Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society

April 2018 meeting

Our next Toronto Branch meeting will take place on Monday, April 23 starting at 7:30 pm at Lansing United Church at Poyntz Avenue and Beecroft Road in North York.

Our main speaker at the April meeting will be the author of Driv’n by Fortune, a book about the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders — a Scots regiment that settled in Canada. Sam Allison will discuss the sources used to trace these military migrants, and highlight some of the problems that both historians and genealogists may encounter in their research, including same names, false names, spellings, changing place names, false assumptions, statistical errors and historical myths. Please join us for Tracking an 18th Century Highland Regiment. After the break, we’ll enjoy a short presentation by Georgie Kennedy on The Search for Ruth.

If you can, come early and join the Members Network in advance of the main meeting, beginning at 6:15 p.m. — share your family history experiences and questions with fellow members in a friendly informal setting.

Lansing United Church is a short walk from the Sheppard-Yonge subway station (look for the exit to Poyntz Avenue). Parking on local streets is free after 6:00 p.m and there are pay parking options nearby. Please leave the few spaces in the church parking lot for members with accessibility needs.

Toronto Branch meetings are free to attend and open to all. Visit our Meetings page to find out more.

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Toronto Research Tip: City directories

City directories are key sources for Toronto research. Most contain an alphabetical list of inhabitants, as well as an alphabetical street list identifying occupants at each address. By cross-checking both lists, you can find out where your ancestor lived at a particular date and with whom, and who else was in the neighbourhood. You may even discover what your ancestor did for a living and the name of his or her employer. Browse through the advertisements and other listings in the directories to really get a sense of the city at the time your ancestor called it home.

Bound hard-copy Toronto directories from 1833 to 2001 are available in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department reading room on the 2nd floor of the Toronto Reference Library. But you can also access most of these on-line from your home computer. Directories up to 1969 have now been digitized — some with funding from Toronto Branch — and can be accessed through the Toronto Public Library’s website. You’ll find more information as well as a handy chart with direct links to all the digital versions on our City Directories page.