Montreal City Directories Online

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec has added a new online collection of interest to anyone researching ancestors in Montreal. The Lovell directories of Montreal and its suburbs (1842-1999) are now available online.

The collection contains images of the original city directories. The web site claims that the online directories are available through the year 1999 although I could only find those through 1992 on the site. That is still much later than any other collection of city directories that I have ever seen. This collection is a great resource for all anyone interested in the genealogy, social history, the history of a building or in the urban geography of Montreal.

The web site is in French but the early directories were printed only in English. Later directories contained both English and French pages. All the images are of the original directories. I had no difficulty navigating this site even with my limited knowledge of French.

Montreal City Directories are available to all at no charge at http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell

My thanks to Guy Lamarche for telling me about this great resource.

Comments

[Jeffrey Muller]

Can you look up people by name alphabetically, or must you page through the streets listings until you find the person you are looking for? I am searching for where my mother lived in Montreal. She lived there from the mid 20"s through the late 30's. Is this online somewhere. I saw the street listings, I was wondering if this has been optically text scanned.