Have you ever been interested in discovering where your ancestors come from? If so, then you share a common interest with millions of Canadians who have spent countless hours researching their family's history and building their family tree. Before air travel, our ancestors traveled via ships from all over the world, arriving in ports across Canada to start new and better lives. From Britain, China, Germany, and the Ukraine - they spent days and weeks travelling to Canada, the last frontier. Ships' passenger lists, which recorded the arrival of immigrants, were the first and sometime only pieces of information documenting the start of their new lives . Ancestry.ca, Canada's leading family history website, recently launched online and fully indexed the complete Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935. The collection contains 7.2 million names, including 5.6 million who those who traveled from around the world to settle permanently in Canada. What is particularly interesting is that 37% of the current Canadian population can trace ancestors back to these passenger lists.

John's story

One such Canadian is Edmonton's John Templeton. John's story began with his Grandmother Elizabeth Wood's journey from Scotland to Canada in 1912. The Wood Family, a party of seven, was initially booked on the maiden voyage of The Titanic, which sailed on April 10, 1912, famously sinking just five days later. For reasons unknown, they cancelled these reservations, a decision which most likely had dramatic impact on John's family history, including whether he would even be here today to share his story.

On Ancestry.ca, John found the record of his grandmother Elizabeth, along with her children, embarking ship in Glasgow aboard the S.S. Letitia on June 1, 1912 and travelling in Steerage. The ship journeyed across the Atlantic, arriving in Quebec City on June 9, 1912. The ship's manifest revealed that the trip for the whole family cost $150.00 and that Elizabeth was to be reunited with her husband Thomas, a bookbinder, who had arrived in Canada 18 months earlier.

Making your own story

John's story is one of many just waiting to be discovered. Are there secrets or unknown facts about your family just waiting to come to life? Starting to research your family history can help you discover so many things about you and your family...and getting started is easy!

The best place to start your family history journey is with the information you already have to hand. Talk with your family members and relatives about what they know, and especially to older relatives who can provide a wealth of facts and stories about the past generations.

When beginning your family tree on Ancestry.ca, start with yourself and then include your children, siblings, parents and grandparents. Record each person's name, birth, marriage and death dates as appropriate. If you don't have exact information, include what you know and make a note to discover what you don't!

Then search family history records, which are full of clues that connect individuals to events in your family history. An online tool like Ancestry.ca makes it easy to search online and build your own family tree. Records that are useful include passenger lists, which show when your ancestors arrived and from where, census records, which provide a snapshot of a family at a given time and place in history and birth, marriage and death records.

As information and records are discovered, upload them all into your family tree on ancestry.ca and then attach scans of photographs, documents, diaries, letters, birth and marriage certificates.

Also, half the fun when researching your family history and building your family tree is to discovering other people who you may be related to. On Ancestry.ca, search for name matches on more than 6.5 million other people's family trees and if mutual names match in your trees, send messages through the online forum and get chatting to discover how or if you are related.

Share the excitement of your discoveries with your family and friends and have them look at your tree and encourage others to add stories, old photos or historical records to expand your tree.

We're all the products of our ancestors who came before us – from the name we bear to the traditions we honour. Understanding our ancestors and where we originated from helps us to better understand ourselves.

For more on how to discover your family's story, visit www.Ancestry.ca.

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For further information please contact:

Erin O'Reilly
Media Profile
416-342-1811
erin@mediaprofile.com