Researching your Toronto ancestors in the early 20th century just became a little easier!
Thanks to funding from Toronto Branch and a partnership between the Toronto Public Library and Internet Archive, city directories for eight “missing” years between 1910 and 1926 have now been digitized and are available to search free on-line.
City directories are among the most important sources for Toronto research. Most contain an alphabetical list of inhabitants, as well as a list of streets showing the occupiers at each address. This allows you to find out not only where your ancestor was living at a particular date and with whom, but also who your ancestor’s neighbours were at the time. The directories will often contain information about a person’s occupation and/or employer too.
The bound hard-copy versions of Toronto directories from 1833 to 2001 can be found at the Toronto Reference Library. Digitized versions—now up to 1926—are available through the Toronto Public Library’s website.
The Toronto city directories newly added to the Internet Archive collection are for the years 1910, 1915, 1916, 1920, 1923, 1924, 1925 and 1926.
You’ll find direct links to these and all the digitized Toronto directories on our City Directories page. Explore away!