Canadian Groups

My ancestry I know has French and English Canadian. The most recent group connected to me is the English as the most recent immigrant to New England from Canada was my great grandmother from Newfoundland. When it comes to my personal connections to this English Canadian side it is looser and I am not nearly as familiar with that side of my family.

The French Canadian in my family is connected through a set of my great grandparents to the Italian side. My great grandmother is French Canadian completely as far as I can tell. Considering the connection to the Italian side of my family and my great grandmother who I spent a lot of time with before she passed was 1 in 11, it is the next group I feel most connection to. That great grandmother spoke french growing up in New England and taught her children some when young but they went on to lose it due to lack of use. I believe that her children also learned it in school since a young age, but I was taught no French at that age. I did take a year of French in high school but switched to Spanish. I suck at learning languages in general though.

Project

Canadian Citizenship: Canada recently changed their rules around citizenship with Bill C-3 to right some historical wrongs about transferring citizenship down to children. It essentially boils down to anyone with provable Canadian citizens by today's rules in their ancestry now being considered Canadians by birth even when born abroad (got rid of most recent one generation limit). It applies to people born before December 2025. The thought of dual citizenship has been a dream for me for a long time even before I heard of this. Italy had lenient rules for a long time but certain things around ancestors naturalization would have prevented me from claiming it there. But I do qualify for citizenship to Canada under these new rules. It has served as a motivator to actually order records and not only look at records off of ancestry or family-search and to order some actual records myself from towns, Massachusetts archives, and Canadian provincial records. It also motivated me to talk to the less personally connected English Canadian side to ask questions about my great grandmother from Newfoundland. They were able to show me several interesting documents like baptism, a British Newfoundland passport, and more. I have enough proof to claim citizenship at this point. I am working on documents on the French side currently as I have mostly completed the English side (connecting my ancestry to Canada).

I just think it is really interesting that a nation could confirm a claim of connection through work I am passionate in. That genealogy can serve not just as a hobby but benefit beyond better understanding ones own identity as genealogy does for me. Also, just as I like looking at old documents and find the details and art interesting, I also like the modern records. I like looking at what details there are under a black light on US passports. From what I know there is a lot more detail on Canadian passports, and I think that would be cool to see.