Provincial Archives of Alberta

The Provincial Archives of Albert (PAA): http://culture.alberta.ca/paa/ is a major repository for records. Their holdings include both private collections and governmental records.

Among the private collections are personal letters and correspondence, diaries and journals, business records, registers and minutes of churches and community groups. Part of these collections include what the PAA terms MUSH Records (Municipalities, Universities, School Boards and Health Care bodies.

Perhaps the best part of the PAA website for the family historian is the section “Research Resources” which provides an inventory of various record types. There are inventories for Newspapers, Faith Organizations (churches), Genealogy (civil registration, censuses, homestead, directories, histories, passengers list, divorce, and probate records), Directories (city, telephone, rural atlas and directories), Maps and Cartographic, and Homesteads.

The civil registration collection consists of births, marriages and deaths from about 1870 through the 1980s. There are indexes prior to 1905 and afterwards they are filed by locality. The homesteads (ca. 1880-1970) are also a major part of the genealogical collection. In 2011, the PAA along with the University of Alberta Libraries and the Internet Archive collaborated to digitize the microfilm of the homesteads. These are now available from 1870-1930: http://archive.org/details/albertahomestead The PAA also has links to the homestead index at the Alberta Genealogical Society website: http://abgensoc.ca/homestead/  

Concerning church registers. The PAA holds the registers for the Alberta and Northwest Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada (ca.1830s-present), the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (ca. 1880-2000), Anglican Diocese of Edmonton and Athabasca (ca. 1870-ca.2000. Note: The records for the Diocese of Calgary are at the University of Calgary), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ca. 1895-ca. 2000)

The PAA has both Archivists and volunteers who can help with patrons and answer enquiries. You may also contact the PAA online with enquiries.