Mailed my Bill C-3 proof-of-citizenship application — multigenerational New Brunswick line with one missing birth registration. How strong is my evidence?
Hi everyone! I finally mailed my CIT 0001 proof-of-citizenship application and wanted to share what I submitted because I’ve seen a lot of different evidence packages in this group. I’m curious how mine compares, particularly for anyone applying under the post-Bill C-3 rules through a multigenerational line.
I’m intentionally leaving all names out for privacy, but I’ll give the generations, dates, types of records, and where I found everything.
My basic biological line is:
New Brunswick family → great-grandmother → grandmother → mother → me.
The biggest complication in my application is my great-grandmother, who was born in New Brunswick around 1926 and came to the United States as a very young child. Despite searching extensively, I have not been able to locate her standalone New Brunswick birth registration.
Instead of relying on one piece of evidence to establish her identity and New Brunswick connection, I built the application around multiple government, vital, immigration and historical records that overlap and corroborate one another.
1. The older New Brunswick generation
I have the 1903 New Brunswick birth registration for my great-grandmother’s father.
This is an actual New Brunswick vital record showing that he was born in New Brunswick, identifying his parents and establishing the older Canadian side of the family.
I located this through the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick’s historical Vital Statistics database.
I also have the 1925 New Brunswick marriage record for my great-grandmother’s parents.
This is particularly important to me because it places her parents in New Brunswick immediately before my great-grandmother’s approximately 1926 birth.
There is a name discrepancy involving her father’s surname between some of these records. His full registered surname appears on the 1903 birth record, while a shortened/variant version appears on the later record. I included a written clarification statement explaining the discrepancy and placed the records together so the officer can follow the identity across the documents.
2. My great-grandmother — the generation with the missing birth registration
This is the part of my application that required the most research.
I have not been able to locate my great-grandmother’s standalone New Brunswick birth registration.
However, I have a 1929 U.S./Canadian immigration/border-crossing record/manifest involving my great-grandmother when she was approximately three years old.
I located this through historical genealogy/immigration research.
This is important because it is a government-created historical record from when she was actually a small child, rather than a family recollection written decades later.
I also have a later certified U.S. vital record for her daughter — my grandmother.
That certified record is extremely important to my application because it identifies my great-grandmother as my grandmother’s mother and specifically records my great-grandmother’s birthplace as Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Therefore, even though I don’t have my great-grandmother’s standalone New Brunswick birth registration, I do have a certified government vital record from the next generation identifying her by name, establishing the parent-child relationship, and independently reporting her birthplace as Fredericton, New Brunswick.
3. The newspaper evidence / obituaries
I also submitted historical newspaper records, and I want to explain these because they aren’t simply random genealogy clippings that I’m using instead of vital records.
One of the records is the obituary of my great-grandfather.
That obituary identifies the family he left behind, including my great-grandmother and my grandmother. It helps corroborate the great-grandmother → grandmother relationship and helps connect my great-grandmother’s Murray identity with the married surname appearing in the later generations.
The other particularly useful obituary is for my great-great-grandmother — the mother of my great-grandmother.
That obituary is interesting because it identifies her descendants across multiple generations and essentially provides an independent family chain connecting the older generation → my great-grandmother → my grandmother → my mother → me.
It also specifically states that my great-great-grandmother herself was born in New Brunswick.
I understand that newspaper obituaries are secondary evidence. I’m not asking IRCC to establish Canadian citizenship solely because an obituary says somebody was born in New Brunswick.
I included them because they independently corroborate the names, relationships, maiden/married surnames and generations already supported by the government and vital records.
4. Something I noticed about the entire documentary trail
One thing that made me more comfortable submitting the application is how consistently the evidence points back to New Brunswick.
I’m not dealing with conflicting records where one document says Ontario, another says Quebec, another says Nova Scotia, etc.
The Canadian side of everything I’ve located repeatedly leads back to New Brunswick:
• my great-grandmother’s father’s 1903 New Brunswick birth registration;
• her parents’ 1925 New Brunswick marriage record;
• the historical immigration/border record involving my great-grandmother as a small child;
• my grandmother’s certified vital record identifying my great-grandmother as her mother and specifically recording her birthplace as Fredericton, New Brunswick;
• the historical newspaper/obituary evidence connecting the family generations;
• and the obituary for the older generation specifically stating that my great-great-grandmother was herself born in New Brunswick.
That’s why I ultimately felt comfortable submitting despite the missing standalone birth registration. There isn’t one isolated genealogy entry making the New Brunswick claim. Multiple independent records created at different times keep pointing back to the same place and family.
5. Great-grandmother → grandmother
This relationship is established by the certified U.S. vital record mentioned above.
This document is especially useful because it does several things simultaneously:
• identifies my grandmother;
• identifies my great-grandmother as her mother;
• establishes their parent-child relationship;
• and records my great-grandmother’s birthplace as Fredericton, New Brunswick.
The obituary evidence provides additional independent corroboration of this relationship and the surname changes.
6. Grandmother → mother — adoption/name-change issue
This generation has another wrinkle.
My mother was adopted and consequently used her adoptive father’s surname.
However, my citizenship claim follows her biological maternal line, not the adoptive family.
I obtained the relevant official/local government documentation establishing her biological mother and included an explanation of the adoption and resulting surname difference.
I specifically addressed this in my cover letter because I didn’t want an officer to get halfway through the lineage and wonder why the surname suddenly changed.
The biological relationship is documented, and the historical newspaper evidence provides additional corroboration across these generations.
7. Mother → me
This is the straightforward generation.
I included my own official birth documentation identifying my mother, along with my identification and the other applicant documentation required for the CIT 0001 proof-of-citizenship application.
8. What I did about the missing New Brunswick birth registration
I didn’t simply write, “I can’t find it.”
I submitted a formal request to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick asking them to search for my great-grandmother’s birth registration.
The Archives confirmed receipt of my request and explained that citizenship-by-descent requests are experiencing significant processing delays.
I included documentation of that request/correspondence with my citizenship application so IRCC can see that I have genuinely attempted to obtain the original provincial record from the responsible government authority.
If New Brunswick eventually locates the registration, I intend to obtain the official/certified record and provide it to IRCC once I have an application/file number and can properly associate supplemental evidence with my pending application.
If the Archives ultimately responds that no registration can be located, I’ll preserve that response as documentation that the original record was genuinely sought from the responsible provincial authority but could not be obtained.
9. And then, of course, I found another record AFTER mailing the application 😂
Literally after mailing everything, I located what appears to be the relevant family in the 1930 United States Federal Census.
My great-grandmother would still have been a young child at the time.
The census appears to provide another contemporaneous government record connecting the family with Canada and potentially corroborating my great-grandmother’s Canadian birthplace/family background.
So now I have that saved as well.
I obviously can’t put it into the package that’s already traveling to IRCC, and I don’t plan to randomly mail another document without a file number.
My plan is to preserve the original census image and citation information. Once I receive an AOR/application number, I can provide it as supplemental evidence if appropriate, especially if the Provincial Archives hasn’t located the missing birth registration by then or IRCC asks for additional documentation.
10. How I actually researched everything
For anyone building a similar multigenerational application, I didn’t find all of this in one place.
I used several different sources:
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick: historical New Brunswick birth and marriage registrations and my pending formal search for the missing great-grandmother birth registration.
U.S. state/local vital-record authorities: certified/official records establishing the later parent-child relationships.
Historical immigration/border records: the 1929 record involving my great-grandmother when she was approximately three years old.
U.S. Federal Census: the 1930 record I discovered immediately after mailing the application.
Historical newspaper archives: obituaries and other family notices that help establish identities, maiden/married surnames and relationships across generations.
Genealogy databases/search tools: I used genealogy sites primarily to find historical records and figure out which government/archive held them. Whenever possible, I then tried to obtain the record from the actual archive, vital-record authority or other original source instead of relying only on somebody else’s family tree or a genealogy transcription.
11. How I organized the actual application
I didn’t want to hand an IRCC officer a stack of century-old records and expect them to reverse-engineer my family.
I prepared a detailed cover letter/evidence index explaining the biological line and what each piece of evidence establishes.
I specifically addressed:
• the missing great-grandmother New Brunswick birth registration;
• my pending search with the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick;
• the surname discrepancy in the older New Brunswick records;
• maiden/married-name changes;
• my mother’s adoption and why the claim follows her biological maternal line;
• and how the individual documents connect one generation to the next.
I organized the supporting documents according to that evidence index so the officer can follow the documentary chain rather than having to guess what each old record is supposed to prove.
I also included the required application/checklist material, fee receipt, identification and two citizenship-specification photographs.
12. What I DON’T have
I want to be completely clear about this because it’s the part I’m most interested in hearing people’s experiences with:
I do not currently have my great-grandmother’s standalone New Brunswick birth registration.
That’s the obvious weakness in my application.
What I do have is a combination of independent evidence surrounding that missing record:
• Canadian government/vital records for the generation immediately above her;
• her parents’ New Brunswick marriage record immediately before her birth;
• a historical government immigration/border record involving her as a small child;
• a certified government vital record from the next generation identifying her as the mother and specifically giving Fredericton, New Brunswick as her birthplace;
• historical obituary/newspaper evidence independently connecting the family and generations;
• an older-generation obituary specifically identifying New Brunswick as a birthplace;
• the newly discovered 1930 U.S. Census record;
• and documented proof that I’ve formally asked the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick to search for the missing registration.
So I wasn’t trying to replace a missing birth certificate with a family tree or a single obituary. I tried to build a collection of independent records around the missing document so IRCC can evaluate the evidence as a whole.
13. What I’m hoping to hear from people here
For those of you who have submitted Bill C-3 / second-or-later-generation proof-of-citizenship applications, especially through older New Brunswick ancestors:
How strong does this evidence package sound to you?
I’m particularly interested in anyone who could not obtain one ancestor’s Canadian birth registration.
Did IRCC accept a combination of government/vital records, immigration or boat manifests, census records, foreign vital records identifying the ancestor’s Canadian birthplace, Canadian records for the generation immediately above the ancestor, etc.?
Or did IRCC ultimately request the missing Canadian birth registration anyway?
If they requested additional evidence, what did they specifically ask you to provide?
I’m completely fine if IRCC eventually sends me a request for additional documentation. My goal wasn’t to pretend the missing birth registration doesn’t matter. My goal was to give the officer as much reliable evidence as possible to evaluate that missing link and demonstrate that I’ve actively tried to obtain the original record.
The application has now officially been mailed to the IRCC Digitization Centre – Proofs in New Waterford, Nova Scotia, so at this point there isn’t much more I can change. 😂
Now I’m waiting for:
Delivered → AOR → Processing → hopefully Approved → Citizenship Certificate 🇨🇦
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with a similar multigenerational case, especially New Brunswick descendants, Bill C-3 applicants, or anyone who had to establish an ancestor’s Canadian birth using alternative historical records because the original provincial birth registration couldn’t be located.
Thanks! 🇨🇦