FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Due to my agreement with the Archives of Ontario, I am unable to confirm who the person is in the picture. However, you may contact Customer Service at the Archives of Ontario at reference@ontario.ca for further information.
Researching each person’s story takes quite a bit of time. There are more than two dozen women I am immediately interested in writing about, including women who were deported, war brides, British home children, black Canadians, and indigenous women. While I cannot provide a time table for when the next story is uploaded, you can sign up on the Notifications page to receive an email when the site is updated. Your information will only be used for notifications and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Photos will be uploaded sporadically. While I cannot provide a time table for when more photos are uploaded, you can sign up on the Notifications page to receive an email when the site is updated. Your information will only be used for notifications and you can unsubscribe at any time.
The women I write about usually have enough breadcrumbs in their patient file that allows me to track them from cradle to grave, unlike some other patients that I research but hit a brick wall because they just disappear from all records. Each story also has a subject matter element, such as deportations, British home children, war brides, and eugenics.
Each image, because it is a photo of an old photo found in a case file that has been either glued, stapled, written on, bent, mangled, faded, or blurry, must first be photoshopped to clean up the image. Some can be restored, others can not. Also, due to my agreement with the Archives of Ontario, I ensure that only photos of a certain vintage are uploaded.
No, sorry, I am not in the field of genealogical research services.
The first step is to contact the reference desk at the Archives of Ontario at reference@ontario.ca and give them all the information that you have, names, dates, etc. They will contact you with next steps. I must mention, while there are some patient files for Ontario asylums, they are in no way complete, with many gaps and lost files. It mostly depends upon which asylum your relative was housed and which years.
Here are a few tips regarding specific asylum patient research.
- It is not unusual to find that your relative was moved from institution to institution. If your relative lived in Hamilton and you expect that she was institutionalized in Hamilton, she could have also been moved to Cobourg, or Toronto, or Brockville, or any of the other asylums. I have tracked women who have been transferred 6 times over the course of their institutionalization.
- It is not usual to find that more than one relative was in an asylum. I have found sisters, and mothers and daughters in asylums together, and references in patient files that record which asylums relatives were institutionalized.
- When researching deaths in vital statistics databases, if you find a death record for a relative that recorded they died at, for example, “Ontario Hospital, Brockville” or “Ontario Hospital, Toronto”, those are asylums. All Ontario asylums were renamed Ontario Hospitals in 1919.