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How this American church helped a man uncover his wife's Quebec roots for Canadian citizenship
Greg Kearney, an editorial cartoonist in Topeka, Kansas, and a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) is using the organization’s database to help his wife prove Canadian ancestry and gain citizenship.
His family is Canadian on his father’s side, and he already holds a Canadian passport, but he wanted to do the same for his wife, whose Canadian roots are older.
“They go back a long way but you don’t have to,” he told National Post in an interview. “All you have to do is get to the Canadian ancestor closest to you. So for instance, in her case, her great-grandfather. They were Protestants in Sherbrooke, Quebec.”
The rabbit-hole of genealogy led to Kearney’s wife being able to trace her roots all the way back to the “filles du roi” or King’s Daughters, a program sponsored by French King Louis XVI to send young women to what was then New France in the mid-1600s to boost population through childbirth. “I must say, my French has been getting a real workout,” Kearney noted ruefully.
“We do know that people use our resources to seek out documents for citizenship,” FamilySearch Library Director Lynn Turner told the Salt Lake Tribune , noting an uptick in people searching the church’s Canadian archives. “Our resources are there for them to use, and we wish them success.”
Turner said LDS has 30 million records from Canada, including census data going back to before Confederation, starting in 1851 and broken down by province and territory. The church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Kearney said LDS records are sometimes just the start of the search for Canadian roots. “The government won’t take FamilySearch’s word for it, nor should they really,” he said.
But FamilySearch will often provide a name, information about the person, and sources for that information.
“And those sources will often have images of the original document attached to it,” said Kearney. “And that’s … what people need. FamilySearch in and of itself is not considered authoritative. The images of the documents are what you’re after.”
In Kearney’s case, the LDS database pointed the way. “You still have to go out and find it,” he said. “I ended up having to contact the Anglican Diocese of Quebec and get a baptismal record.”
The odd overlap between church and state is the result of a recent piece of legislation. Bill C-3, known as the “Lost Canadians Act,“ came into effect in December and allows anyone with a direct ancestor born in Canada, regardless of how many generations back, to claim citizenship.
Archivists and genealogists have reportedly been flooded with inquiries from Americans looking to prove that connection and potentially apply for citizenship. That includes requests to FamilySearch, an online archive operated by LDS that boasts almost 17 billion searchable names in its historical records.
The reason for the database, however, has nothing to do with Canadian law. According to an LDS website , “learning about one’s family history is more than just a casual endeavour. Latter-day Saints believe families can be together after this life. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen relationships with all family members, both those who are alive and those who have died.”
LDS has been in the genealogy business since 1894 and says it “has created the largest collection of family records in the world.”
The next step for Kearney, who stresses that he is not an expert in such matters, is to hire a lawyer to see to his wife’s paperwork. But he’s excited at the prospect of having her join him in Canadian citizenship.
“I think this is a wonderful thing,” he said. “I think for over 150-odd years, the line of immigration has always gone south. And now, finally, Canada gets the chance to have the flow come the other way.”
He added: “And anybody who does this, people who go through this much effort in tracking down all the little bits and pieces that you have to have, anybody who does this is going to be a pretty darn well committed Canadian.”
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