Friday, June 14, 2024.
Begin your Conference experience with a full day discovering and exploring the records at two of the City of Toronto’s key libraries for genealogical research – the Toronto Reference Library and the United Empire Loyalist Library.
Door-to-door return transportation to the Toronto Reference Library and a bag lunch are included in the cost of this tour. The UELAC Library is within a short walking distance of the Toronto Reference Library.
You have your choice of going to both libraries or focusing your time at just one. If you provide us with a list of materials that you wish to peruse in advance, we will forward that list to the library staff so that they can have them available for your visit. Your tour coordinator will travel with you throughout the day, and library staff will be on hand to show you around their facilities, introduce you to their collections and help you make the most of your day.
Lunch break: At 12:00 pm, you’ll have a chance to relax and recharge with a tasty bag lunch.
The Library Tour bus leaves the Conference hotel at 9:30 am, and will pick you up again at the Toronto Reference Library at 4:00 pm – we’ll return you to the hotel in plenty of time to prepare for the evening’s opening festivities.
Toronto Reference Library
The Toronto Reference Library holds a number of important collections for genealogical and historical research.
The Local History & Genealogy Collection on the second floor offers resources such as city directories; birth, marriage, death, immigration and military records; genealogical indexes and much more.
The Special Collections and Rare Books resources, on the fifth floor, is where you’ll find:
- Baldwin Collection of Canadiana: Historical manuscripts, books, ephemera, newspapers, maps and documentary art, including over a million Toronto Star photos.
- Chinese Canadian Archive: A community-built archive focused on the Chinese Canadian community in the Greater Toronto Area.
- Toronto Star Newspaper Room: Current issues of all major Toronto newspapers, as well as regional Ontario and international papers, and some historical newspapers.
- Map Collection: Current and historical maps of local and international locations.
- Native Peoples Collection: Books, CDs, DVDs, as well as language-learning kits, by and about Indigenous peoples, with emphasis on First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in Canada.
United Empire Loyalist Library
The United Empire Loyalist Library contains an extensive collection of UEL information from both a genealogical and historical perspective. Highlights include resources on:
- Upper and Lower Canada, and the Maritimes: local and military histories, family histories, Loyalist Burial sites, Historical Atlases of the Counties, biographies, Carleton’s Loyalist Index, index of the Upper Canada Land Books, Canadian Archives reports, Ontario Bureau of Archives reports, Ontario Register, Vertical File material and Ontario Land Records fiche.
- The Thirteen Colonies: the Arthur Kelly books of genealogy and history for New York, settlers of Beekman Patent, local histories and genealogical records, gazetteers and research guides for the Colonies, 1790 censuses of Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania and a range of Atlases of the Colonies and the American Revolution.
