For general enquiries, it is a difficult task to institute an in-depth search without knowing a place-name for your ancestor when researching the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Most records are arranged by town or district locations. In some minor circumstances, we have a few limited province-wide indexes – such as the Saskatchewan Residents’ Index1, or the Saskatchewan Burial Index2, or Saskatchewan Obituary Index3 – that at the least will give us a distribution of the family name and most of these constitute pre-1960 information; at best, a pioneer ancestor might be located. This is always first priority, to locate the family, and these index searches are covered by the minimum retainer. Your chances at success are much better, however, if you know a town name or provincial district by which to isolate the search better.

If you do know a place-name, you’ll receive some research and additional research suggestions based on information you’ve supplied. In this case, the minimum retainer covers evaluation of your information, a preliminary research plan, implementation of some basic research strategies and evaluation of those research results in the Report.