Ancestry.ca, the largest Canadian family history website, announced a partnership March 14th with the Universite de Montreal to index the complete Drouin Collection, long considered by the genealogical community to be the best resource for French-Canadian family history records.

The Drouin Collection contains nearly 12 million records from 1621 to the 1940s, and includes 37 million French-Canadian names and 3.6 million images. The collection represents all vital records from Quebec — including baptism, marriage and burial — as well as a compilation of church records from Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and various New England states in America. Records of the Drouin Collection are now digitized and available on Ancestry.ca and are expected to be fully indexed by the end of 2007.

“Providing Canadians with online access to the Drouin Collection will be a major milestone for family history research to help everyone from professionals to beginners research their French-Canadian roots,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO, The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.ca.

“Examining a cross-section of Ancestry.ca’s record collections, you can see the multicultural heritage and history of Canada, which includes people of English, French, Scottish, Irish and African heritage.”

The Drouin Collection contains six separate databases: Quebec Vital Records, Ontario French-Catholic Church Records, Acadian Catholic Church Records, Early U.S. French-Catholic Church Records, Quebec Notarial Records and various other French Records. Experts at the Universite de Montreal will assist in classifying records based on their location and will ensure that the French names and dates are properly transcribed.

“The partnership between Ancestry.ca and Universite de Montreal is a significant accomplishment for demographic research in Quebec, to make available precious French-Canadian civil records which have never before been indexed,” said Bertrand Desjardins, Senior Researcher, Demography Department, Universite de Montreal. “The Universite de Montreal is working closely with Ancestry.ca to verify and transcribe the collection. For the millions of people across Canada and North America with French-Canadian ancestry, indexing these records will allow access to information which was previously extremely difficult to obtain and search.”

In the 1930s, Gabriel Drouin, an entrepreneur and capitalist, created what has come to be known as the Drouin Collection by tracking down and duplicating local church records in French-speaking areas, including parts of Maine. For nearly a century, the Drouin Genealogical Institute was the largest genealogy research company in Quebec, producing family trees for those of French-Canadian heritage, and the only location to offer access to the records. Ninety-five percent of the records are from the province of Quebec and are written in French.

Ancestry.ca is in the final stages of developing a French interface enabling native French speakers access to the more than 5 billion names found in its entire collection of historical records.