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Prior to June 2026, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) didn’t describe acceptable documentation for Canadian ancestors who were born in the 1800s or earlier. Their web page “Apply for a Canadian citizenship certificate: How to apply” was silent on this issue. An archived version of the page is available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20260614134240/https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-citizenship/proof-citizenship/apply.html#apply-paper As a result,…

This was an AI-aided project that used a series of tax, church and land records to establish the presence of John Wall and his family in Canada between 1848 and 1864. The records clearly establish his family’s presence in Ontario in this period. But the value of the AI tool (in this case, Claude) was…

Canada’s citizenship law changed on December 15, 2025. Effective that day, thousands — possibly millions — of people born outside Canada who have a Canadian ancestor became Canadian citizens. Since then, many have come to us with questions about Canadian citizenship by descent. That makes sense, because we’re a Canadian genealogical research company. We help…

If you can prove your descent from an ancestor born in what is now Canada … the answer might be “Yes”! Canada’s first Citizenship Act came into effect on January 1, 1947. Anyone born in Canada before that date was considered a “natural-born Canadian” as long as they had not lost their status as a…

DNA Identifies the Father of an English-born Child Growing up in London, England, Elaine’s biological father was a mystery. Her mother said he had been a Canadian airman stationed in Europe in the late 1950s. Beyond that, there were no names, no records, no photographs — just a story, repeated but never explained. For decades,…