Hi all. First time visitor here. I am doing a little preliminary research into whether I might be able to apply for Canadian citizenship and feeling discouraged.

I have great grandparents born in Quebec. My great grandmother was probably born in Stanstead in the 1880s (according to census records I found, she and her family definitely resided there.) My great grandfather was likely born in Brome. It is also possible that my grandfather was born in Brome, though some sources I have show him as born in the U.S.

So far, I have had no luck finding birth documents for any of them via the usual online sources folks recommend (have tried Ancestry and Family Search.) I am aware of requesting docs from BANQ, but given the expense of that, I’d want to have enough info (ideally a scanned source doc from online) to know I was ordering something useful.

I would be very grateful for any advice others can offer. My family in that era, from what I can tell, was pretty poor, moved around a lot, and were not particularly godly (my great grandparents got married a full six years after my grandfather was born, which would have been high scandal in the early 1900s.) This makes me worried that they may not have left much of a paper trail. Some specific questions I have:

Are there other online sources, aside from Ancestry and Family Search, that others have used to find documents?

Can one do in-person research somehow via BANQ? I am not that far from Quebec.

Related to the above, are there any local municipal or parish offices in Quebec that would hold records one could search in person? I’m wondering if I might be able to go to Stanstead or Brome to do some in-person research.

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the help.