How to find out what time you were born

Do birth certificates show the time of birth?

Sometimes. Birth registration in Canada is handled by each province and territory, so what is on file for you, and what is printed on a certificate, depends on where you were born and when. A short certificate or wallet card often leaves the time out. The fuller version, called the long-form certificate or a copy of the birth registration, is the one most likely to carry it if it was recorded.

We don't list rules for individual provinces here, because they differ and change. The reliable way to find out is to contact the vital statistics office of the province or territory where you were born and ask two things: does my record include a time of birth, and which version of the record shows it?

How to ask for the long-form record

1. Find the vital statistics office (the name varies) for the province or territory where you were born. Use its own government website.
2. Ask for the long-form certificate or a copy of the full birth registration, not the short version or a wallet card, and ask whether the time of birth is shown.
3. Be ready to prove who you are. Offices usually limit who can order a certified copy, and the person on the record normally can. Fees and waiting times vary.
4. If you were adopted, or the record was amended, ask the office how to request the original record. Rules differ by province or territory.

Ask the hospital for your records

The hospital where you were born may still hold the delivery record. Hospitals merge, rename and close, so first find out who runs it today. Then ask its medical records (health information) department how to request records of your birth. Older records are sometimes moved to storage or to another custodian, and how long they are kept varies by province and by facility, so ask even if the birth was a long time ago.

In older records the details of your birth may sit in your mother's chart. She can usually request her own records. Ask for the delivery or labour record, which is the page most likely to give a time. Some hospitals also issued a decorative birth souvenir with the time on it. That isn't an official record, but it is a clue.

Ask your family

Parents, grandparents and older siblings are often the best source, and the only one for many people. A remembered time is valuable but not always precise, and people round. These questions help turn a memory into something you can use:

• Was it light or dark outside? Before or after a meal, a shift change, a television show?
• Who was there, how did they get to the hospital, and who did they phone afterwards?
• Did a nurse tell them the time, or is it the time someone looked at a clock later?
• Do two people remember it differently? Keep both. Your range runs from the earliest to the latest.

Baby books, announcements and religious records

• Baby books often have a line for the time of birth, filled in by a parent in the first days.
• Birth announcements in cards, letters or a local newspaper sometimes give the time. Local libraries and newspaper archives can help you find one.
• Hospital bracelets and bassinet cards, if someone kept them, can carry a time.
• Religious records, such as a baptism or naming record, sometimes note the time of birth. Ask the congregation or its archive.
• Letters and diaries written around the birth. A relative may have a note of when the call came.

Write it down as a range

Whatever you find, write it as a range, such as “between 2 and 4 in the morning”, and note the source. A confident time that is wrong does more harm than an honest wide one, and a range is what the free check below needs.

If you can't find it

Many people never find a record. You still have two steps that work from a range. First, the free range check: give the earliest and latest time that could be right and see every rising sign inside it. Nothing is saved. If the range holds one sign, you have your answer for it. If it holds several, read what you can use without a birth time in the meantime.

Second, the report. It tests a chart every 5 minutes across your range against the dated events of your life, such as moves, marriages, children and career changes, and sends the most likely window with the evidence and a confidence level. It is not a certified birth time and it is not for official documents. See the sample report.

In the UK?

The rules and the records are different in the United Kingdom. See the UK guide: how to find your birth time in the UK.