Hi Sharon,
1) My Great Grandfather and family moved to Canada between 1904 and 1908. Can someone recommend how I could track down when they emigrated/which ship they were on?
jorose has already explained the problems with Canadian ships lists for this time period. The National Archives of Canada (NAC) holds immigration records from 1865 to 1935. Ships are on the reel, in order of arrival. You can find the details at this URL
http://www.archives.ca/02/020202_e.html
If you want to order filmed passenger lists (remember they aren't indexed!), a list of NAC microfilm numbers for
passenger lists to Canada 1865-1922 can be found at
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/filmnos_can1865.shtmlYou could also try
http://shipslists-online.rootschat.net/canada/2) My Grandmother's sister was born in Canada in 1908. How would I go about tracking down her birth and maybe obtaining a copy of the birth certificate?
If ONtario, did you try the online Ontario Vital Stats Project? just in case...
http://www.rootsweb.com/~onvsr/The Archives of Ontario has the Indexes (where they exist) and Registration Books from the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario for Births: 1869-1908 and these are available to the public. You could look for your gma's sister in the indexes either from AO or a Family History Centre. See
http://familysearch.org/ to get the film no. for LDS
3) The family were still in Canada in 1915 when my g grandfather joined the CEF. His attestation papers give his address as Porter Ville, Maynooth, Hastings County, Ontario and the place of attestation was Belleville, Ontario.
Did you send for the rest of his file? You can only do that by sending in a FAX or SNAIL MAIL, the attestation papers are only a small part of the complete file.
I can never remember the URL to get to the new LAC website so just go in through
http://www.rootsweb.com/~canmil/ The Canadian Military Heritage Project. Look for the link, something about FIND YOUR MILITARY ANCESTOR.
Also check the 1911 census indexes at
http://allcensusrecords.com/canada/ Just look for 1911 Ontario and see if your location has been done yet. Also at
http://automatedgenealogy.com/ they are transcribing 1911.
4) My G Gradndfather arrived in England and joined his army unit on 7 March 1915. Sometime between then and Mar 1916 my G Grandmother and the children emigrated back to England - again, how would I track down that information & the ship she sailed on?
Unfortunately Canada did not keep outbound lists. There are British "inbound" lists, but they are not indexed, nor microfilmed. The original inbound lists reside at Kew.
All ships carrying passengers in or out of any British port were required by law to deposit an official passenger list with the relevant port authorities
The records for all these ship passengers travelling between 1890 and 1960 survives within the collection of
original British Board of Trade passenger lists. The only place they can be seen is at the Public Record Office in
Kew, England.
These lists are not filmed, not indexed and they are not available on-line. See
http://www.passengerlists.co.uk/ for more help