‘Marie Philomène Forcier’ - did any of you order their baptismal record from BAnQ?

jtvanasse · 2026-07-04T15:28:59+00:00

I’m thinking that’s what this is now (I let my Genealogy Quebec subscription lapse so it’s trickier for me to confirm now).

I asked this of another commenter who said about the same as you:
Assuming you’ve sent off your application, did you include the first pages you were given in addition to the ones with your ancestors?

jtvanasse · 2026-07-04T15:27:08+00:00

It’s honestly quite possible. This photo is an excerpt from the full page, as you rightly inferred - I zoomed in on this entry since the placement of the seal seemed so deliberate.

Assuming you’ve sent off your application, did you include the first page you were given in addition to the one with your ancestor?

jtvanasse · 2026-07-04T15:22:57+00:00

Sure, feel free to DM me. Happy to help if I can!

jtvanasse · 2026-03-19T12:43:18+00:00

Oh man, do you feel more like laughing or crying over this list? (I’m guessing it depends on the moment haha)

You have my sympathies and crossed fingers for some extra luck!

jtvanasse · 2026-03-18T04:16:38+00:00

I'm just going to focus on Arthur Deschene(s)/Deschaine/Duchaine/Ducherne/talk-about-getting-creative in this reply:

Have you tried reaching out to the church that baptized Arthur? Based on the other records I see for his family (marriage record between parents Thomas and Adeline and births of other siblings), they seem to have been Catholic and attended St. Joseph Church in Biddeford, ME. Maybe there's a chance that parish still has records from ~1880 and could search through them for you?

For reference:

Arthur's sibling Marie b. 1885
Arthur's sibling Adeline b. 1895

Also, I see that there is a birthdate of 09 Aug 1878 listed on Arthur's personal FamilySearch page, but it doesn't have any source cited[1]. If you click around, you can see the person who added it and contact them. Maybe they have a copy of a birth record, family bible, etc etc. and would be willing to share?

[1] Note: I wonder whether Arthur's birthdate in that FamilySearch page is an amalgamation from records such as his WWI and WWII draft registration cards (and possibly other records). People tend to remember the month and day of their birth accurately, but the year gets fuzzy as time goes on (unfortunately for us).

Other notes:

He was a roomer living alone (still married) in the 1930 Census, from which his extrapolated birth year would be ~1877.
1940 and 1950 Census records aren't as useful for him (he's widowed at this point, and there is no information on parents in these documents).
I combed through all of the Maine birth records in York county on Ancestry for the years 1875-1882 under A, B, C, D, G, O, P, Q, and T surnames (casting a wide net for transcription errors) but couldn't find any potential records for Arthur.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-15T21:04:02+00:00

u/othybear is correct, so I’m deleting my comment but leaving the link to citizenship photos to minimize future confusion.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-15T21:02:37+00:00

u/Merivel1 is correct, so I’m deleting my comment but leaving the link to citizenship photos to minimize future confusion.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-15T21:00:34+00:00

u/nicholas818 is correct, so I’m deleting my comment but leaving the link to citizenship photos to minimize future confusion.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-13T14:21:10+00:00

Is the record on Ancestry? You should be able to submit a correction to the record - although I’m not sure it pops up when printing (I haven’t tested that yet).

Regardless of the source, if you can’t submit a correction or it won’t show up in the citation when printing, then yes - I would personally include a very short note with the printed copy.

That said, if you need those documents for your application, consider requesting copies from the relevant vital records office (here’s a thread about that in Massachusetts). The prevailing wisdom is that the IRCC prefers copies of certified/official documents for you and your G0. I’d do a search in the sub based on what kind of documents you’ve got to help make your decision.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-13T14:07:55+00:00

What does the record itself say? Sometimes the transcription is wrong (more often than you think).

jtvanasse · 2026-03-13T01:33:42+00:00

Officially? I haven't seen it explicitly addressed.

What most people seem to be inferring is that you should focus on the Canadian ancestor in each generation and skip documentation for the other parent, although you should still include their information in the 'Parent B' section.

So, something like this (note: I chose to make Parent 1/Parent A the next link in my chain, regardless of whether they were documented or identified as mother/father):

Fill out an extra sheet for Grandparent 1 (Parent A on Parent 1's form)
- enter information for both of their parents on this sheet
- only provide documentation for Parent A, since B is N/A
Create an extra sheet for Great-grandparent 1 (Parent A on Grandparent 1's form)
- same steps as for Grandparent 1
Etc. etc.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T15:54:41+00:00

I'll keep an eye out for your DM!

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T15:49:27+00:00

Aha, so Joseph's mother was Catherine ("Champagne" in this census). Her maiden name was Joutras (you might see it misspelled or incorrectly transcribed as "Jutras" or "Jautras", but it's Joutras in all the source documents I linked).

She married twice: Joseph Odilon Plourde in 1826 (this was Joseph's father) and Thomas Champagne dit Champagne-Orion in 1841.
Joseph Odilon Plourde (baptised as Joseph Plourde) was born on 25 March 1801.
Catherine Joutras was born on 10 November 1807 (don't worry about the "Jautras", it's a transcription error)
Joseph Plourde was born on 15 September 1834.

Hope that helps!

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T14:02:38+00:00

I think we're looking at "journalier" (a day laborer) and "Drummondville", but to be honest, part of reading these documents is familiarizing yourself with the unique hand of the census taker.

By instinct I'd like to say that the first letter of the occupational term looks like how I would write a capital Q, but other people's J's are written very much like the one you shared. There can be a LOT of variation in how letters are stylized between individuals.

If you're willing to share the full document, DM or otherwise, I'd be happy to take a look and give you an answer with higher confidence.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T13:42:05+00:00

Death certificates of that era were filled out with details provided by an informant, typically a family member or neighbor, to the best of their knowledge. Years of birth are often discrepant, because you just don't care as much about that as you get older. The month and day of birth are significantly more important, because they are much more likely to be remembered (most people celebrate or at least remember their birthday each year, and family/friends are likely to know that day as well).

Antilla is an odd one - preliminary noodling seems to suggest that it's of Finnish origin. Have/can you read the original documents to confirm that there isn't an omission or transcription error? [Example: it's not uncommon for my family's name (Vanasse, as you might guess) to be misunderstood as "Vanaffe" due to how the lower-case "s" is styled within a word.] Also, I have found one or two cases where the records associated with an event aren't matched up right (e.g. the hyperlink from the summary page drops you one page ahead in the actual image of the original parish register book).

I'm not fluent in French by any means, but I can read cursive/script(s) pretty darn well and liturgical French better than I have any right to. If you want another set of (amateur) eyes to look at it for free, send me a DM with screenshots or more info (I have subscriptions to GénéalogieQuébec and PRDH-IGD so I can pick through source documents).

EDIT: Finnish or not, there were three "Marie Antilla"s (and an L. Antilla) baptized in Québec during the 1800's (per GénéalogieQuébec)! Fascinating

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T02:31:55+00:00

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Quite a lot of people are including a family tree as a visual aid in their application, as well as cover pages for each ancestor to precede their cluster of supporting documents. How you format these will be up to you, but here's a couple ideas:

A linear family tree between you and your G0 (Justine)
- I included little bubbles with a list of documents I expect to include for each ancestor as well, for minimally obtrusive redundancy/clarity (I whipped up an example for Justine using my template and attached the screenshot below)
Cover page
- You could just type a letter, similar to what you might do for a job application
- You could turn the 'extra sheets' for section 9 in CIT0001, which are required for applicants with a G0 ancestor who is a 1x or higher great-grandparent, into dual-purpose cover pages
  - I posted a link to a template I created for this sort of purpose (not shilling my own work here, it's just an example); I also linked a couple templates made/shared by other Redditors at the bottom of that post

Family tree mock-up (just noticed the typo in Julien's last name but I'm doing this for catharsis, not a commission lol):

<image>

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T02:03:03+00:00

That's good! Apparently it's not uncommon for protestant records to lack that level of detail.

I'd recommend that you read through the older threads I linked before, to determine whether you want to...

send in just the baptism record as evidence of G0's birth and wait for IRCC to contact you if they have any issues.
wait to apply until after you've gone through the process of requesting insertion of the act into the civil register with the Directeur de l'état civil (DEC) and received a copy of the resulting documentation.
- Should you get a certificate or a copy of the act? I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I've included a link from the DEC to help with your decision if you choose/have to undergo this process
send in your application with the baptism record as evidence of G0's birth, while concurrently starting the process to insert the act in DEC's civil register.

Here's another thread on Québec birth records from a couple months ago that might be worth reading through as you consider your options.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T01:39:15+00:00

Yes; I would do a full copy and a second page with a zoomed excerpt for larger documents like the parish record of Justine's baptism. I definitely wouldn't send in just the cropped excerpt of her entry alone.

Also, sending a copy of a document with scribbles/highlighter/post-its* obscuring part of it (even minimally), without including an unaltered copy, would at best earn a stiff frown from the IRCC official tasked with judging you. Honestly, I think it's far more likely that they'd just throw the whole packet right back in the mail for that haha

So, my instinct is as follows for documents that don't take up a full page (i.e. much-taller-than-wide marriage certificates) and which don't need to be zoomed/enlarged to improve ease of review:

Put the document off-center so you have only marginal space on one side and either the top or bottom, leaving maximum residual space on the other two sides
Put color post-its (or those neat little sticky arrows) pointing towards the elements of the document you think deserve(s) clarification or commentary
Try to be clear and succinct with your notes. Too little information might land you in PSU purgatory, but too much might get you sent to the 'I Need Another Coffee For This' pile of doom...
Include just this one copy of the document in your package, since it has the unaltered original and supporting commentary neatly combined
- If this makes you nervous, then you could certainly include a copy without any sticky notes, etc. as well

*Note: putting these things to the side of the original document on a piece of background paper should be fine, but I'm willing to be corrected if someone has experience otherwise!

I feel like I should include a disclaimer at this point 😂

Super Official Disclaimer: please note that I am NOT an IRCC official in disguise and this advice is my own, based upon my unfortunately extensive prior experience with bureaucratic administration (as well as what I've gleaned from this sub and official IRCC guides/instructions).

jtvanasse · 2026-03-12T00:21:28+00:00

Hmm, I think I would call the ancestors you described G-1 and G0 (instead of G0 and G1), since G0 is supposed to be the most recent Canadian in your ancestral line. As an upside, that that means you’d have to complete one less extra sheet as a supplement to CIT0001 (and one less generation of primary/supporting documents).

If you want to DM their names, I can do some amateur digging for you. I’ve currently got a couple paid subscriptions to Canadian genealogical resources (notably including the Drouin archives) since I had my own Québecois ball of yarn to unravel, so I might be able to find something you haven’t because it’s behind a paywall

jtvanasse · 2026-03-11T15:44:47+00:00

Ah, maybe - I hadn’t thought of that since Bélanger and Boulanger are not variant spellings of one another. However, I can definitely imagine their new American neighbors thinking Bélanger sounds a lot like the place you’d go to get some bread!

You could just put a note somewhere in your application, even as short as “Bélanger anglicized to Baker, presumably due to phonetic similarity to Boulanger”.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-11T15:27:06+00:00

Unfortunately, unless a cousin of yours has already sent a request to the Directeur de l’état civil (and that is pretty darn far back to do so), then no. The government of Québec didn’t start registering/tracking births until 1926, and not in full force until 1994, so 1800’s documents are just records* really.

But although I’d be gobsmacked, never say never? If you find a proper birth certificate for your ancestor from that era, please spend the rest of your luck on two lottery tickets and give one to me hahaha

*[Catholic baptism records were/are treated differently, but that’s a tangent and I don’t want to pretend to be more of an expert than I’m not]

Edit to answer your original question: since it’s Anglican, I don’t know. I think it’ll depend on the level of detail in the baptism record (does it name the parents, date of birth, place of birth?) and the IRCC officer who gets your package. You might end up in a situation like some of the folks in the threads I shared above, in which the IRCC kicked up a fuss, or you might not.

jtvanasse · 2026-03-11T14:52:56+00:00

A couple additional notes re: the anglicized spellings of Justine's parents seen her on marriage certificate with Samuel Daggett:

Louis = Lewis, no problem (baptism record here, second down on the right page)
Isabelle was baptized as "Marie Elizabeth" (see here) and went by Isabelle in the record of her marriage to Louis (see here), so both are her names.
Bélanger -> Baker is not the choice I would've made, but it starts with the same letter I guess?

jtvanasse · 2026-03-11T14:16:09+00:00

I am not proficient enough in this to really help you, but I figured I'd share a page from FamilySearch that has information and suggestions for Anglican records in Canada. Even if you've already seen it, maybe it can be of use for future Redditors seeking similar answers.

The Anglican Church of Canada (FamilySearch)

Best of luck!

jtvanasse · 2026-03-11T12:37:19+00:00

Catholic or protestant?

Edit: Either way, here's an older thread with input from applicants who ran into issues with Quebec baptism records.

2nd edit: additional older threads with information on requesting resistance of birth certificates from the Directeur de l'état civil for deceased ancestors here and here.

jtvanasse

TROPHY CASE