When Larry was born in 1955, it was four years too late to meet his great-grandfather, Pierre Jean-Baptiste Robichaud, a native of Moncton, New Brunswick who had settled in Michigan and been laid to rest in a Lansing cemetery.

The family had no way of knowing that in 2026, Larry, his wife, and his children could all claim the right to Canadian citizenship from Pierre’s family line.

A 30-year veteran of Oracle, Larry had settled into a comfortable semi-retirement in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he and his wife lived within a few hours’ drive of each of their three adult children.

Then came the winter of 2025–2026, the ICE raids, the protests, the shootings. Tense, harrowing moments for a mixed-race family with children adopted from Nigeria.

Larry’s daughter, a paramedic, had often spoken about moving to Canada, but the competitive process for obtaining Canadian permanent residency was a real barrier to permanent relocation.

Then Larry’s wife read an article about recent changes to Canada’s citizenship laws, and everything changed.

If the family could prove a direct line of descent from a Canadian ancestor, they could claim their right to Canadian citizenship. But where should they begin to look? Did the records even exist? If so, where were they?

Armed with only his great-grandfather’s name and place of origin, Larry started with Google Gemini.

Gemini led Larry to Canada’s digitized census records, available online through Library and Archives Canada.

Within a few minutes of browsing, Larry had found it. He stared, transfixed at his monitor, at a grainy page of hand-written names from Canada’s 1901 census. The legibility left something to be desired, but he found the name he was looking for: Pierre Jean-Baptiste Robichaud. Nationality: Canadian. Profession: Grocer.

Here it was: confirmation that the family didn’t need to immigrate to Canada. Through their descent from Pierre, they were already citizens. With the right documents, they could apply for proof of Canadian citizenship.

Larry messaged his family group chat, and it started blowing up. There were over 30 family members descended from Pierre. Every single one of them a Canadian citizen by descent.