In this post, I look at the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company collection on Ancestry. I’ll give a brief background on who created the records, where they came from, tips on how to use the collection, and end with an example from both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, Ancestry
What’s available for you?
Never before seen records from the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company are now available on Ancestry.1 Here are the categories.
How can I use these records in my family history research?
After exploring for two days, here are my top suggestions:
- Search for your person by name using either the Search function (pictured above) or manually on a “Crew or Passenger list.” Previously available collections end by 1935.2 This collection, which not exhaustive, holds lists from 1904-1981, and on a wide variety of ships: transatlantic, coastal, and Great Lakes.
- Search for information about the ship. This is where the collection comes into its own, with “Journals, Logs, and Ship Movement Books” (1905-1971); “Named Ships” (1836 2002); “Schedules and Fares” (1867-1992); and “Voyage Reports” (1916-1967). Ingenium’s archivist, Adele Torrance, shared that the Voyage Reports are among her favourite in the collection. Below are examples of the types of information available.
Where did the records come from?
In June 2024, Ancestry released the “Canada, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” from Ingenium. If you’re not familiar with Ingenium, they are a Crown Corporation that includes three national museums in Ottawa: the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum.3 There are two archive locations. Researchers are welcome by appointment.
These records were created by the Canadian Pacific Railway Steamships Limited and its later iterations. As genealogists, it’s important to understand the provenance of a record source in order to determine the record’s probable accuracy.
A brief history of the CPR
Here is a summary of the history of the CPR.
The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was founded in 1881 to build the railway. Its portfolio grew to include airlines, hotels, railways, and ships.4 The CPR created the Canadian Pacific Railway Steamships Services (CPSS) before 1883. The CPR spun the CPSS off into its own company in 1915, then changed its name to the Canadian Pacific Ocean Services (CPS) in 1921. CP Ships began in 1969 as an independent subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Limited. Canadian Pacific Limited was broken up in 2001, 120 years after it was founded.
Where to find ship information
Find ship information directly in passenger lists. Indirect information about ships may be found in family stories and photos, immigration records, naturalization records, and newspapers.
Using the collection
Although the collection is called “Canadian Pacific Steamship Company” (CPSS), there are also records created by other lines. To wrap your head around this idea, think of the CPSS as being the collectors of information about their business and their competitors. For example, “Crew or Passenger Lists,” 1905, has a list for the Allan Line’s SS Bavarian.5 The most recent passenger list is for 1981 – startlingly recent by Canadian standards – for the Princess Patricia’s Alaskan cruise departing Vancouver on Oct 5th.6
Western Canada example – the Empress of Asia, 1913
Use the CPSS “Named Ships”and “Schedules and Fares” together with passenger lists to learn about the fares, ship, and voyage.
Longer, faster, and more luxurious than the previous Empresses of Britain and Ireland, the Empresses of Asia and Russia were sister ships 593 feet long and gross 16850 tons.7 On 14 Jun 1913, the Empress of Asia sailed out of Liverpool, UK, for her second world cruise. Among the ports of call were Madeira, Cape Town, Durban, Colombo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Nagasaki. She arrived to Canada’s west coast on 31 Aug 1913. Round the world passengers could then debark to take the CPR across Canada to Halifax.
When she docked at Vancouver, the passenger manifest shows she carried 798 adults and 47 children, for a total of 845 people.8 About 450 passengers paid for third class passage, many of them Chinese who probably boarded at Hong Kong on Aug 13th, such as ten year old solo passenger Ng Choy from Toisan, Guangdong. He would not have seen much of the Empress of Asia’s luxuries, but he would have seen the ports of Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama.9
There are nil fares available for the 1913 voyage, but approximations may be found for 1918 and 1919. Asiatic steerage fares on the Empress of Asia for men was CAD$60 [$1095 in 2024] between Vancouver and Hong Kong.10
Ng Choy passed medical inspection shortly before docking at Vancouver at 3:00 pm on 31 Aug 1913. It’s unknown how he travelled to Victoria, but he was detained until the following day, when he was processed as a Chinese immigrant and paid his head tax of $500. Immigration officials collected $127K [$4,049,427 in 2024] from the 267 Chinese passengers who sailed on the Empress of Asia. The province of BC collected 25% of the taxes as its due.
Eastern Canada example – the Empress of Scotland, 1950
Use the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company records “Crew or Passenger Lists,” “Journals, Logs, and Ship Movement Books,” “Schedules and Fares,” and “Voyage Reports” together to find what life was like onboard ship. Canada did not keep outbound passenger movements (excepting Chinese persons) and so it is delightful to see such information captured in corporate records. The CPSS records contain both inbound and outbound passenger information, as well as the names of the captain and crew.
The Empress of Scotland regularly crossed the Atlantic, Liverpool to Quebec return. On 3 Nov 1950, the Pike family – Mr. Allan Pike, Mrs. Pike, Master Frederick Pike, and Master Robert Pike – departed Quebec for a week’s sailing to the UK.11 Assuming the children were over twelve, the fare would have been £55.10 per person [$17,091 for the entire family in 2024].12 The captain recorded “rough sea / mod swell / very rough sea / very heavy swell,” in the ship’s log for almost the entire voyage. 13
The voyage report provided more details.14 It was a rough sailing. The captain reported increasingly bad weather with “…a falling barometer and rough sea…” then later, “…in Long.40° West the wind had veered to South West and increased to moderate gale force. By Noon on Tuesday in Long.27° West the wind was blowing Force 9 from the West with a very high following sea…”
The ship’s surgeon and purser reported accidents among crew and passengers. One woman was thrown when the chair on which she was sitting broke loose from its chain. Another was thrown down the stairs during a heavy swell. Another sustained broken ribs when thrown against the deck railing. Dancing and other entertainments were cancelled. Several passenger’s effects were damaged when left unsecured in their cabins. The Empress of Scotland docked safely at Liverpool on 10 Nov 1950, and presumably the Pike family was happy to see dry land.
What might the voyage have looked like?
The records provided such a dramatic story, I asked ChatGPT to create an illustration.
On the Cover
The collection “Promotional Artwork” contains art commissioned by CPSS over the decades.15 This piece from 1920 depicts Canadian Pacific’s worldwide status.
Afterword
Ships have personalities and lives, and humans have been sailing since time immemorial. The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company records help us family historians fill in the dry details of dates of immigration and departure with colour and life. The Empress of Asia was built in 1912 by Fairfield Shipbuilding in Glasgow. In 1942, she was sunk off Singapore during the Second World War.16 The Empress of Scotland in this post was the second of her name for Canadian Pacific. Built in 1929 at the same shipyard as the Empress of Asia, she sailed 37 years before a fire in New York caused damage too extensive to repair.17
As is always the case in genealogy, I had no idea how the story would turn out when I began writing, nor that I would find the stories of ten year old Ng Choy in 1913, or the Pike family in 1950.
Thank yous
Thank you to Adele Torrance and the Ingenium team, for giving me a tour of the collection in September. If you’re in Ottawa, I recommend visiting the collection in person, as some fortunate souls were able to do. Also thank you to Gail Dever, Ken McKinlay, and John Reid, for their look at the collection back in June.
References
1“Canada, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” database online, Ancestry (Ancestry.com : accessed on 6 Dec 2024); citing “Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” Canada Science and Technology Museum Library and Archives, Ingenium, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
2See for example, “Canada, Incoming passenger lists 1865-1935,” database with images, Ancestry.com (Ancestry.com : accessed 8 Dec 2024); “Canada, Passenger Lists, 1881-1922,” database with images, FamilySearch (http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 8 December 2024); and “Passenger Lists, 1865-1922,” database with images, last modified 9 Sep 2020, Library and Archives Canada (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/passenger-lists/passenger-lists-1865-1922/Pages/introduction.aspx : accessed 8 Dec 2024).
3Canada, Ingenium, Ottawa, ON, Library and Archives, website, Ingenium (https://ingeniumcanada.org/library-and-archives : accessed 8 Dec 2024), email: biblio-archives@ingeniumcanada.org.
4Canada, Ingenium, Ottawa, ON, “Fonds CPS – Canadian Pacific Steamships Limited fonds,” (1880-1998), finding aid and archival description, Canadian Pacific Steamships Limited (1921-1969), ref. no. CA ON00419 CPS, Ingenium (https://www.archeion.ca/canadian-pacific-steamships-limited-fonds : accessed 8 Dec 2024).
5“Canada, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” database online, “Crew or Passenger Lists,” 1905-1981, Allan Line – Passenger list – Bavarian, 1905, 12 images, Ancestry (Ancestry.com : accessed on 9 Dec 2024).
6“Crew or Passenger Lists,” 1905-1981, Passenger List-Princess Patricia Alaska Cruise, 1981, 8 images.
7“Named Ships,” 1836-1991, Around the World By the New Empress of Asia, 1913, 26 images.
8Canada, “Incoming Passenger Lists, 1865-1935,” database online, images 1-38 of 232, passenger manifest for the Empress of Asia, arriving at Vancouver on 31 Aug 1913, Ancestry (Ancestry.com : accessed 8 Dec 2024); calculations about Ng Choy and the revenue collected was based on Peter W. Ward and Henry Yu, “Register of Chinese Immigrants to Canada, 1886-1949,” Faculty Research and Publications: “Register of Chinese immigrants to Canada 1885-1949.xlsx,” and “Register_of_Chinese_Immigrants_description.pdf,” documents online, University of British Columbia Open Collections (https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0075988 : accessed 10 Dec 2024).
9“Canada, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” database online, “Named Ships,” 1836-1991, Around the World By the New Empress of Asia, 1913, p. 7.
10“Schedules and Fares,” 1867- ca. 2000s, CPOS Supplement 3 to Tariff E3, 1918, image 3 of 3; From Vancouver (to) China-Manila-Japan-Cabin Fares, 1919, image 9 of 13.
11Journals, Logs, and Ship Movement Books,” 1905-1971, Extracts from Log of Rms-Empress of Scotland Voyages 62 West to 73C, 1950, 1905, images 1-2 of 25.
12“Schedules and Fares,” 1867- ca. 2000s, CP-Sailings and Fares to and From Europe, 1950, 5 images.
13“Journals, Logs, and Ship Movement Books,” 1905-1971, Extracts from Log of Rms-Empress of Scotland Voyages 62 West to 73C, 1950, image 19 of 25.
14“Voyage Reports,” 1905-1971, Captain’s General Voyage Report-Empress of Scotland Voyage No. 70, 1950, 24 images.
15“Canada, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company Records, 1897-1981,” database online, “Promotional Artwork 1916-1968, Artwork by Unkown [sic] Artist, image 20 of 73, 1920, Ancestry (Ancestry.com : accessed on 9 Dec 2024).
16Dan Black, “Demise of an Empress,” 23 Sep 2024, online article, Canada’s History (https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/military-war/demise-of-an-empress#:~:text=But%2C%20in%20the%20stark%20reality,Singapore%20on%20February%205%2C%201942. : accessed 10 Dec 2024); also “S/S Empress of Asia, Canadian Pacific Line,” 2024, database online, Norway-Heritage (https://www.norwayheritage.com/p_ship.asp?sh=empas : accessed 10 Dec 2024).
17“S/S Empress of Scotland (2), Canadian Pacific Line,” 2024, database online, Norway-Heritage (https://www.norwayheritage.com/p_ship.asp?sh=emps2 : accessed 10 Dec 2024).
