La Société généalogique du Nord-Ouest

01/24/2026

https://lp.ca/wVazJy?sharing=true

Vous voulez acheter une vieille église et la transformer en condos ? En musée ? En centre communautaire ? Pensez-y à deux fois. Surtout si vous entamez des rénovations de fond. Il y a de bonnes chances que vous trouviez des squelettes dans la cave… Un dossier de Jean-Christophe Laurence

01/17/2026

12/10/2025

Saviez-vous que la SGNO (Société généalogique du Nord-Ouest) possède une vaste collection de ressources (imprimées et numériques) pour retracer des ascendances métisses, notamment la série exceptionnelle de livres de la généalogiste Gail Morin. Au total, la SGNO détient 98 de ses ouvrages, répartis en plusieurs séries [ Métis Families, Fur Traders Families of Quebec, Fur Traders Families of the Pacific Northwest, MNO Root Ancestors, Company Men, Country Wives, Census Indexes, Parish Indexes, etc. ] qui sont essentielles pour toute personne effectuant des recherches sur une ascendance métisse dans l’Ouest canadien, en Ontario, au Québec et dans le Nord-Ouest des États-Unis. Les six premières séries énumérées offrent des ouvrages présentant des lignées familiales détaillées et précises, tirées de registres paroissiaux, dossiers de SCRIP, de recensements et documents liés à la traite des fourrures. Pour plus d’informations ou pour obtenir de l’aide, n’hésitez pas à visiter la SGNO dans notre centre de recherche à Edmonton (102 - 8627 91e Rue NO), à consulter notre site Internet https://www.sgno.ca, ou à nous contacter à info@sgno.ca

12/10/2025

Did you know that the SGNO (Société généalogique du Nord-Ouest) has a large collection of resources (print and digital) for tracing Métis ancestry, most notably the exceptional series of printed books by the genealogist Gail Morin. In total, the SGNO holds 98 of her works, divided into several series [ Métis Families, Fur Traders Families of Quebec, Fur Traders Families of the Pacific Northwest, MNO Root Ancestors, Company Men, Country Wives, Census Indexes, Parish Indexes, etc. ] that are essential for anyone researching Métis ancestry in Western Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and the Northwestern USA. The first six series listed offer books with detailed and accurate family lineages drawn from parish records, SCRIP files, census records, and fur-trade documents. For more information or assistance, feel free to visit the SGNO at our research centre in Edmonton (102 - 8627 91 St NW), check out our website at https://www.sgno.ca, or contact us at info@sgno.ca

12/04/2025

GENEALOGY ADDICT - DID YOU KNOW ?

Dit Names: Spoken Memory in Nouvelle-France

When the first settlers crossed from France to Québec in the 17th century, they carried more than tools and prayers. They carried names — and often, they carried two.

A dit name (from the French dit, meaning “said” or “called”) was a second surname, a spoken marker of place, kinship, or survival. It wasn’t a legal title, but a lived one. A man might be born Simard, but known as Simard dit Lombrette — Lombrette being the name of the land he settled, the family who raised him, or the trait that defined him.

These names helped distinguish one branch from another in a colony where surnames multiplied and records blurred. A dit name might reflect:

- Geography: La Rochelle, Lombrette, Beaupré — anchoring the settler to a place.
- Occupation or trait: Lejeune, Le Sage, La Forge — marking skill or character.
- Adoption or gratitude: honoring a godparent, a maternal line, or a family who took them in.
- Military service: soldiers often received dit names to distinguish themselves within regiments.

Some names were passed down. Others faded after a generation. Some families kept both names, others dropped one or the other depending on the parish, the scribe, or the season.

For genealogists, dit names are both a gift and a puzzle. They reveal movement, kinship, and story — but they also complicate the trail. One man might appear in records under three names, depending on who wrote them and when.

But for descendants, dit names are a kind of spoken memory. They remind us that identity was never fixed — it was shaped by land, labor, and love.

To read Simard dit Lombrette is to hear the echo of Puymoyen carried across the sea, stone laid in Beaupré, and a father and son choosing the unknown together.

Historical Timeline
- 17th century (New France):
- The name Lombrette appears in colonial records as a dit name and as a concession of land in the Beaupré area.
- It was used to distinguish branches of families (e.g., Simard dit Lombrette) and to anchor them to a specific tract of land.
- There was no incorporated municipality or parish called Lombrette at this time.
- The dit name Lombrette means “a little shade.” One tradition holds that the Simard family was not tall and thus cast small shadows; another maintains that a village of this name existed near Puymoyen. Yet no evidence of such a place has been found near Puymoyen or Angoulême, France.

Final Thoughts:
In the end, Lombrette was not a village carried from France, but a name rooted in New France — a spoken memory that marked one branch of the Simards as they laid stone in Beaupré. ©

11/23/2025

New ChatGPT (5.1) and Genealogy work:

We have an AI that finally follows instructions. Here's what that means for your genealogy work.

11/16/2025

Immédiatement après l’AGA de la SGNO, le mercredi 19 novembre 2025 à 19 h (heure d’Edmonton), vous pourrez assister à une causerie intitulée "En 1936, un Métis de « 130 ans » décède : Peokus, Griffe-de-Faisan, Jean-Baptiste Lapointe. Qui était-il ?", animée en français par madame Juliette Champagne, PhD. La causerie durera environ 45 minutes.

Vous pouvez participer à la causerie en ligne via Zoom (en mode virtuel) ou en personne, au local 102 de la Cité Francophone, situé au 8627 - 91e rue. Pour en savoir plus, consultez la page dédiée à cette causerie sur le site Internet de la SGNO :

Causerie SGNO

11/06/2025

Practical and Enriching Basic Genealogy Workshop

Join us for the next session of the French SIG: a practical and enriching Basic Genealogy Workshop – with a focus on French-Canadian Research, presented in English and offered in a hybrid format (in person at the SGNO center at La Cité Francophone and online via Zoom). This workshop is designed to help you strengthen your genealogical research skills, whether you are just beginning or already have experience.

Jean-Yves Vanier-Verbeek, president of the Société généalogique du Nord-Ouest (SGNO), member of AGS Edmonton, and leader of the French SIG, will share his expertise on the steps to follow and the specific tools you need to research your family history, with a focus on French-Canadian genealogy. Come and uncover the fascinating stories hidden in your family tree!

For more detailed information and to register visit:

https://www.edmontongenealogy.ca/french-sig

11/02/2025

Voici un article intéressant de ce matin dans La Presse+ intitulé « Pour que revive la fête des Morts » : https://1drv.ms/b/c/ffe81a28307117d7/ESP9HXStINhLjJVfd3qytYIBrwSV2vIdHyTBZmousr3mCw?e=dfaxpS

11/02/2025

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2025-11-02/pour-que-revive-la-fete-des-morts.php?utm_campaign=internal+share&utm_content=ulink&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=lpp&redirectedFrom=https%253A%252F%252Fplus.lapresse.ca%252Fscreens%252F7c0726ad-621d-4400-9bcb-2d9f6120be56__7C___0.html%253Futm_campaign%253Dinternal%252520share%2526utm_content%253Dulink%2526utm_medium%253Dreferral%2526utm_source%253Dlpp

08/15/2025

L’équipe du Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson a appris avec une grande tristesse le décès de Stephen White, qui a œuvré pendant de nombreuses années comme généalogiste au sein de notre institution.

Son travail, fut reconnu et apprécié bien au-delà de nos murs. Son dévouement pour la généalogie à profondément marqué la recherche et la mémoire collective acadienne.

Nous tenons à exprimer nos plus sincères condoléances à sa famille, à ses amis ainsi qu’à toutes les personnes qui ont eu le privilège de le connaître et de collaborer avec lui.

07/11/2025

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR RESEARCH IN THE NOTARIAL ARCHIVES OF QUEBEC:

A powerful new search method to locate notarial acts in the notarized archives of Quebec and New France is now available on the FamilySearch website.
It is a method based on artificial intelligence and handwriting recognition technology.

In brief: The full-text search tool has been deployed on the collection of notarial archives of Quebec and New France on the FamilySearch site. To learn more about the Full-Text Search tool, please consult the following article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/full-text-search-experimental-ai

What does this mean?

As you probably know, the collection of digitized notarial archives is available on the sites of BAnQ, Ancestry, and FamilySearch, in addition to the notary indexes and directories (ie "Repertoires") found on the Généalogie Québec website.

Before the arrival of this new search method using Full-Text Search, you first had to locate indexed information about notarial acts (found in databases and on sites such as Parchemin [archiv-histo.com], Nos Origines, Ancestry.ca, PRDH, etc.), or in books, like the 27-volume series of "Inventaires des greffes des notaires du régime français de Pierre-Georges Roy, Antoine Roy et autres". Then, with this specific information for an act (name of the notary, date of the act, and names of the people involved), you generally had to browse the notarial records online, image by image, to find a specific act.

From now on, thanks to FamilySearch’s Full-Text Search, there is a more efficient way to find acts without having to browse the notarial records online, image by image!

Here is an example concerning one of my ancestors, Jean Vanier. In the Parchemin database, we find the summary of a notarial contract: “une quittance de François Barbau, époux actuel de Madeleine Vanier, de Charlebour proche Québec, à Jean Vanier…”, written by notary J.-C. Raimbault of Piedmont, dated October 30, 1731. This same act is also summarized on page 125 of volume 21 of "Inventaires des greffes des notaires du régime français" (section of notary Joseph Charles Raimbault):
“Quittance par François Barbau, de Charlesbourg près de Québec procureur de Madeleine Vanier sa femme, à Jean Vanier, pour 210 livres pour droits et prétentions en la succession de défunt Guillaume Vanier, père de la dite Madeleine Vanier. (30 octobre 1731).”

Before today, to obtain the image of this notarial contract, you had to go to one of the sites mentioned above (BAnQ, Ancestry, or FamilySearch), first locate the collection of notarial archives, then browse the images to find the act in question. Sometimes, the acts are not in chronological order, which can make the search quite long.

Now, it is much easier. Simply go to the FamilySearch site, and more specifically access the Full-Text Search tool in the FamilySearch Labs section: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text (Note that a free account is required to access the tool.)

In the Keywords box, type “Jean Vanier,” and in the Year box, enter 1731. Then click Search… The first result that appears is the quittance act of October 30, 1731, between François Barbaut and Jean Vanier!

This is obviously an exemplary case and a brand-new search method, so results may vary — but it is an extremely promising tool! You will also notice that Full-Text Search finds all other acts where the searched name appears. For example, Full-Text Search found 10 other notarial contracts involving my Jean Vanier for the year 1731, as well as for a few years before and after.

And as a bonus, artificial intelligence attempts to produce a full transcription, displayed to the right of the image. From what I can see, so far, the transcriptions are not very accurate, but it is still a good start to help us decipher the text. This will surely improve over time.

In short, a representative of FamilySearch announced at their annual RootsTech 2025 conference last March that Full-Text Search would be applied to the Quebec notarial archives — and here it is!

Happy researching, and I wish you wonderful discoveries!

Jean-Yves Vanier-Verbeek
President of the Société généalogique du Nord-Ouest (SGNO)