"The Nova Scotia Genealogist" Arrived Today

The Summer 2008 issue is out, and as usual, J. Fralic-Brown and crew has put together another tremendous edition.

They have "Extracts from The Wesleyan Newspaper, 1838 - Part II", which cover deaths, "Vital Statistics On Line in the Maritimes", and two articles on "Nova Scotia Strays".

They also have an article on "The Simpson Collection, Part I - Dolores Lockhart's Wonderful Gift", which gives an account and description of the papers of James Simpson of Halifax in 1749. In the next issue will be Part II, in which more of the records will be discussed.

And the second installment of the article "'First Missionary' - Well, Not Really, But ... Part II" talks about the life of Thomas Wood, a missionary from the Church of England in Nova Scotia.

Follow Wood as he goes from Halifax to New Brunswick Annapolis Royal, and read about his exploits in the countryside in the early days of the Colony of Nova Scotia.

Part III will be in the fall issue of the Genealogist.

Their AGM was held in May, and there was an interesting fact - they reported that membership had fallen by 15% over last year.

This is quite a big dip in the numbers, and one way the president suggested that they could reduce the cost of doing business was to reduce the number of issues of the Genealogist to two from three, or making it available on the website.

I vote for making it available on the website and keeping the number of issues to three! It is a good publication, full of useful and timely information, and is worth making available to as many researchers of Nova Scotia and Maritime history and genealogy as possible.

Canada Genealogy Centre is 5 Years Old!

It's hard to believe, but the Canada Genealogy Centre (GCG) is already five years old!

It was on March 29, 2003——a cold windy Saturday——that I bundled up and went out to Nepean (now Ottawa) to see the launch of a new genealogy site at the Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

The first site was 93 pages long, and by June 5, 2004, the number of pages had increased to over 300 pages.

Today, there are 20 databases online, the two newest being the Chinese Immigration List and the 1881 Census.

In fact, it is so popular that it is the second-leading website among the federal government sites - a close second to the weather website!

The top four databases, in terms of hits, are Immigration (1925-1935), Western Land Grants, the Soldiers of the First World War, and the 1871 Census.

They also have online "That's My Family", developed in partnership with the Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Quebec and Ancester Search.

According to John Reid's blog, the hardcopy of the 1916 Census for the Western Provinces has just arrived at the LAC, and is now in the CGC Microfilm Consultation Room. The index of the census is being done by Ancestry.com.

These days, 60 percent of visits to the LAC are to the CGC.