SETTLERS IN CANADA

Alarge number of British people emigrated to Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries and some received Canadian government assistance to do so. Abel Davis, for example, emigrated to Canada from Birmingham in 1924 with his wife, Mary, and seven children. Their youngest was Ronald, aged 4. Abel and Mary saw Canada as an opportunity to leave the heart of a British industrial city for the great outdoors, and to give their children a better start in life, even though Abel himself was nearly 50.

There are lots of records that you can use to try to follow an emigrant’s journey. However, the diversity of sources can be confusing if this is an unfamiliar area of investigation. It’s not possible to cover all the resources available in this article, but I will outline some of the major ones.

Online data sets

Fortunately, most of the online data sets are available from just a few major websites. Most significant is Library and Archives Canada (LAC), which has an extensive collection of free resources concerning immigrants and settlers www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/

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