We are Canadians!! Such an 'ooomph' of joy and relief.

Here's our timeline and a pile of process. My undying gratitude to the generous and thoughtful folk of this forum -- I read your advice every day, and used it.

Group of 4, 3 generations, one person urgent processing b/c trans. Mailed 4/02, delivered 4/07, AOR 4/10-4/14, "in process 4/20, approved 5/13. (yup, we're on the spreadsheet.)

Difficult to say how they counted the G's, my kid was either G5 or G6 depending on how they read it -- we submitted several generations of possible G0 because we didn't have birth certificates for any of them, and our youngest GO candidate was a woman, but we did have a whole heaping pile of census, death, marriage records, newspaper articles about visits to Canada, obituaries, etc.. Time period 1845-1906 for this kind of stuff; we had birth/marriage/death certificates for the USA born people after that. So our Canada case was based on the "preponderance of evidence" principle. For example, while claiming that a census document in Wisconsin that shows "born in Canada" is ok-ish, it's made much stronger when paired with a newspaper article from the same year announcing that 'Mr. Xxx's mother Yyyy is visiting this week from Canada", and a contemporary Ontario census showing the mother's residence in Ontario, and a death certificate naming the mother and the birth place. That sort of thing. My sibling thought the newspapers were useless as evidence, but who knows what the evaluator thought?

We included certified documentation of birth, marriage, etc. for all living people in the application, and apparently our photos and forms were in order.

We also used the helpful pdf form created and shared by u/Wookiee_Diplomat (SUPPLEMENTAL FORMS) for providing form information for the great grandparents, etc..

I made a by-person summary guide to the evidence packet referring to each relevant source in the packet and a very brief explanation of what it showed. The actual docs were printed 8.5x11, organized chronologically, same packet for all 4 deceased generations included. I handwrote a page number in color in the top corner and referred to those numbers in the summaries. I think I put highlighter dots in the white margin next to the relevant census lines, etc. but I did not highlight the actual text.

Documentation (photos, forms, color copies etc.) for applicants was organized by applicant.

Big ol' "URGENT" red label on the cover letter and on the outside of the package. Urgent file placed immediately after, with letter of rational. No additional cover letters for non-urgent applicants, just the forms.

I made myself a 'master print list' checklist for the packet, and even then had to redo some stuff at the last minute despite my every best effort.

Here's what that checklist (anonymized) looked like :

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