The Drouin Microfilm Indexing Project of Jewish Vital Records of Quebec

In 1943, the Drouin Genealogical Institute microfilmed all available vital record registers of Quebec including the Jewish registers of Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, and Civil Records of Montreal, Lachine, Outremont and Westmount in which there are entries identified as Jewish.

Indexing the 1841-1942 Jewish vital records of Quebec in the Drouin collection was a four-year project of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, completed in early 2002.  The database contains more than 75,000 entries, principally births and marriages as well as approximately 4,300 deaths. The project involved not only the photocopying of thousands of index pages - where they exist - and subsequent data entry, but also a frame-by-frame examination of all the records to create indices where there were none, entering given names where they were not recorded in the indices, verifying that names in the indices corresponded with those in the records, and adding actual dates of birth for delayed registrations.

The database also includes entries from notebooks of Rabbi I. L. Colton and Cantor Nathan Mendelson. Rabbi Colton was the principal mohel in the Montreal Jewish community from 1917 to 1954.  His notebooks listed circumcisions, some births of females, and marriages (685) at which he officiated.  All 14,000 entries are indices only; there is no additional information!  However, in some cases there are matching records in the Drouin Microfilms. While solely for events at which he officiated, Rabbi Colton's notes from 1943 to 1954 are the only source of indices to Jewish births for this period. Entries from Cantor Mendelson's notebooks are incomplete but include circumcisions and some adoptions from 1938 to 1975 inclusive. Carbon copies of a number of Mendelson's letters certifying births have also survived.  These have been indexed and photocopies, when existing, are also available to researchers.

Availability of information from the database

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Surname Lists: Click here to SEARCH the Surname Lists, extracted from the database. The Surname List is also be integrated into Avotaynu Inc.'s Consolidated Jewish Surname Index.  

Index Searching: For reasons of privacy, the indices are not available on the Internet. If you see a surname of interest, contact the JGS of Montreal at the email address listed below. Give us the surnames, and we will do a search for you. Limitation of Searching: There is a maximum of 100 database entries per surname search.  Where there are more than 100 entries for a surname, searches will be limited to two given names / or initials or a limited year range.

Orders for Copies: Records can be ordered via e-mail to vital@jgs-montreal.org. Payment can be made with most credit cards of via PayPal. Instructions for payment will be sent once order is placed. Payment also possible checks in US or Candian dollars.

Send Email inquiries to: Vital@jgs-montreal.org

Make cheques payable to:
Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal
6500 Mackle Road, Apt. 201
Cote St. Luc, Quebec H4W 3G7
Canada

Copies of records supplied by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal* are for the sole purpose of personal family history research and are not valid for any other purpose

*A non-profit organization under Quebec Registration #3342755926

(ver. 2009 04 28)