Dear Listers, In Vancouver, B.C. (1980) someone very close to me changed their entire name and, yes, it was a requirement that one had to notify the Dept. of Vital Statistics and it was then required to be published in the paper. In fact I believe you had to show evidence of the publication by sending a copy of the section of the paper to a specific Vital Statistics department. There was a section in the classified ad portion of the 'Vancouver Sun' newspaper titled 'change of names' and it is surprising how many various name changes were entered there. I believe the fee was only $10.00 to do this! I hope this information is of help. Unfortunately I have not been following the story of Jarek's uncle so am not sure what the dates involved were. I wonder how easy it would be to get old copies of the Vancouver Sun newspaper. It would of course help to know approximately when the change of name may have occurred. Best of luck with this search. Alannah