Quebec has more genealogical data per capita than almost anywhere on earth. The combination of Catholic parish record-keeping starting in 1621, the small founding population (about 8,500 people whose descendants make up most of present-day French Quebec), and a near-obsessive culture of family-tree research means that for most Quebec ancestries the records exist. The challenge is knowing which database to query for which year.
This is a deep dive into the four main Quebec-specific genealogy resources: the PRDH-IGD, the Drouin Collection, BMS2000, and the Tanguay Dictionary. Use it alongside the general research guide in Tracing Canadian ancestry with DNA, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, and FamilySearch.
PRDH-IGD — the gold standard for pre-1850 Quebec
The Programme de recherche en démographie historique, or PRDH-IGD, is the most authoritative Quebec genealogical database. It was built by demographers at the Université de Montréal and indexes essentially every recorded baptism, marriage, and burial in Quebec from 1621 to 1849.
What makes it different from the commercial databases: PRDH-IGD links individuals into family units. A search for one ancestor returns not just their record but their parents, siblings, spouse, and children — already disambiguated by the database's curators. This is a massive time-saver. Where Ancestry might return 47 possible matches for "Joseph Tremblay born around 1820 in Quebec," PRDH-IGD returns three, each with parents and a marriage record already linked.
Subscription: $29 CAD per month or $250 CAD per year. Worth it for the duration of the research. Most descent applications can be completed within a month, so the monthly plan is typically sufficient.
PRDH-IGD limitations:
- Coverage ends in 1849. For ancestors who lived past mid-century, you need to switch to BMS2000 or the Drouin Collection.
- French interface only (though the database fields are mostly self-explanatory once you know the abbreviations).
- Returns no record images — only transcriptions. To get a primary-source image (which IRCC prefers), you cross-reference the PRDH record ID into FamilySearch's Drouin scans.
The workflow for most American applicants with French-Canadian ancestry:
- PRDH-IGD to identify the specific ancestor and their parish.
- FamilySearch Drouin Collection to retrieve the actual scanned image.
- The local diocesan archive to obtain a certified extract for IRCC.
Drouin Collection — every Quebec parish register, scanned
The Drouin Collection is a microfilmed and now digitised archive of every Catholic parish register in Quebec from 1621 to 1968. The collection takes its name from Gabriel Drouin, the Quebec genealogist who began microfilming the parish registers in the 1940s.
The full Drouin Collection is hosted on FamilySearch (free) and Ancestry (paid, with better search). For most American applicants, FamilySearch is sufficient. The collection contains roughly 6 million pages.
What's useful: the actual scanned image of the original parish register page is what IRCC adjudicators look at. The clerk's handwriting, the parish stamp, the priest's signature — these are all visible. A scanned Drouin page is treated by IRCC as primary-source evidence.
What's tricky: the records are in French, handwritten, and use 17th-19th century French abbreviations. "Bie" for "baptisme", "fils légitime de" for "legitimate son of", names sometimes contracted to two letters. The Drouin Institute publishes a free PDF guide to reading these abbreviations.
For Americans without French, the Drouin Collection works fine for finding the record. Reading it well enough to extract names, dates, and parish requires either basic French or a Quebec-genealogy-experienced helper. A Quebec genealogist will do this for $30–$50 per record extracted.
BMS2000 — post-1850 Quebec
BMS2000 (Baptisme-Mariage-Sépulture, "2000" for the year of the project) is the modern continuation of PRDH-IGD for 1850–2000. It's run by a consortium of Quebec genealogical societies and covers approximately 19 million records.
Subscription: $50 CAD per year or pay-per-search at $1–$3 per result. The annual plan is the better deal if you need more than 20 records.
BMS2000 picks up where PRDH-IGD leaves off. For an ancestor born in 1880, BMS2000 is the right tool. For an ancestor born in 1830 or earlier, PRDH-IGD has better data.
Crucially, BMS2000 indexes both the Catholic parish registers AND the civil registration that Quebec began in 1926 (parallel to but separate from the parish records). For 20th-century ancestors, this dual coverage matters because some families baptised in the parish and never registered with the civil authorities, while others did the reverse.
Tanguay Dictionary — the genealogical bedrock
Abbé Cyprien Tanguay published his Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes in seven volumes between 1871 and 1890. It indexed every French-Canadian marriage from 1608 to 1763, the entire French regime period. Tanguay's volumes were the first comprehensive Quebec genealogy reference and remain useful for very old lineages.
Tanguay is freely available on FamilySearch (scanned originals) and is incorporated into both PRDH-IGD and the Drouin Collection. For most modern users, you don't query Tanguay directly — its contents are integrated into the other databases. But you'll see "Tanguay vol. III, p. 247" referenced in older genealogical sources, and knowing what that means matters for verifying claims.
Tanguay is reliable for marriages — his data was painstakingly transcribed from parish registers — but his vital-record data has been refined and corrected over the past 150 years. When PRDH-IGD and Tanguay disagree, PRDH-IGD wins (their cleanup was more recent and methodical).
The Carignan-Salières Regiment and the Filles du Roi
These two source-groups are worth knowing about because they're the bottom of most French-Canadian family trees.
The Carignan-Salières Regiment was a French military unit sent to New France in 1665 to fight the Iroquois. About 1,200 soldiers came; roughly 400 stayed after their tour, marrying local women or arriving Filles du Roi. Their names are documented in regimental rolls held at the Service historique de la Défense in France and indexed in Quebec genealogy databases.
The Filles du Roi ("King's Daughters") were 770 young women sent by Louis XIV to New France between 1663 and 1673 to marry the male colonists and establish families. The records of their crossings and marriages are exceptionally complete. If your ancestry traces to one of them, the chain back to her place of origin in France is usually also documentable.
Roughly 80% of present-day French Quebecers (and their American descendants) trace one or more lineages back to either a Carignan-Salières soldier or a Fille du Roi. The Cloutier line (Angelina Jolie's traced ancestry) connects to the Carignan-Salières wave through one of the regiment's officers.
Acadian records — different system
Acadian genealogy is separate from Quebec genealogy. Acadians lived in present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI. After the 1755 Deportation, their records were scattered and many were destroyed. The surviving Acadian records are held at:
For applicants with Acadian ancestry (including those in Louisiana descended from Deportation refugees), the research path is different. We cover it in Acadian and Maritime genealogy for Canadian citizenship.
Practical: a typical research session in PRDH-IGD
Concrete example. You know your great-great-grandfather was Antoine Bouchard, born around 1855 in Quebec. He emigrated to Manchester, New Hampshire, around 1880. Here's the workflow:
- Open PRDH-IGD. Search for "Bouchard, Antoine" with year of birth 1850–1860.
- PRDH-IGD returns 23 hits. Most have a spouse or parents already linked.
- Look at the parents column. You know from family memory or US Census data that Antoine's mother was named Marie Tremblay. One of the 23 hits has parents Joseph Bouchard and Marie Tremblay. That's likely your match.
- Click through. PRDH-IGD shows Antoine's full family unit: parents, three brothers, two sisters, spouse (married 1878 in St-Siméon, Charlevoix), and one child born before emigration. Source citation given.
- Cross-check with the Drouin Collection on FamilySearch: navigate to St-Siméon parish records, 1855 baptisms. Find Antoine Bouchard's baptismal entry on January 14, 1855. Download the image.
- Request a certified extract from the Charlevoix diocesan archives ($30 CAD).
That's one generation documented. The same workflow repeats for Antoine's parents (Joseph Bouchard born around 1825 in Charlevoix), and his grandparents, and so on back through Tanguay's coverage into the 17th century.
What IRCC accepts from these sources
For proof of citizenship applications, IRCC accepts:
- Certified extracts from diocesan or parish archives — gold standard. Always preferable when available.
- BAnQ-certified copies of vital records — the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec issues certified copies of civil registrations from 1926 onward.
- PRDH-IGD printout with the source citation — accepted as supporting evidence, but works best paired with a Drouin image.
- FamilySearch Drouin Collection image with source citation — accepted; IRCC's adjudicators are familiar with the format.
- BMS2000 printout — accepted as supporting evidence; pair with primary source where possible.
What IRCC won't accept on its own:
- Ancestry's "Family Tree" entries unsourced.
- Tanguay alone (use it to find the record, then get the parish source).
- DNA test results.
The application's documentary chain is covered in Documents required for proof of Canadian citizenship application — full checklist.
Source: Resource list verified against the Quebec Genealogical Society directory and the BAnQ guide to civil registration. Database descriptions current as of May 2026.
A small portion of this article — research support, fact-cross-checking, and copy-editing — was assisted by AI tooling. Editorial decisions, source verification, and final sign-off remain with our team. We cite primary sources from canada.ca for every factual claim.
