Are Your Ancestors Canadian? Here's What to Know About Becoming a Citizen.

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TORONTO -- Six months after Canada expanded its citizenship eligibility to people with ancestral ties to the country, genealogists, archivists and government vital records offices have mobilized to respond to the flood of new requests for historical information.

People who can prove a direct Canadian-born ancestor -- a grandparent, great-grandparent or someone even further back -- can claim citizenship as of December 2025, after a legal decision that found it unconstitutional to restrict citizenship rights beyond the first generation.

Applicants are now crowdsourcing their knowledge and sharing experiences to help others navigate the process. Americans make up 48% of those applying for Canadian citizenship.

For some people, citizenship opens up possibilities to reconnect to their family roots, provide a safe haven from the political instability in the United States or to qualify for Canada’s social programs, like healthcare and a subsidized university education.

Just months into President Donald Trump’s second term, Doug and Laurie Junkins were ready to leave the United States for good. They worried about their daughter, who is transgender, amid sweeping policies and funding cuts targeted at the group by the administration.

Canada was a natural choice for relocation, an easy drive north of their home in Seattle. After an hourlong meeting with a Canadian immigration lawyer, the couple, in their late 50s, became dispirited about their prospects.

“Right at the end of the conversation, Doug said, ‘Oh, too bad my Canadian grandfather can’t help us,’ and it was like a record scratch,” said Laurie Junkins, a personal trainer who also has Canadian ancestry. The lawyer lit up, and gave the couple some good news: Those Canadian connections offered a pathway in.

It was a huge relief for Junkins, speaking from the family’s new home in Victoria, British Columbia. “I don’t think we have ever been happier than we are now,” she said.

Here’s how to navigate the new rules for Canadian citizenship.

First, unearth your family history

Genealogy websites were the first resources that Matt May, a career consultant for tech workers, tapped into to unravel his family’s migration from Quebec to Massachusetts, where he was born. He immediately found his great-grandmother’s baptism certificate through a free website, FamilySearch, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said he also found a great-grandmother going back 10 generations, Hélène Desportes, who may have been the first person of French descent born in Canada.

“That just blew me away,” May said. “It’s like winning the lottery,” he added.

To complete his application, May requested copies of the baptismal records through the National Library and Archives of Québec, which says it has been inundated with requests from Americans. Last month alone, it received 1,969 requests for archival records, compared with just 87 at the same time last year.

Churches were among Canada’s first keepers of vital records, a mostly invisible role, until now.

In the subterranean level of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, two full-time archivists devote hundreds of hours to calling up sometimes barely legible documents dating back as far as 1800. They are stored in a climate-controlled vault containing registries from parishes in southern Ontario.

“My expectation was that this is going to start to slow down, but it has not,” said Claire Wilton, the archivist at the diocese. She said she and other religious archives colleagues had received no communications from the government warning them about how they might be affected by the rules change.

Searches can be all-consuming, said Sarah McDougall, the archives assistant, whose desk is adorned with scraps of paper containing biographical details she’s hunting. The records are often out of order or illegible, and they may be missing the names of parents, especially for couples married in the 1800s.

Get your records in order

While not finding a record can be dismaying, there are often explanations, as can be the case if someone moved to the United States in between census periods. Some people turn to a professional genealogist, who can draft reports explaining relevant circumstances, said Theresa McVean, chair of the Canada Chapter Association of Professional Genealogists.

“If you cannot find a record, a genealogist, given the right amount of time and context, could help you establish proof of the birth of your ancestor without a record,” McVean said. “It’s very sophisticated work and hard to do, but it is possible.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is the federal department responsible for processing applications under the expanded law, known as Bill C-3. Jeffrey MacDonald, a spokesperson for the department, clarified one common misconception: Having distant Canadian ancestry does not make an applicant automatically eligible for citizenship.

In an email, MacDonald said that applicants must prove a “chain of parent-child relationships through each generation and provide solid evidence to support their claim.”

And there can be unexpected road bumps.

MacDonald said that a “limited number” of people who had obtained a citizenship certificate were recently asked to surrender it while their file underwent a review to ensure that the materials filed were compliant with the law.

The agency also has a checklist for gathering documents, which must be mailed and require a fee of 75 Canadian dollars, about $54.

Almost one quarter of the 17,400 citizenship-by-descent applications approved between December 2025 and March were attributable to the law expansion.

Be prepared to wait

There are about 63,200 citizenship applications for review ahead of the one submitted by Abbey Campbell, who started a TikTok account from her home in the Hudson Valley region of New York to document her process and educate others on immigration rules.

“What surprised me was how many people were looking for information, and how I wasn’t the only one that felt overwhelmed,” she said. “A lot of people just didn’t know where to start.”

Information crowdsourcing efforts have appeared on social media as applicants search for relatives, share tips about parish records and exchange notes about timelines. There is an extensive Google spreadsheet, hosted on Reddit, with data from hundreds of applicants who have shared their information about their timeline for a response.

Campbell has continued to make weekly videos and answer questions from the community of potential Canadians, a space that has come to represent hope and excitement, she said. The estimated wait for her application is 11 months.

“A lot of people are planning to move there as soon as they get their citizenship,” Campbell said. “It’s a gift.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 7:57 AM.