Researching Family History

Passenger & Immigration Lists - British Columbia

Passenger and Immigration lists can hold valuable information. They can indicate addresses, destinations and names of other family members. Note that census records often include the year a person arrived in Canada, which can be helpful in narrowing down dates for passenger and immigration list records. The 1901 census is the first to include information on the year of arrival and year of naturalization. 

Online

Ancestry Library Edition

  • “Canadian Passenger Lists: 1865-1935” - searchable by name, port, ship, arrival/departure dates, with digital images of records (this includes records for the ports of Victoria, and Vancouver).
  • “Canadian Immigration Records:1790-1906” - searchable by name. Transcriptions of records.

Library & Archives Canada 

  • Home page for information on passenger lists and links to resources for ship’s passenger lists (ocean arrivals) as well as border entries.

Print

There are also numerous books of passenger list arrivals (that may not have been captured, or incorrectly indexed, in the online resources) and a variety of books on the topic of immigration to Canada. Browse the bookshelves in the 929.3 area. General books about Immigration are in the 325 area.

Microfilm

Microfilms for all Canadian incoming passenger lists are available at the library.  The films are organized by port of arrival and date.  For details on the microfilms, see section 3-10 of the library’s guide: Canadian Family History Resources