Have a Canadian Great-Great Grandparent? It Could Make You Canadian.

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Have a Canadian Great-Great Grandparent? It Could Make You Canadian.

Canada has opened a route to citizenship for people who can prove they have a Canada-born ancestor. Millions could qualify, and Americans are already lining up to apply.

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A citizenship ceremony for new Canadians last year in Montreal.

Credit...

Andrej Ivanov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By

Vjosa Isai

and

Matina Stevis-Gridneff

Reporting from Toronto

April 27, 2026,

12:36 p.m. ET

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Ellen Arthur, a 79-year-old retired family lawyer in Lexington, Va., has decades of experience digging up personal records for her clients. But surfacing a century-old baptismal ledger kept by a Catholic church in Montreal, where her mother was born, was a first.

That dusty old record is what Ms. Arthur is leaning on to seek Canadian citizenship for her two adult sons.

They are among thousands of Americans using a new stipulation in Canada’s citizenship rules that came into effect in December, under which people who can prove a direct Canada-born ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent, or someone even further back — can officially become Canadian.

Ms. Arthur had already been eligible for citizenship as the daughter of a Canada-born Canadian, but had not pursued it. Under the old policy, know as the first-generation rule, her sons would not have been able to inherit citizenship because neither she, nor them, were born in Canada.

Now, the access to being Canadian can theoretically stretch generations back, if one can prove they are a direct descendant of someone born in Canada.

And while the process is bureaucratic and Ms. Arthur’s case has been stalled by clerical and administrative hiccups, it is already attracting hopeful Canadians, most from the United States.

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