The writings on this site are based on the study of Finnish immigrants in Canada. It began, of course, with my own relatives and continued with a few local collaborators in investigating the Finnish heritage of the residents of Nolalu, Thunder Bay. As I became familiar with the source materials in that context, I couldn’t stop and expanded the scope to cover the entire Thunder Bay District.

A lot has been written about Finnish immigrants, and many genealogists have traced the paths and descendants of their American cousins. Similarly, many descendants of immigrants have sought to uncover the background of their immigrant ancestors, with varying success. My own research has aimed for systematic use of source materials. I have reviewed all marriage certificates from the Thunder Bay area from 1875 to 1940, and death certificates from 1900 to 1950. I have sought to identify each immigrant’s known grandparents and connect them to previous research on the geni.com World Family Tree. This is not always successful and requires further research.

Through marriages, immigrant families connect with each other, and sibling and cousin relationships between different families are revealed through common Finnish relatives, despite the variations in surnames. When the family has branched out to other provinces of Canada or the USA, I have tried to continue the research in those areas.

The results of the research regarding family connections are documented in geni projects and personal profiles. I usually don’t refer to the original sources in these writings, the references are in the geni profiles. Following people and family connections is easier when the reader is a registered and signed-in geni user.

Even a study of this scope opens up perspectives on the demographics of migrants, their places of residence, their occupations and their changes during the investigated – albeit short – period. At the same time, I can perhaps give Finnish genealogists a slightly deeper understanding of the lives and communities of their immigrant relatives than what is typically given in single family genealogy studies.

Samira Saramo recently wrote about these issues from the perspective of more general historical research¹:

Despite decades of research conducted in Finland, the United States, and Canada, the histories of Finnish North American communities have found little space within the history of Finland. After the moment of emigration, it seems Finnish migrant history no longer fits in the scope of the national narrative. Instead, it has been boxed into the academic field of “immigration history” or left for the work of genealogists and local historians.

The primary target group of the articles is Finnish genealogists and relatives of immigrants in Finland. That’s why only selected articles will be published also in English. The translations will be AI assisted, and any mistakes in grammar and vocabulary will remain mine.

Disclaimer: As a genealogist, I stand on the shoulders of a 10,000-foot giant of geni user community. I immediately connect what I have found to previously researched family branches when those have been built and documented by the vast Finnish genealogy community. Mistakes and questionable interpretations are of course my own.

Disclaimer: As a researcher, I’m a couch tiger. I haven’t traveled in the target area, and I haven’t interviewed local people in any systematic manner. The exceptions to this are my own relatives and a few permanent collaborators in Thunder Bay.

Disclaimer: I don’t present myself as a historian and I don’t seek to challenge the results of scientific research. I hope that some of my observations and conclusions can be of interest to historians as well.

1. Saramo, Samira, Whose History is Migrant Community History? An Essential Question for Heritage Preservation. https://activehistory.ca/blog/2023/10/16/whose-history-is-migrant-community-history-an-essential-question-for-heritage-preservation/ ↩︎