Canada: Indexed Passenger List launch, Sept. 16

CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt" posted more information on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and The Generations Network (TGN) (parent of Ancestry.com) launch of the Ancestry indexes to Canadian passenger lists (1865-1935).

Diane Rogers found the announcement here at Olive Tree Genealogy, authored by Lorine McGinnis Schulze.

On Tuesday the 16th of September 2008, Ancestry.ca in partnership with the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will announce the world-first online launch of the complete and fully indexed Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935.

This is a comprehensive collection of passenger lists for all Canadian ports during this key immigration period and includes more than 5.5 million names of those who travelled from around the world to settle in Canada.

You will have the opportunity to interview the descendents of Canadian immigrants who appear in the collection and learn from genealogy experts about tracing your own family's history.

Please join us on September 16 at the Toronto Archives Building at 255 Spadina Road at 10:30 a.m.

This new resource will help many readers of Tracing the Tribe, whose immigrant ancestors crossed over to the US after disembarking at Canadian ports.

I recently found my great-grandfather in the Border Crossing Index; I hope to find more details in the new Passenger List Index.

Tim Agazio of Genealogy Reviews is also hoping to find his grandfather, Antonio, who did the same, but cannot be located in the Border Crossings database:

The Library and Archives of Canada has these documents online, but they are not indexed and I've been going through them name by name during the year I think he arrived. Of course I haven't found him. Hopefully I'll get lucky once this new indexed database is released.

Years ago, I ordered the microfilms of these arrival manifests and tried to check them line by line in my Southern California neighborhood library. I couldn't find anything that even resembled Zayde's name - Aaron Peretz Talalay/i.

The end result of this intensive search was a pair of seriously overstrained eyes and a painful shoulder from reeling and reeling and ... . Here's hoping someone had better eyes than I did at that time.