document, specifically a marriage or death, it can be more difficult to find among the many results obtained.
The advanced search, which we hope to bring online in the coming months, will alleviate this problem. But for now, you can use the date filters to find specific events whose dates you know.
How the date filters work
When you select a date or date range, the search engine excludes from the results all documents that do not contain the date(s) you have selected.
For example, if you select the 1945 filter, only documents specifically containing the year 1945 will remain in your search results, regardless of whether 1945 is a year of birth, marriage, death, residence or publication in the record.
If you know that one of your ancestors married in 1945 and would like to find his or her marriage certificate, start by searching for the ancestor’s name. You can include a date of birth if you wish, but it is not necessary.
You will then obtain a list of all the documents where this individual is mentioned on the site. By activating the 1945 date filter, you’ll end up with a list of all documents in which the individual is mentioned AND in which the year 1945 appears, which should enable you to find the marriage easily.
FAQ
What about the old search tools?
Genealogy Quebec’s current research tools and databases will remain available to our members for the long term. However, they will no longer be updated once the new search engine has been fully released.
Some of my search results don’t match the information I’ve entered
The first and/or last names do not correspond
By default, the search engine allows for some variation in the spelling of names . What’s more, the LaFrance name dictionary will eventually be integrated into the system, meaning that certain names will be matched despite different pronunciation or spelling.
An option (Exact Search) allows you to limit the search results to records where the names match exactly.
However, please note that the exact search does not prevent the display of results in which only one of the first names or surnames searched for is listed. For example, a search for “Jean-Sébastien Roy” will also produce results with “Sébastien Roy”, even with exact search enabled.
The year does not correspond
In the Basic search, you are asked to enter the approximate or exact year of birth of the ancestor you are looking for. However, the majority of documents on the site do not contain a date of birth. Therefore, we use the date of birth entered in your search to exclude documents that are not relevant. For example, it would not be useful to show you a marriage which took place in 1734 if you entered 1844 as the date of birth, even if the name matches.
As a result, you’ll often see results that don’t contain the date you entered; these aren’t there by mistake.
The location does not correspond
In the Basic search, location is used to prioritize and order results.
A correspondence between the location searched and the location mentioned in the document is not necessary for a document to be included in the search results.
For example, if you search for “François Desjardins” as the first and last name, and set “Montréal” as the location, all documents on the site containing a “François Desjardins” and taking place in Montréal will appear first in the search results. However, once these results have been exhausted, the search will start displaying documents mentioning “François Desjardins”, regardless of location.
