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    • Main contributor: Craig Kanalley
    irwin switzer armstrong obituary in brantford expositor
    Obituary for Irwin Switzer Armstrong (1848-1933) in The Brantford Expositor in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

    Obituaries are notices of death that provide information about recently deceased persons.[1] The word obituary comes from the Latin obit, meaning death. Canadian obituaries are typically found in the country's newspapers. Online databases, local libraries and archives in Canada provide access to such records, including historical newspapers. MyHeritage has the following online collections that include obituaries for Canada:

    It may be worthwhile to also check Minnesota obituaries since that U.S. state shares a border with Canada.


    Information contained in an obituaryInformation contained in an obituary

    obituary in toronto newspaper
    A brief obituary published in 1907 in the Toronto World for Stapleton Caldecott.

    The first obituaries published in Canadian newspapers contained limited information about those who had passed away. They typically included the name of the person, when they died, where they lived, and sometimes their age. Over time, obituaries became more detailed to include survivors of the deceased, such as spouse, children, grandchildren, and occasionally parents or siblings.

    Obituaries published in recent decades in Canada are more likely to provide rich biographical information, such as the person's interests, their trade or occupation, military service, and other details. Funeral arrangements and burial details are sometimes included in an obituary. Since the information contained in an obituary can vary, it's advisable to seek out the obituary for each ancestor or relative to see what it contains.

    How to find obituaries in CanadaHow to find obituaries in Canada

    The MyHeritage collections of Canadian obituaries cited above are a great place to start. Once you have checked those, you may need to look for alternate sources to find additional obituaries.

    Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa
    The Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, a useful place to visit to find Canadian obituaries.

    The Library and Archives Canada, which is the national library in Ottawa, has a "Finding newspapers" guide. If you attend the archives in person, you can search databases on site that have indexed Canadian newspapers.

    Some newspapers are digitized, including:

    The Canadiana project has indexed early publications that may be worth checking. Another place to look is the Canada Newspaper Archives, which has 9.2 million newspaper pages in Canada indexed, dating back to the 1700s.

    The Vancouver Public Library has a section of its website dedicated to Obituary Research and it has several collections available to find obituaries in the province of British Columbia, as well as elsewhere in Canada. The University of British Columbia has a historical newspapers collection that is free to search; it has image scans back to the 1800s.

    For more recent obituaries, Canadian Obituaries has an archive of obituaries going back to the early 2000s and new ones are regularly published.



    See alsoSee also

    Explore more about Canada obituariesExplore more about Canada obituaries

    References

    1. ↑ Obituary definition and meaning. Merriam-Webster Dictionary


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    APA citation (7th Ed.)

    Craig Kanalley. (2024, October 26). *Canada obituaries*. MyHeritage Wiki. https://www.myheritage.com/wiki/Canada_obituaries