Canada Obituaries

Obituaries are newspaper articles published near the time of a person’s death. They include biographical information such as a person’s date and place of birth, dates of immigration, marriage dates, community service, and names and locations of surviving relatives. Long obituaries for pioneers and prominent people are often found several pages away from the brief death notices in vital statistics columns. If you know the approximate death date of your ancestor, search the entire newspaper for several dates.

Local genealogical and historical societies, public libraries, and some newspaper publishers maintain clipping files of obituaries. Printed abstracts of obituaries can also be found in various published sources, such as genealogical periodicals. A few Canadian published sources are listed in:

Jarboe, Betty M. Obituaries: A Guide to Sources. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. (Family History Library book .)

University of Toronto has a collection of over 20,000 Canadian obituaries. The date range is late 18th century to 1977 and covers famous as well as less-famous Canadians. You can access this collection at this Toronto Library link.

See also "Newspapers," "Periodicals," and "Vital Records."

The Family History Library has a few published lists of obituaries. See the Locality Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:

[PROVINCE] or [COUNTY] or [CITY] - OBITUARIES

Websites

 * http://www.genealogybuff.com/canada/
 * http://www.genealogybuff.com/canada-bbs/
 * Canadian Obituaries Forum
 * Canadian Health Obituaries Index File