Unable to Obtain My Certificate of Citizenship

[jimbo20000]

Thanks in advance for any assistance and direction. I am a 60-year old US citizen/Resident, and would like to retire in several years to Canada. My mother immigrated as an infant from Scotland to Canada in 1918, and became a Canadian Citizen (I think as a "landed immigrant"-her father was Canadian). She is deceased. I was born in 1955 in the US while she was still a Canadian citizen, but I do not have a copy of her certificate. I DO have other documents supporting her citizenship, (such as a 1950's era official letter from Canada Immigration acknowledging her lost Canadian passport, and records of her residence and business ownership in Canada from the 1940's and 1950's, as well as divorce papers from a Canadian court.) Although I forwarded notarized copies of all these documents to CIC, they did not accept them as adequate evidence. I first applied to CIC for MY certificate, and they requested my mother's proof of Canadian citizenship. I applied for HER proof of citizenship, and they did not find her in their records. So, I'm at an impasse.
How do I obtain assistance with a more comprehensive record search, or if that fails, use existent documents to prove her citizenship? Likewise, is it just time to give up on this dream and realize the technical issues cannot be overcome.
Thank you!

 

[Zarzor]

I would recommend going to a lawyer. They are good with these stuff and know how to deal with cic requirements.

Good luck

 

[alphazip]

First of all, remember that Canadian citizenship did not officially exist before January 1, 1947. So, when your mother immigrated to Canada from Scotland, she was just moving from one part of the British Empire to another. When that first Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect, citizenship was granted to (amongst others) a person who was: "a British subject who had Canadian domicile..." However, the government did not seek out such people and issue each of them a Citizenship Certificate. My grandmother also immigrated from Scotland to Canada (in 1911) and she never had a Citizenship Certificate.
So, if CIC is demanding a Citizenship Certificate, they are asking for something that most people from that era never had.

Looking at the application form, I see that the proof required for some categories of citizens is an immigration document or stamp in a passport. I don't imagine you have either of those. It may be possible to get a copy of a ship's manifest to show when and where your mother arrived, but whether CIC will accept that, I don't know. I would recommend doing a search on your mother's birth name on ancestry.com (for Collection Focus, choose Canada) and seeing what you might find there.

 

[jimbo20000]

Thank you alphazip for your quick reply. My grandmother died in Scotland in childbirth, and the family story is my mother was brought to Canada on a troopship as a baby. Her father was a Canadian citizen, and stationed as a military officer in Scotland. I appreciate the background on the 1947 dates, and I'm not sure if her Canadian citizenship would be predicated upon her father or her mother's status (or both). I do know she possessed a Canadian passport at one time, and I have an official letter from Canada immigration acknowledging it was lost or misplaced. I will follow up with Ancestry.com and other sources, but to date I have been unable to find her father or her own immigration evidence. What makes sense is she probably never possessed a certificate of citizenship, which would indeed have rendered the previous CIC records search unfruitful. I'm off to ancestry.com for a try!!!
Thanks again.

 

[alphazip]

If your mother (I wrote grandmother in my previous reply...just corrected that) was the daughter of a Canadian father, then, if she were still living, she could claim Canadian citizenship on the basis of that fact alone. However, that would still not benefit you, since you would be the second generation born abroad, barred (as of 2009) from claiming citizenship by descent. (You were not a citizen at birth, because, at that time, Canadian women could not pass citizenship to children born abroad.)

Your grandmother, though she never made it to Canada, would be considered a war bride. I would recommend that you get in touch with Melynda Jarrett at Canadian War Brides: http://www.canadianwarbrides.com/contactus.asp Also, write to Don Chapman, who has been fighting for the rights of "Lost Canadians" for a number of years: http://blog.lostcanadian.com/

 

[alphazip]

If your grandfather was a Canadian soldier in WWI, you can look to see whether his service file reveals anything useful here:

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/canadian-expeditionary-force.aspx

Immigration records can be searched here, but if all you know is the year, and not the ship, you would have to look through thousands of pages:

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/passenger-lists/passenger-lists-1865-1922/Pages/introduction.aspx

General genealogy page:

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/genealogy/Pages/introduction.aspx

 

[alphazip]

If your mother (I wrote grandmother in my previous reply...just corrected that) was the daughter of a Canadian father, then, if she were still living, she could claim Canadian citizenship on the basis of that fact alone. However, that would still not benefit you, since you would be the second generation born abroad, barred (as of 2009) from claiming citizenship by descent. (You were not a citizen at birth, because, at that time, Canadian women could not pass citizenship to children born abroad.)

Your grandmother, though she never made it to Canada, would be considered a war bride. I would recommend that you get in touch with Melynda Jarrett at Canadian War Brides: http://www.canadianwarbrides.com/contactus.asp Also, write to Don Chapman, who has been fighting for the rights of "Lost Canadians" for a number of years: http://blog.lostcanadian.com/

CBC contacted Don Chapman, did you?

"Woman, 99, denied citizenship despite living in Canada since 1933"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/99-year-old-denied-citizenship-and-healthcare-1.3242077

 

[screech339]

CBC contacted Don Chapman, did you?

"Woman, 99, denied citizenship despite living in Canada since 1933"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/99-year-old-denied-citizenship-and-healthcare-1.3242077

And yet she didn't apply for OHIP during all that time? She would have noticed this problem had she applied for it then. The problem was that she was Canadian all this time, just that those in the CIC department didn't know the full law very well as there was a law that accepted the 1947 law, which gave her citizenship.