When searching the now free Canadiana website, there are three main areas to explore. Canadiana Online, Heritage and Early Canadiana. Heritage is more genealogy specific and is covered by Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy.
Here we will talk about Canadiana Online. This includes three sections : monographs; series...periodicals, annuals and newspapers; and government publications.
If your ancestors were part of a group (political, religious, trades, social, etc) you may find them mentioned in a journal published by that group, as they often included a Personals column or a list of members or subscribers. I previously found a relative in the Canadian Militia Gazette.
You can type your ancestor name in the search box at the top and you may get way too many results to check. I typed my surname Seale and got 4695 results. Hmmmm.
Besides getting too many results, your ancestor name may not be recognized in some cases. My Seale surname often gets read as scale or "the seal of", and my Mavor surname gets read as the mayor. That makes for many useless results. But remember, when you're looking for something specific you often come across a surprise!
I found this publication, The Civilian, and thought one or two of my people should be mentioned in an issue as they were civil servants.
The Civilian was a fortnightly journal devoted to the interests of the
Civil Service of Canada. It was published from 1908 to 1921, but not by the government so it's under series, not government publications. We will use this as an example of how to navigate.
The Civilian was on the 7th page of results. I click on it and get that journal. It opens on page 279, the first page of that issue... no mention of Seale. The matching result is supposedly on page 282, which I click on and still no Seale... it's "scale".
Next I click on the name of the journal, circled in red above, and that gives me all the issues of The Civilian. At the top left it says there are 300 available issues. If you click on the About tab, it gives info on this journal in the notes... range of dates published, any errors or special issues, etc.
I type Seale in the search again and it gives me all the issues with their page match.
This gives me a more manageable 18 results. I know my great grand uncle was a civil servant and died in March, buried in April in 1921. There are issues for this period. So I clicked on the April 1921 issue and it opens on the first page of that issue by default, but there is a matching result on page 168. Click on that link...
Whoohoo... it's actually Seale this time and Williams death notice is there. I copy the URL and add it to the Web Link section in the Resources column on his profile page of my Ancestry tree.
Other results are City of Kingston Directories (including Barriefield where my Seales lived) and I found the Quebec Seales in military journals, but there was a surprise result. There are some Seales on the Voter's List of the Town of Gananoque!?!
On the top left it says there are three images that match. There is Robert who is a blacksmith, Ann who is a widow, and on the third image are John A and James. None of these people are in my Seale family, but Gananoque is not far from where they lived.This gives me another path to research as most Seales I have come across in Canada are from the same big family in Laois, Ireland.
You don't have to search by ancestor name. Try searching by the place your ancestor lived, by their trade, or by a society they may have belonged to. When I searched Waterville one result was a Waterville Cookbook, with some submissions by relatives.
You will find many newspapers and journals, in several languages, in this collection that you won't find anywhere else. At the Online Collection page, instead of typing a name in the search scroll down to the Series section and click browse this collection.
When you find one that interests you click on it, then click on its name at the top left to learn more about that publication and the issue dates available. Then you can do a name or place search from there.
You can narrow your search by changing the date range on the left to dates your ancestor was there. Also use the other filters... search in text, language, which collection.
UPDATE:
I was doing a search today and now discovered can also use the minus sign in your search. That will help filter your results. When you have many results for the same source, like directory, you can search "name -directory" . Another frequent flyer is "Bill: an act..." so you can filter it out also by searching "name -directory -bill". Seems like you can keep adding minus keywords to pare down your results. Similarly the plus sign works so you can search "name +place -directory". But the plus doesn't work as well.
Happy hunting!
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