British Columbia, Canada Genealogy

Guide to British Columbia ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

British Columbia History
British Columbia is a province in Canada. It is in the western most portion of the country. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria. Contact with Europeans brought a series of devastating epidemics of diseases from Europe the people had no immunity to. The result was a dramatic population collapse, culminating in the 1862 Smallpox outbreak in Victoria that spread throughout the coast. European settlement did not bode well for the remaining native population of British Columbia. The arrival of Europeans began around the mid-18th century, as fur traders entered the area to harvest sea otters in 1774.This co-occupancy was ended with the Oregon Treaty of 1846. The Vancouver Island colony was facing financial crises, and pressure to merge the two eventually succeeded in 1866, when the colony of British Columbia was amalgamated with the Colony of Vancouver Island to form the Colony of British Columbia in 1866, which was, in turn, succeeded by the present day province of British Columbia following the Canadian Confederation of 1871. With the agreement by the Canadian government to extend the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia and to assume the colony's debt, British Columbia became the sixth province to join Confederation on July 20, 1871. The borders of the province were not completely settled. The Treaty of Washington sent the Pig War San Juan Islands Border dispute to arbitration in 1871 and in 1903, the province's territory shrank again after the Alaska boundary dispute settled the vague boundary of the Alaska Panhandle. Establishing a labour force to develop the province was problematic from the start, and British Columbia was the locus of immigration from Europe, China, and Japan. The influx of a non-Caucasian population stimulated resentment from the dominant ethnic groups, resulting in agitation to restrict the ability of Asian people to immigrate to British Columbia through the imposition of a head tax. When the men returned from the First World War, they discovered the recently enfranchised women of the province had helped vote in the prohibition of liquor in an effort to end the social problems associated with the hard-core drinking Vancouver and the rest of the province was famous for until the war. 

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British Columbia Counties
The counties are created for the administration of justice, and are not used in the administration of government. Local government is organized by municipalities and by regional districts. The counties are:

FamilySearch Resources
Below are FamilySearch resources that can assist you in resourcing your family.
 * Facebook Communities - Facebook groups discussing genealogy research
 * Learning Center - Online genealogy courses
 * Historical Records - databases and record images on FamilySearch
 * Family History Center locator map