Access the digitized microfilm reels on Héritage
This reference guide was created by CRKN staff in 2022 to assist researchers in navigating this series.
About the records
Until 1917, two federal departments - Agriculture, followed by the Interior - were responsible for immigration. In 1917, the Department of Immigration and Colonization was established. Since then, Immigration has existed as a separate department, except for the period from 1936 to 1949, when it was the responsibility of Mines and Resources. Today, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is the department of the government of Canada with responsibility for issues dealing with immigration and citizenship. The department was established in 1994 following a reorganization within the federal government.
This collection is part of the Records of Entry collection, which is a body of immigration records which document the arrival of individual immigrants in Canada - and hence their legal status under the Immigration Act and other federal laws - from 1865 to the present day.
This collection consists of manifest indexes for 1906-1920. The index is organized chronologically by date of arrival for each ship, regardless of the port. The indexes include arrivals at the port of Quebec, Halifax and Saint John. The indexes include the names of the passengers for each ship, which are provided in alphabetical order by surname.
Passenger lists were the official records of immigration in these years. They are arranged by port and date of arrival.
Starting in 1906, immigration staff began indexing the names found in the passenger lists. Instead of making a master index, each passenger list was indexed separately. These are called manifest indexes. They include the ports of Quebec, Halifax, and Saint John from March 1, 1906 to the end of December 1920. The indexes are arranged by date of arrival rather than by port. Some of the lists are not in exact date sequence.
There are two series of manifest indexes:
• Main series: microfilms T-521 to T-529, T-5520 to T-5569, and T-16185 to T-16191.
• Retakes : microfilms T-530 to T-533, T-5509 to T-5518.
Some of the indexes were poorly microfilmed or missed in the original filming. They were filmed again and called Retakes.
The paper copies of these manifest indexes were destroyed after they were microfilmed.
For each manifest index there is a title page with the name of the ship, port and date of arrival. That is followed by a series of one or more alphabetical lists that show these details:
• Name
• Age
• Destination
• Page and line number on the passenger list
• Ticket number
For some lists, there is one index of names. For other lists, there is an index for each group of passengers on the ship, such as First Class, Second Class, Steerage and Steerage to U.S.A.
In some cases, the title page was filmed too darkly and may be impossible to read. That may make it difficult to determine the ship and date.
If you find your ancestor’s name in one of the indexes, it will tell you the page number on the actual passenger list. You can then look at that list in this database Passenger Lists for the Port of Quebec City and Other Ports, 1865-1922.
Here is an example:
• On microfilm T-532, here is the title page for the Parisian, which arrived at Quebec on 21 June 1907.
• On this image, we see the name of Horsyok Danglo, destination Montreal.
• It indicates that his name appears on page 19, line 24 of that Parisian passenger list.
Tip: When you look at an actual passenger list, note that a page number is not the same as a digital image (page) number.
You can see the full list by clicking here.
Manifest Indexes, 1906 to 1920
Manifest Indexes (retake series): 1906-1920