were you. And there were many other ways as well.

But the list of criteria was not exactly exhaustive — as Jackie Scott and many others learned decades later. These people — citizens in every sense of the word except for the official one — are called the Lost Canadians.

Ms. Scott’s story is typical of many of them. She was born in England just after World War II, but before January 1, 1947. Her father was a soldier in the Canadian Army serving in England; her mother was an English national. Jackie was born out of wedlock, but her parents married and, by 1948, moved (back?) to Canada. According to the London Free Press, Scott lived her entire post-immigration life in Canada and, in 2004, went to obtain apassport. Her request was denied. The Citizen Act, until it was amended in 1977, snared Scott in a loophole which resulted her not being a citizen.

Under the original wording of the Act, a baby born abroad was only made a citizen if his or her father was a Canadian citizen, assuming that the child was born in wedlock. (At the time, wives and children were still considered, to a large degree, property of the father/husband.) If the child was born out of wedlock, then the child’s mother had to be a Canadian citizen. Scott’s parents weren’t married when she was born, and her mother wasn’t a Canadian citizen — so neither was she.

When Scott and others objected, claiming that the basis for such a distinction was ridiculous at