Library and Archives Canada for Citizenship by Descent

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is a federal institution in Ottawa that preserves Canada's documentary heritage. For anyone building a citizenship by descent application, it is also the most underused free research tool available. Four specific collections held at LAC can prove a Canadian ancestor lived, immigrated, naturalized, or crossed the border, often decades before provincial vital statistics offices started keeping consistent records.

Naturalization records, 1915-1951. If your ancestor was not born in Canada but became Canadian through naturalization, these records confirm it. The Canadian government published the names of newly naturalized citizens in the Canadian Gazette, and LAC has digitized and indexed them in a free, searchable database. Search by surname at bac-lac.gc.ca, narrow by given name, and you will find the certificate number, date of naturalization, and province. Records before 1915 exist but require a written or in-person archival request rather than an online search.

Census records, 1851-1931. Census records do not prove citizenship directly, but they prove your ancestor was present in Canada at a specific time, in a specific household. The 1921 Census is free at LAC's website and at FamilySearch. The 1931 Census, released in 2023, is also free at FamilySearch. Earlier censuses (1901, 1911) are on FamilySearch and Ancestry. Each entry shows full name, age, birthplace, relationship to head of household, and sometimes year of immigration -- data that corroborates a birth certificate or fills a gap where one is missing.

Passenger lists, 1865-1922. LAC has digitized ocean passenger manifests for arrivals at Canadian ports between 1865 and 1922. If your ancestor immigrated from the British Isles, Ukraine, Italy, or anywhere else and arrived through Halifax, Quebec City, or another Canadian port, their manifest entry may be here. This is especially useful when you need to establish a precise immigration date for a pre-1947 naturalization chain.

Border crossing records, 1908-1935. Two sets cover this era: 1908-1918 and 1925-1935. These record individual crossings at land ports between Canada and the United States, including name, age, citizenship, and destination. If your ancestor moved between Ontario and New York in the 1920s, or crossed back into Quebec from Vermont, this is where the movement record will be.

Go to recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca, LAC's unified collection search. Filter by collection type (immigration, census, naturalization) and search by surname. Most results link directly to digitized images of the original records.

Names in nineteenth and early twentieth century records are phonetically inconsistent. A surname like Lavoie might appear as Lavoy, Lavwa, or Lavoia depending on which enumerator wrote it down. Try multiple spellings. French-Canadian names were frequently anglicized by census takers who wrote down what they heard spoken aloud. If a surname search fails, try first name plus approximate year, or use the soundex search option within FamilySearch.

For naturalization records specifically: not every person naturalized between 1915 and 1951 appears in the online database. The index covers names published in government lists, not every individual file. If you cannot find your ancestor there, the record may still exist as an unnumbered file. Email lac.reference.bac@canada.ca to request a manual search.

If your ancestor held Canadian citizenship and the LAC free databases come up empty, you can ask IRCC to search its own archives directly. Form CIT 0058, Application for a Search of Citizenship Records, triggers a search of IRCC's internal files going back to the 1947 Citizenship Act.

The fee is $75 CAD, identical to the CIT 0001 fee. Processing time as of July 2026 is approximately 17 months. If you are searching an ancestor's records rather than your own, the online application does not apply. Submit a paper application by mail to:

IRCC Digitization Centre, Citizenship 3050 Wilson Ave New Waterford, NS B1H 5V8

Include the ancestor's full name, date of birth, birthplace, approximate date of entry to Canada as a permanent resident, and your relationship to them. If the ancestor is deceased, attach proof of death and the relevant birth and marriage certificates establishing your connection. A positive CIT 0058 result, confirming your ancestor held Canadian citizenship on a specific date, is one of the strongest supporting documents you can include with a CIT 0001 application.

A no-result response from IRCC does not mean your ancestor was not Canadian. Record-keeping before 1947 was incomplete, and inconsistency between provincial registers was common. The absence of a record shifts the burden back to LAC's collections and to provincial archives for alternative evidence.

Consider the case of James from Massachusetts tracing citizenship through a great-grandfather who immigrated from Scotland in 1901 and settled in Nova Scotia. The provincial vital statistics office had no birth certificate on file. But LAC's passenger list showed his ancestor arriving at Halifax in June 1901, the 1911 census showed him in Pictou County as a British subject, and the 1921 census showed his occupation and household with James's great-grandmother. Combined with a letter of no record from Nova Scotia and a church baptismal record, that package met IRCC's standard.

LAC records and CIT 0058 results are supporting evidence, not primary documents. IRCC's June 2026 documentation standard (CIT 0014) requires a letter of no record from the relevant province before alternative evidence is considered. Once you have that letter, LAC records alongside census data, church records, and other primary sources meet IRCC's balance of probabilities standard.

For a full breakdown of how alternative evidence works when a birth certificate does not exist, see the guide to proving Canadian ancestry without a birth certificate. For what counts as a certified copy versus a photocopy, see what a certified copy means for your application.

If you are at the documentation stage and want a review of what you have assembled, MaplePass checks your evidence package as part of the application process and identifies gaps before you submit. Start with a free eligibility check, then the full guided application for $199.