International Incident

MyFamily.com, parent company of subscription genealogy sites Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com, launched a Canadian database service with records containing more than 150 million names.

Ancestry.ca <ancestry.ca> also offers the Web’s only complete index to the 1911 Canadian census, released last summer. Your search results link to the record images on the Library and Archives Canada Web site, but you look at them in Ancestry.ca’s image viewer. (You can browse the census images free at <www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/0201_e.html>; unless you have a good idea of your ancestor’s residence, though, that can take quite awhile. Or, if you’re lucky, a volunteer for Automated Genealogy’s <automatedgenealogy.com> free indexing project has already recorded your family.)

Other Ancestry.ca records include Ontario and British Columbia vital indexes, Ontario and Nova Scotia censuses, telephone directories, and the Canadian Genealogy Index (which has details on more than 2 million records of all types dating from the 1600s to late 1900s).

Ancestry.ca’s Canada Deluxe membership provides access to all its databases for $99.95 annually, or $14.95 monthly (in Canadian dollars). You also can bypass a subscription and use the pay-per-view option; 10 views within 14 days cost $5.95. A new World Deluxe subscription ($359.95 per year) gets you into Ancestry.ca as well as Ancestry.com <Ancestry.com > and Ancestry.co.uk <ancestry.co.uk> (see below for more on MyFamily.com’s restructured subscriptions).

You may soon see MyFamily.com subscription sites covering Italy, France and Germany, too. In February, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that CEO Tim Sullivan had reorganized the company into five business units and expanded the International unit. That meant laying off 50 people, or 10 percent of the company’s workers.

Price Restructuring

MyFamily.com has streamlined subscriptions on its database sites, making it easier to keep track of what you’ve paid for. Gone are the multiple subscriptions to census, immigration and other collections. New Ancestry.com subscribers now select from two options: The World Deluxe membership of US, UK, Irish and Canadian records costs $299.40 annually or $34.95 monthly; or the US Deluxe membership of census, vital, military, land, newspaper and other records for $179.40 annually or $24.95 monthly.

Ancestry.co.uk and Ancestry.ca each offer the World Deluxe membership, too. The former has a UK Deluxe membership (69.95 pounds annually); the latter offers the Canadian Deluxe membership (see above).

Current subscribers can upgrade their memberships by calling (800) 262-3787. You’ll receive a credit for the unused portion of your subscription. If you don’t upgrade before renewal time, MyFamily.com product manager Beau Sharbrough says a representative will call you to discuss the new plans.

From the June 2006 issue of Family Tree Magazine.