Americans are looking back centuries for Canadian ancestors — and citizenship

Jeffrey Lensman's Quebec-born great-great-grandfather Odilon Marceau and great-great-grandmother Mathilde Goyette are seen with their adult children in a 1910 handout photo. Lensman, from Salt Lake City, Utah, is seeking Canadian citizenship on the basis of Marceau's birth in Quebec in 1838. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Jeffrey Lensman (Mandatory Credit)

Cody Sibley was born and raised in Louisiana, but he always felt his family shared strong ties to Canada thanks to his Acadian ancestors from Nova Scotia.

Sibley said that as an eighth-generation descendant of Acadians, his family’s roots could be traced back to “generation zero,” Agathe Doucet, who was baptized on Jan. 19, 1710, in Nova Scotia.

He said Doucet married to Pierre Pitre in 1727, but the couple’s lives were turned upside down in 1755 when British soldiers arrived at their doors and ordered their expulsion; like many Acadians, they ended up in Louisiana, where the community went on to become known as Cajuns.

Sibley is now among a surge of Americans combing through genealogical records in the hopes of finding a Canadian ancestor — some, like Sibley’s, dating back hundreds of years, long before Canada officially existed. They plan to use the information to claim Canadian citizenship, under recently introduced legal changes that remove the so-called “first-generation limit” on citizenship for people born or adopted outside Canada to a Canadian citizen.

As word of the changes spread, document requests from would-be citizens have swamped archives across Canada.

The theory being pursued by the wave of would-be Canadians is that the changes to the Citizenship Act, known as Bill C-3, that took effect in December mean citizenship was passed down automatically through generations of descendants subsequently born outside Canada.

“I’m not entirely sure how the majority of Canadians feel about this. But I think it’s a really fascinating thing that the Canadian Parliament did,” said Sibley, who now lives in Portland, Ore., and has been hunting through birth certificates, baptism records, and genealogy sites to prove an unbroken chain of Canadian ancestors.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesman Matthew Krupovich cautioned that while the recent changes extend access to Canadian citizenship by descent, having “distant Canadian ancestry alone does not make someone automatically eligible.”

But the claimants’ hopes are supported by some immigration lawyers and consultants.

British Columbia immigration lawyer Amandeep Hayer said that after the Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect on Jan. 1, 1947, anybody born in Canada before or after then — alive or dead — became Canadian.

How many generations could someone with Canadian ancestors go back to claim citizenship under the recent changes to the act? Hayer said the answer is “unlimited at the moment,” as long as they have documents proving an unbroken chain of descent to the original Canadian ancestor.

“I even have somebody whose ancestor was an aide to one of the Fathers of Confederation get approved. So, that gives you an idea of how far back we’re going,” said Hayer.

Hayer said descendants of the Acadians are also among those who will benefit from the law — as long as they have documents to prove their claims.

Toronto-based immigration consultant Rod Chalmers agreed, saying that as “crazy” as it may seem, there is no legal cutoff on the number of generations as long as someone can prove an “uninterrupted legal chain.”

Therefore, “we probably have millions of Americans who are now Canadians who don’t even know it,” said Chalmers.

Archivists across Canada say their once-quiet domains are now overwhelmed with requests from the U.S. following the Citizenship Act changes.

Claire-Hélène Lengellé, director of communications for Quebec’s provincial library and archives, said they are experiencing “an exceptional volume” of requests as U.S. citizens with Quebec‑born ancestors seek certified copies of vital records.

Lengellé said in April alone, they received around 1,700 requests — more than 12 times higher than the 56 requests at the same time last year.

“We cannot predict how long this unprecedented surge in requests will last, but all requests will be processed,” said Lengellé.

Provincial archivist of New Brunswick, Joanna Aiton Kerr, said archivists noticed the surge begin in December.

Aiton Kerr said they initially had no idea what had triggered it, before they realized it was linked to the law change.

“Normally, we would have about 100, 150 requests for any type of genealogical research in the course of a month. But now we’re getting about 300 to 400 a month, and we are confident that they are directly related to U.S. citizens seeking documentation that they need for citizenship,” said Aiton Kerr.

Aiton Kerr said they now have 1,700 requests in backlog.

“It would be wonderful if we had additional staff and resources to help us, but it’s not possible in this current fiscal environment,” said Aiton Kerr. “So, patience, patience. We appreciate it very much,” she added.

‘It’s not a joke to us’

Online genealogy groups have been flooded with tales of people seeking and discovering Canadian ancestry — and, they hope, their own Canadian citizenship.

When The Canadian Press reached out to a social media group for citizenship claimants, dozens responded.

There was Stephen Redmond, from Tennessee, who claims a Canadian ancestor who was a pivotal figure in New France; Jeffrey Lensman, from Salt Lake City, whose great-great-grandfather was born in Quebec in 1838, but ventured west to search for gold and ended up in Montana; and San Francisco Bay-area resident Leah Larkin who said that as a Cajun who grew up in southern Louisiana, the implementation of Bill C-3 could restore some of the dignity stripped from her ancestors.

“I tear up sometimes at the thought that I can somehow restore my Acadian ancestors back to their homelands,” said Larkin.

“Even if I never move to Canada, I will have restored what’s just a really powerful connection to a place where we were dispersed from in the 1700s,” said Larkin.

Redmond, 38, lives in McEwen, about an hour’s drive from Nashville, Tenn., and has never set foot in Canada. He said his five-times great-grandfather was French-Canadian fur-trader Jacques Timothé Boucher, who moved from New France and became lieutenant-governor of the Illinois Territory, before moving to Nashville where he is known as the “first citizen.”

But Redmond traces his Canadian heritage further back, to his eight-times great-grandfather Pierre Boucher, founder of Boucherville, Que.

“It kind of reminds me of ‘The Princess Diaries,’ where Mia (played by Anne Hathaway) had no idea who she was and then found out her history was important. I may not get her fairy tale ending, but I’m thankful to know where I came from,” said Redmond.

Not all of the would-be beneficiaries of the recent law changes date their Canadian histories back so far.

Mariam Watson from Indianapolis, Ind., said her grandmother, Asako Uyeda, was born in New Westminster, B.C., in 1921 to Japanese immigrant parents.

Watson said Uyeda, who attended the University of B.C., “self-deported” to Japan sometime after 1942, with Watson guessing it was due to anti-Japanese sentiment amid the Second World War.

Uyeda later met an American military officer in Japan, and they settled down in the United States. But Watson said her grandmother always talked about wanting to return to Canada, which she called home.

“She never forgot it. It was very special to her,” Watson said.

In addition to the law changes, several claimants cited the political atmosphere in the United States for seeking Canadian citizenship.

Sibley said he thought it would be “good to have an alternative exit strategy” in the form of Canadian citizenship amid the current political climate.

Lensman said he wanted Canadian citizenship not only to honour his family background but also because he was “feeling increasingly unsafe where I am in Utah, a very Conservative state.”

In Pittsburgh, Pa., Maria Dutilly said her great-grandmother, migrated to the U.S. from Mont-Joli, Que., in 1903, part of the “Great Hemorrhage” when almost a million French Canadians fled their hometowns for the U.S.

She said one of the driving forces behind her citizenship application was “who’s in the White House at this time.”

She said many Americans are concerned about their safety under the administration of President Donald Trump, but becoming a Canadian citizen gives her another option.

“I want to assure Canadians that a lot of Americans, we are doing this out of the utmost respect, and we are so appreciative of the IRCC for doing this. It’s not a joke to us, and we will adjust, we will adapt, we will love maple syrup,” said Dutilly.

‘I love our prime minister’

Whether the claimants qualify as Canadian citizens may not be a simple matter.

Krupovich said each application would be reviewed on a “case-by-case” basis, and establish that each ancestor on which the claim relied “became, or would have become, a Canadian citizen under Canadian citizenship legislation.”

“Applicants must provide documents proving both that their parental ancestor was Canadian and that they are directly related through each generation,” said Krupovich.

These documents include birth certificates, citizenship or naturalization certificates, or other official records, while documentation from online genealogy websites “cannot be used on its own to prove a claim to citizenship.”

The law change came in response to a 2023 ruling in Ontario Superior Court that declared the first-generation limit to citizenship by descent was unconstitutional. The federal government didn’t appeal the decision, and amended the Citizenship Act in response.

Proving Canadian ancestry can involve digging through faded documents, and frequent dead ends and roadblocks. Descendants of the Acadians have been challenged by the destruction of documents in the torching of churches in the 1700s.

Sibley said he was pursuing Catholic baptismal records, a process that could take four months, but which he found “weirdly fun in a way.”

Lensman said when his grandfather was born in Montana in 1902, his birth was unrecorded except by the baptismal record of his childhood church.

“The record was in Latin, but I could still recognize the details. For my application, I had to hire an IRCC-approved translator to provide the English translation,” said Lensman.

Immigration consultant Chalmers said the pursuit was appealing to a good puzzle solver.

“I’m sure there are people up till 3:30 in the morning on Ancestry … and these other sites, just yawning, but it’s so exciting,” said Chalmers, “Because you’re finding out about you. What’s more exciting than you?”

Hayer said his firm was getting 15 to 30 calls a day from Americans showing interest in the Bill C-3.

“I’ll be blunt, this has been my most successful year so far, and it just seems to be growing at the moment,” said Hayer.

Alaska Airlines flight attendant Nicolas Volant said he found out about his likely qualification for Canadian citizenship in a phone call with his sister in February.

“She was, ‘Hey, did you just see this new Canadian law?’ We’re Canadians,’” said Volante.

Their grandmother was born in 1904 in Coaticook, Que., and in her late teens, she moved to Easthampton, Mass.

“I remember her going back home, all of her family, her parents, and her brothers and sisters are all buried in Canada, and she never became an American citizen,” said Volante.

He said he plans to submit his application for a citizenship certificate by the end of the month, and he and his siblings were “ecstatic” at the chance to be Canadians.

He said he is ready to move to Canada as soon as his application is approved.

“I mean, this just feels deeply acknowledging, and I love our prime minister (Mark Carney), and I call him my prime minister,” said Volante.

Larkin, meanwhile, says she’ll be happy simply to be accepted as a Canadian.

“For the Canadian people, I’m really grateful that you have gone back in time and accepted us, accepted the Acadians as part of your culture, your tribe,” said Larkin.

“Even if I never move there, I will just be proud to be Canadian.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 19, 2026.

Nono Shen, The Canadian Press