Adoption Records
Getting Started
This guide has had minor revisions January 2014 and August 2015.
With recent changes in provincial legislation across Canada, it is now possible for adoptees to often obtain health related information, adoption orders and even their own birth information form. They can also register that they do, or do not, wish to be contacted by their birth paren'ts. Similarly, birth paren'ts can register their wishes about being contacted. If these avenues are insufficient or for more general resources on searching for lost kin, including high school yearbooks, the genealogical collections at the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Toronto Reference Library can be of assistance.
Searching the library website
Suggested subject and keywords:
- adopted children
- adoptees
- birthmothers [country] e.g. birthmothers Canada
- birthparen'ts [country] e.g. birthparen'ts Canada
- [place name] Directories e.g. Kingston Ont directories
- voting registers [place name] e.g. voting registers North York
- student newspapers and periodicals – Ontario for an overview of school yearbooks and magazines
- [name of school and place] and yearbook e.g. Jarvis Collegiate Toronto yearbook
- [surname] family e.g. Sutherland family for family histories
- voting registers [place name] e.g. voting registers North York
Suggested Titles
Ontario specific
- Adoption notices taken from [some Ontario] newpapers. (up to 1994)
- Index of adoption notices published in the Ottawa Journal (1960 – 1980)
- Search manual for adoptees and birth relatives[Ontario]. (published 1997)
General
- Finding families, finding ourselves: English Canada encounters adoption from the nineteenth century to the 1990s
- Finding anyone, anywhere, anywhen
- Letters to Muriel: a search for kin
- Traffic in babies: cross-border adoption and baby-selling between the United States and Canada, 1930 – 1972
- Who is my mother? birth paren'ts, adoptive paren'ts, and adoptees talk about living with adoption and the search for lost family
Using online resources
British Columbia adoptions and reunion registries
New Brunswick post-adoption disclosure services
Toronto Star: Historical Newspaper Archive (Toronto Public Library (TPL) card required)
Globe and Mail: Historical Newspaper Archive (TPL library card required)
In Library resources
Ancestry Library Edition database has Ontario births (to 1913), marriages (to 1928), and deaths (to 1938) as well as some databases for other provinces.
Additional resources:
- cemetery transcriptions from the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) Collection
- family charts (OGS)
The Ontario Genealogical Society deposit library collection is housed at the Toronto Reference Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Department.
For further assistance contact
Answerline: 416-393-7131
answerline@torontopubliclibrary.ca
Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Toronto Reference Library, 416-393-7175
3 thoughts on “Adoption Records”
Congratulations and a big thanks from the adoption community for this very useful page!
Karen Lynn
Canadian Council of Natural Mothers
Looking for my nephew. Born in Toronto, Ontario, possibly 1970.
Mother’s maiden name is Ronna Nicholson
As you are seeking information on a living person, born fairly recently, there is little that a library can do, as the information you seek is not public. If the birth mother is still alive, then she would be able to request the necessary information. As a “sibling of a birth paren’t”, all you would be able to obtain from the Ontario government is “non-identifying information”. Suggest you consult the following website. http://www.ontario.ca/government/search-adoption-records for further details.”