How to find out if you have Canadian citizenship through the same ancestor as Beyoncé
Canada Offers Citizenship by Descent to Relatives of Acadian Resistance Leader Joseph Broussard
American singer-songwriter Beyoncé is the sixth great-granddaughter of Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil, an Acadian resistance leader who led 193 refugees to Louisiana in 1765. As a result, anyone able to trace a continuous line of descent to Broussard is not only a distant relative of Beyoncé but also a Canadian citizen by descent. This is due to changes to Canada’s Citizenship Act last December, which eliminated the generational limit for inheriting Canadian citizenship.
To determine if you are related to Beyoncé through Joseph Broussard, you can either hire a professional genealogist or conduct your own research and map your ancestry backward. The first step is to identify a single repository to document your findings, such as general-purpose software like Excel or Google Sheets, or specialized software for genealogical research like Family Tree Maker or RootsMagic.
Once you have chosen a repository, you can start building your family tree by creating records for all the ancestors you can identify with the information you have ready at hand. This includes documenting parent-child relationships from generation to generation, starting with your own parents, followed by your grandparents, then your great-grandparents, and continuing to work backward.
As you build your tree, you can expand it in search of Broussard’s descendants by consulting online genealogy and family history platforms like FamilySearch, MyHeritage, FindMyPast, WikiTree, Ancestry, and Geneat. By inputting known information about your existing ancestors, you can attempt to identify related ancestor records in the database and update your repository with the information.
More than 13,000 people are known to share the same Canadian ancestor as Beyoncé, but this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. With the recent changes to Canada’s Citizenship Act, many more people may be eligible for Canadian citizenship by descent. If you think you may be related to Joseph Broussard or Beyoncé, now is the time to start researching your family tree and exploring your options for Canadian citizenship.
For personalized support with your Canadian immigration pathway, contact GTR Immigration.
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