Branching Out Spring Seminar at Campbell River

The Branching Out Spring Seminar of the Campbell River Genealogy Society of British Columbia will be held on Saturday 25th April at the CR Maritime Heritage Centre from 9:30-3:00 pm.

The speaker will be Dave Obee and he will present four seminars and they will be -

Travel Smart with Technology: Visiting an ancestral community is one of the greatest thrills. The presentation is designed to help travellers, both real and virtual, to maximize their research into family connections outside Canada.

Beyond the Online Basics: A genealogical guide to digital collections. This session provides ideas on how to find the documents that will help you learn more about your families, or the local histories of the areas where they lived.

A Fresh Light on old Newspapers: Thanks to the many digitization projects, there are millions of newspaper pages on the Internet. What are the pitfalls? This presentation takes you through the digitization process, from hard copy to your computer screen. It is designed to help you achieve the best results from your work.

Trinkets & Treasures: Things Your Ancestors left Behind - Items that your ancestors used or created will help you to gain a better understanding of the lives they lived and serve as a reminder of times past. Think of the stories they can tell.

The cost of the seminar is $50.00.

A Save-On bag lunch can be pre-ordered for an added fee. Refreshments will be available and there will be a draw for door prizes.

To register, contact Janice Wilkin before April 17 at wilkin1@telus.net or phone (250) 203-0585. A registration form can be downloaded from www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bccrgc/

Their website is at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bccrgc/

The Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/179838535426731/

UPDATE: OGS Conference – Interview No 4

Shirley Sturdevant, former president of the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) has interviewed Dave Obee LLD (University of British Columbia) from Victoria, British Columbia. He will be a speaker at the OGS Conference to be held in Barrie, Ontario from May 29th to May 31st, 2015.

He will be participating in the Saturday morning panel discussion and be presenting lectures entitled A Sense of Place and Time, Western Canada by Rail, and From Eastern Europe to Canada.

Dave is the editor-in-chief of the Times Colonist newspaper. He is also the author of twelve books, including guides to Canadian immigration records and census records. He is a columnist for Internet Genealogy and Family Chronicle, and serves on the board of Canada’s History Society. 

To view the YouTube interview, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5932gCFc5Ig

And to review the other interviews on this blog, you can go to the following websites -

Interview No 1 with Thomas MacEntee and Dr.Janet Few at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/update-ogs-conference-interviews.html

Interview No 2 with Dr. Maurice Gleeson at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-ogs-interview.html

Interview No 3 with Kirsty Gray http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/02/update-ogs-conference-interview-no-3.html

The OGS website is at http://www.ogs.on.ca/

The Conference Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/OntarioGenealogicalSocietyConference?ref=hl

Check the Canadian Week in Review every Monday morning for the latest in Genealogy, Heritage, and History news in Canada.

If you missed this week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/03/canadian-week-in-review.html

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!
It has been a regular post every Monday morning since

April 23, 2012.

Genealogy Classes at Royal Roads University

Dave Obee is teaching two classes at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC in February, and they are called Discovering Your Family History: An Introduction.

The course description says that “The Internet has made it easy to gather information about family histories, however, it is still important to use proper research techniques to understand the records being consulted and to flesh out the raw details of a family tree with information about the lives of ancestors. Designed for people who have already gathered the basic information on their families, this course stresses the need for research in local history and social history as well and will help participants understand how to use a wide variety of resources and plan further work”.

The courses takes place on the 2nd and 9th of February, and it cost $145 + applicable taxes. The site says it is best to register by Sat, Jan 19th, 2013.

More information is available at http://cstudies.royalroads.ca/courses/PEOI3001-Y12.htm

Dave Obee Gives Two Talks

His first talk, entitled “Destination Canada”, will be given on Saturday, March 24th from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. at the West Vancouver Memorial Library.

More than seven million people arrived in Canada from Europe, the United States, and Asia between 1815 and 1930.

This talk discusses the wide variety of sources that deal with immigration to Canada, including ship passenger lists (available from 1865 through 1935), border-crossing records, and naturalization and citizenship documents.

The second talk, “Writing Your Family History”, will be held from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. in the Welsh Hall, and touch upon the reason for writing a family history, and how a well-written story will make other family members more interested in the research that you are doing. He will also discuss ideas that will help you get over writer's block.

For more information, visit the West Vancouver Memorial Library at http://www.westvanlibrary.ca/, or write info@westvanlibrary.ca.

My List of Books for the Holidays

These are five books Canadian books that I have found particularly helpful to me during the past year, and which I have used in doing my own genealogy. I would suggest that you may find them helpful, too -

British Home Children: Their Stories. Compiled by the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (ISBN 978-1-926797-47-2). A compilation of personal essays in which 36 children tell their life stories of how they came to Canada, and the life they lived here between 1869 and 1948.

The book is available from Global Genealogy at http://globalgenealogy.com/countries/canada/home-children/resources/101189.htm

Tracing Your Irish Roots is published by Moorshead Magazines (ISBN 978-0-9781592-6-9). A great collection of fifteen articles previously printed by the publisher since 2005.

It is available through Moorshead Magazines at http://familychronicle.com/Best_of_Irish.htm

And as part of a series, her sister publication, Tracing Your English and Scottish Ancestors also has fifteen articles in it about English and Scottish genealogy.

It is available from http://familychronicle.com/best_of_engscot_contents.htm

One of the best books published in 2010—and which I use as my "go to" book on immigration, citizenship, and naturalization—is Dave Obee's book, Destination Canada: A Genealogical Guide to Immigration Records. (ISBN: 978-0-9735143-3-9)

For any questions that I am asked about immigration, I always include Obee's book in my searching for the answer because I want to make sure that I am aware of all of the facts surrounding immigration to Canada.

To read the rest of the review, go to http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2011/04/destination-canada.html.

The book is available from http://globalgenealogy.com/countries/canada/general/resources/319005.htm

Glenn Wright's Canadians at War 1914-1919, A Research Guide to World War One Service Records (ISBN13: 978-1-926797-45-5). This is a very detailed book on the resources available to a researcher on the Canadians who fought in the First World War.

A military archivist at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) before his retirement a number of year ago, he has left no stone unturned in his description of the resources available to the researcher. You can read the full review in Families, the journal of the Ontario Genealogical Society (a membership in the organization is required), or from Global Genealogy's listing at http://globalgenealogy.com/countries/canada/military/resources/101160.htm

Saint John Branch Genealogical Fair

On October 1, 2011, from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, at The St. Joachim’s Church Hall, 603 Loch Lomond Road, Saint John, New Brunswick the Saint John Branch of the NBGS Inc. will be hosting a Genealogical Fair.

Several exhibitors will be in attendance, and it will feature the NB Archives Road Show which includes research material from the New Brunswick Provincial Archives.

I understand that Dave Obee, genealogist from Victoris, British Columbia will be there giving talks.

This fair will be of interest from the beginner to the experienced researcher.

They say that you will be able to "Learn the first steps in the lifetime journey of family research, perhaps find that small piece of information that chinks away at that brick wall you've encountered or make connections with researchers that are on the same trail as you are".

There will be a small entrance fee, and refreshments will be available to purchase.

Plenty of free parking is available.

Their site is http://www.nbgssj.ca/GenealogicalFair_October12011.asp

Dave Obee - Canada's Genealogist

I first met Dave Obee of Victoria in 2007 at a genealogy/library conference at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. His website is at http://www.daveobee.com/

Since then, we had the occasion to meet each other in various events, and at the 2011 conference of the Ontario Genealogical Society held in Hamilton, I asked him to write a piece on Social Media for the August issue of Families.

As a lead-up to reading the paper in the fall issue of Families, there is a good article called "Database search strategies” at http://www.daveobee.com/columns/09search.htm in which he gives us ten reasons why a search may not be as straightforward as we may think they would be - as Dave says “There are dozens of reasons why a search might fail”.

Some of the reasons he gives are -

Original records were poorly written,

Places were confused, and

People lied - Some people do not want to be found.

But he gives eight ways to search to increase your chances of success, including the use of wildcards, and how to be flexible in searching.

Dave will be speaking at the 2012 Ontario Genealogical Society Conference to be held at Kingston, June 1-3, 2012. The website is http://www.ogs.on.ca/seminar/conference2012.php

Victoria, BC Digitizes Newspaper

The first 100,00 digitalized pages (from 1858 to 1910) of the Times Colonist (known earlier as the Daily Colonist), the newspaper which serves Victoria, British Columbia is now on the Internet at www.timescolonist.com.

The press release says that "It is sure to become one of the most important resources for historical researchers throughout the province. It has the potential to open up many new doors in historical writing, help genealogists trace their family trees and learn about their ancestors, and even the way that history in taught in our schools".

They have the following information on the site -

- Birth, marriage and death information

- References to anniversaries, business openings and school reports

- List of passengers arriving in Victoria (the federal government did not keep records until 1905)

Dave Obee, an editor at the newspaper and the one who spearheaded the project, was at a conference in Ottawa this past summer. I had the opportunity to meet him and discuss the project with him. You can go to his site at www.daveobee.com.

He is one-half of the team that wrote the book, Finding Your Canadian Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide and he will give various talks at the Ontario Genealogical Society this summer in Oakville on May www.ogs.on.ca.

This project was made possible with the help of University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, and the Greater Victoria Public Library.