About the Genealogy Dashboard

The JGS-Montreal Genealogy Dashboard groups together about 100 resources for genealogical research. Some require registration, but most are free. Most can be used for any type of genealogical research, but some are focused on Jewish genealogy, especially in Montreal, Quebec, and Canada. They are categorized into:

• Canadian: census, immigration, naturalization
• Quebec and Montreal: civil records (birth, marriage, death), directories
• Death/Burial: obituaries, burial records
• Jewish: Jewish databases, Jewish newspapers, Jewish Organizations, Holocaust
• General: Ancestry.ca, Google newspapers, Facebook, Phonebook, Societies
• Family Trees: Ancestry, Geni, MyHeritage

1. you can look for an obituary in the Montreal Gazette archive, and if unsuccessful,
2. you can immediately search Genealogie Quebec, and if unsuccessful,
3. you can try CanadianObits.com.

Warnings about the forms on the dashboard:

1. For technical reasons, some resources are not searchable from the dashboard.
2. The forms present limited options, and these options might not be the ones that you expect, or want.
3. The forms simply submit your terms to the resource, so the search syntax varies from form-to-form.
4. The results of your search are shown on the resource site.

The resources can be used in any order. There are notes about places and years a resource covers, but it's useful to keep an open mind. For example, Gazette obituaries generally range from 2000 to the present, but an "in memoriam" might appear for earlier deaths.

Tips:

• There are checkboxes at the top to hide the help at the very top, and to show descriptions of resources.
• By default, the results of searches are sent to a results window, which is reused by subsequent searches. There is a checkbox at the top to choose to display all results in a new window.
• If you have a preference for certain options, the Bookmark link can be used to save them.
• At the right of each section, there are links to the other sections to make it easier to jump around.
• The format of the dashboard is meant to be compatible with mobile devices, but that could be improved.
• Several sites adapt what is displayed on their screens depending on the size of the window (i.e., responsive design), so if you don't see something you were expecting, try widening your window.
• It's quite easy to add or modify a resource. If a link or form does not work, let me know.

Examples: Some of these examples require accounts, some of which require a paid subscription.

• Leonard Cohen 1934-2016
  1. In Quebec and Montreal, search the Drouin Collection. Leonard Norman Cohen was born in 1934 in Montreal, and his birth was registered with Jewish Share Hashomyium [sic]. The document names his parents.
  2. In Death/Burial Searches, search Gazette Obituaries. Only finds a different Leonard Cohen.
  3. In Quebec and Montreal, search the Montreal Gazette (via Newspapers.com). Many results, for a fee.
  4. In Death/Burial Searches, search JOWBR at JewishGen.org. This search is, by default, limited to Canada, and the results show one burial in Quebec, but it is not the songwriter. Leonard Cohen is buried in the Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, which has not given permission to JOWBR for indexing or photographing. Checking FindaGrave.com, we find him, but he is not in BillionGraves.com or JewishData.com.
  5. In Jewish Resources, search Canadian Jewish Newspapers. There are two forms: one goes directly to the website at Simon Fraser University, while the other uses Google's index of the site. Both find many articles, but you might find searching through Google more reliable.
  6. In Jewish Resources, search the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network.
  7. In General Resources, search Ancestry.ca, Voilà (Canada's library catalogue) or WorldCat.org, Google Newspapers ...
  8. In Family Trees, search Ancestry.ca, Geni.com, ...
  9. For technical reasons, some sites can not be search from the Dashboard. There are several very good sources in the Quebec and Montreal section:
     • GenealogieQuebec.com marriages and deaths ($15/month)
     • Lovell's Montreal Directories with street addresses
  10. Note that because Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal, he did not immigrate or naturalize, and because he was born after 1921, no census records with him have been made public. Those are two broad categories of searches handled by the Dashboard, but not in these examples.
• Mordecai Richler 1931-2001
• William Shatner 1931- His father, Joseph Shatner 1898-1976, immigrated in 1912 and naturalized in 1930, so sections on Naturalization and maybe (definitely) the Census of 1921 would be useful for him.
• Make a list of Genealogy Dashboard bookmarks for people you want to research!