The conference was held this past weekend of September 19-21 in Ottawa, and was a success - the best I have felt about a conference in many a year!
This year's conference was the society's 14th annual one, and was entitled "Celebrate Your Anglo-Celtic Roots", which meant there was a special emphasis on England.
The keynote speaker was Sherry Irvine, a genealogist and one of the founders of Pharos Teaching and Tutoring from Victoria, British Columbia <
www.pharostutors.com> who gave an outstanding Don Whiteside Memorial Lecture Friday evening when she talked about "Genealogy With Wings: Reflections of a Family Historian in an Age of Techno-enthusiasm."
Her speech truly did set the stage for the rest of the weekend because it advanced the setting of genealogy on the Internet to "Genealogy 2.0".
She explained that genealogists who are willing to go that one step further and get on the train going towards "techno-enthusiasm" by becoming involved with such Web 2.0 technologies as collaborative family history sites, blogs, wikis, and Facebook and other social networking websites, will find their genealogy expanding and taking on new meaning for those involved in it.
You and your cousins can go on the Internet and build your family tree together, bringing a new dimension to genealogy that I will look into because my cousins are all across Canada and in the United States, and this will bring us closer together! (I will look into putting the genealogy of Andrew BARCLAY, the progenitor of the United Empire Loyalist BARCLAYs of Boston, New York City, and Shelburne, Nova Scotia on such a site.)
And it just continued through the next two days as it encompassed Marian Press in her talks about "Genealogy 2.0: What Do I Need To Know" and "The Past, Present and Future of Librarians for Family Histories", and Alison Hare and her talk about how to properly document your genealogy work called "Citations for Genealogists."
The rest of the time I spent in the Marketplace where I said my "Hellos" to everyone, including Ed Zapletal, the editor at Mooreshead Magazines Ltd. (
Internet Genealogy,
Family Chronicle); Derek Hopkins and John Reid of the Quebec Family History Society, who gave me a demonstration of the new Quebec database that the society owns, and which is only available only to members <
www.qfhs.ca>; and Mike More from the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society <
www.ogsottawa.on.ca> spent a hour or so on Friday afternoon talking about Canadian genealogy in general.
Doug Rimmer, Assistant Deputy Minister - Program and Services Sector, also gave a brief summary of the accomplishments of the Canadian Genealogy Centre of the LAC over the past year.
He touched on the hours that the LAC is open and how they were increased when they were reduced last fall, and this was because of the "public reaction", and he also discussed a few of the databases which have been put on last year - the North West Mounted Police; Black Loyalists; Chinese Immigration; the 1881 Census; and the Second World War - Killed in Action.
Congratulations should be given to all of the team who worked on this year's conference, especially the Program Co-Chair, John Reid, who put together a wonderful conference by bringing the speakers to us from Victoria, B.C., Toronto, and England, and Wills Burwell, who as Past President and Co-Chair (Administration) of the conference, helped to make everyone feel welcome. Their cadre of volunteers are also to be congratulated for their dedication and hard work in the face of the onslaught of the many harried and hurried genealogists who took over the LAC this past weekend!
Mark your calendar for next year's conference from September 18th to the 20th. Their website is <
www.bifhsgo.ca>, and John Reid at his blog,
Anglo-Celtic Connections, also has some comments on the conference.
