Quebec
Official Records Office
DEC — Directeur de l'état civil
Quebec's official civil records office. Issues certified extracts for birth, marriage, and death records from approximately 1900 onward.
Visit official site ↗How to Get Records
- 1
Identify the approximate birth year of your Quebec ancestor — this determines which source to use.
- 2
Born before ~1900: Search the Drouin Collection on FamilySearch (free) or PRDH. You're looking for parish register entries (actes de baptême), not civil certificates.
- 3
Born 1900–1993: Records exist but were not yet standardized. Request a certified extract directly from the DEC by providing the full name, approximate date, and location of the event. The DEC will search and issue a certified extract if found.
- 4
Born 1994 or later: Records are fully standardized. Request through the DEC online or by mail.
- 5
If the DEC cannot locate a record, request a letter of negative search (lettre de recherche infructueuse) and include it in your IRCC application.
Resources
Tips
- •1994 is the key threshold. The DEC standardized vital registration across Quebec in 1994. Before that, records were fragmented across hundreds of Catholic and Protestant parishes.
- •Before 1994, think baptism record (acte de baptême) rather than birth certificate. Quebec Catholic parish registers going back to 1616 are among the most complete vital records in North America.
- •PRDH links individuals across multiple records into family units — very powerful for tracing multiple generations simultaneously. Worth the subscription for Quebec-heavy research.
- •Use wildcard searches on FamilySearch (e.g., "Tr*mblay" for Tremblay) to catch spelling variants. Quebec names were frequently anglicized or mis-transcribed in records.
- •For records from 1900–1993, also check BAnQ in addition to the DEC — coverage between the two sources is not always identical.