Bruce: In Canada the provinces are each responsible for their own public records. They vary in the period required before disclosure. Here in BC they are 100 years for births, and 25 or 30 for deaths - longer for marriages. I've forgotten precisely since I haven't done a search in some years. In BC they have all been indexed. Other provinces, I have found, are not so accommodating. Anything in the BC records I can search - get the film information, and go down to the Provincial Archives here in Victoria - pull the film and make a copy. I pay for the photocopy. I have offered to do that for anyone who needs BC records. Victoria is the provincial capital, and anyone would have to come here, or pay to have the archives provide the documentation. The indexes (indices) are found through the Province of BC website in vital statistics . They are not too badly hidden. I suggest that you go whichever provincial website you need and find out there how you can obtain the records, although I think you may have to get a little older before you can get the late '50s. If it's in BC, I'll be glad to help any way I can. Mac Carpenter > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:58:13 -0000 > From: "Bruce Dorward" <personal@dorrit41jbd.bbmax.co.uk> > Subject: [ANGUS] Companies offering "access to public records" > To: "Angus List" <Angus@rootsweb.com> > Message-ID: <393706D1935A4207A40CF9404612796F@LENOVO933EDC27> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > I would like to look up records of my great-grandfather's relatives in Canada and their decendants which means finding BMD records outside the period covered by, say, Ancestry on-line. I need to get as far as the late 1950s at least. Other than going to a public record office or library with microfilm copies in Canada there seems to be no other way of getting this information. > > A Google search brings up several US based organisations that claim to be able to access public records, legally and confidentially, for a remarkably low fee. I tried the "sampler" on one such web-site (OnlinePublicRecordsSearch.com) and the search engine produced a report saying that some considerable amount of records information was available ... but naturally I would have to pay the subscription to see it. Actually I would have been happy to know his address at the time of his death and where he was buried but anything else, such as the date of his divorce, would have been interesting. > > Has anyone on the list ever used such a service? If so were the results worth having and were there any unforseen problems? > > Cheers, > Bruce D > > ------------------------------ > > >