How are websites useful?
Understanding how death records are collected and organized will make your research that much more effective. There are many websites that contain authoritative information on researching death records.
Since vital registration is a provincial responsibility in Canada, the most authoritative resource for Ontario death registrations is the Archives of Ontario. The links on the right explain how death registrations were collected and how to access them.
Death Registration Websites
Finding a Death Registration - A Pathfinder
Created by the Archives of Ontario, this pathfinder clearly lays out how to find a death registration for an Ontario death, and includes other resources for obtaining these records.
Pathfinder to Death Registrations
This pathfinder from the Archives of Ontario (PDF format) is a handy one-page guide for locating death registrations in Ontario.
The Archives of Ontario microfilms and makes death registrations available to the public. In order to locate a record, you first need to find it in the index, which will in turn point you to the record. By consulting the table on this website, you can find the correct "reel" of the index for the death record you are searching for.
What to Search: Deaths/Burials
This webpage from Library and Archives Canada provides links for obtaining death registrations in Canadian provinces and territories. As death registrations are under provincial jurisdiction, LAC does not hold any records themselves, but this page provides links and resources for each province and territory.
