Canada, WWII Service Files of War Dead, 1939-1947

A collection released a couple of weeks back by Ancestry's Canadian wing may be of interest to those in the UK with Canadian connections.

Entitled Canada, WWII Service Files of War Dead, 1939-1947, it is available at http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=9145 via a Worldwide subscription, and carries the following description on the site:

Canada entered the Second World War on 10 September 1939. More than a million Canadians served in the armed forces, representing about 10 percent of the entire population. Around 45,000 lost their lives.

This collection contains case files of nearly 45,000 Canadian military personnel killed in the Second World War. Over 29,000 of the case files have been indexed and can be searched using the provided search fields. Images for the remaining case files may be browsed, and will be indexed in a later update to this collection.

The files include attestation papers, death certificates, and photos of the soldiers. Information found on the documents varies, but can include a wide variety of details, such as:

soldier's name
date and place of birth
address
religion
marital status
names and birthdates of children
military service
physical description
education
occupational history
parents’ names
next of kin and address

Some records are in French. Use the arrow keys to make sure you see all the pages related to your ancestor.

The source is Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx)

Sherman tank as a war memorial, North York, Toronto

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.