National Volunteer Week in Canada

National Volunteer Week (NVW) is from April 12 to 18, 2015.

Annually, we spent close to two billion hours a year – the equivalent of approximately one million full-time jobs – in an effort to help out family, friends, and those in need to better our neighbourhoods and communities.

The call for the 2015 nominations for the Prime Minister’s Volunteer Awards was launched on April 13, 2015, and will run until June 30, 2015.

We, at Genealogy Canada, salute all of volunteers of the Canada genealogy community. We have volunteers who take photos of gravestones, who work on the The Ontario Name Index (TONI), who put together our monthly meetings, workshops, and conferences, and who work in our libraries, museum, and archives.

We appreciate what you do for us so that we have records to search, and encouragement to us when we feel that there is nothing left to search to find that elusive ancestors.

A big thank you to everyone. We appreciate all the work that you do.

The website for the National Volunteer Week is at http://volunteer.ca/



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/2015/04/canadian-week-in-review-13-april-2015_13.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.

 

Happy 4th Blogiversary!

GenealogyCanada.blogspot.com is now 4 years old!

Thank you to all who have followed this blog over the years, and those who have posted links.

A special invitation goes out to new visitors to stop by and take a few minutes to enjoy the 600+ posts.

Besides myself, there are two others who have their Blogiversary on this day -

Mary's Musings http://musingmary.blogspot.com Mary is from Phoenix, Arizona, and she started the blog in 2010. She is on google+ as Mary Warren, and she says that she is on Facebook as Mary Post Warren, if you would like to go there to see her latest news.

The Rippers www.gyrippers.blogspot.com Another blogger from Arizona, she is a Graveyard Rabbit! She has had the blog since 2009, and there are cemeteries from all over the US.

Congratulations to all my fellow bloggers who are celebrating a Blogiversary this year!

New for 2012, you can now reach me on Facebook. This is where I'll be posting extra material and photos not seen on the blog.

I invite you to drop by for a visit www.facebook.com/GenealogyCanada, and if you wish, join me as a Friend.

Thanks again for your support. It's appreciated!

Elizabeth

Have you "Google Booked" lately?

Are you like me, "I will Google Book when I have time!"?

So, the other day when I wrote a blog about the Manitoba Genealogical Society <http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/11/manitoba-genealogical-society-website.html>, I took the time to explore Google Book, as it has been a while since I had done so.

I went to Google Book <www.google.ca/books> and in the Search Box I put the title of the book I wanted to read as "History of Kings County, Nova Scotia" and pressed the button, and there it was - completely scanned!

The first thing I noticed was the number (variety) of books that Google now has for genealogists and family historians to read at their leisure.

They say that they now have 7-million books in which they put the fullview - the full text of the book - every page, including Table of Contents and Indexes - online. And this list included the book that I looked at, much to my pleasant surprise.

They also have a limited preview of the books, which means that the line in which the name you want to research is highlighted, but you can get them at the library or at bookstores which are mentioned on the side of the page by Google.

Google Book started in 2004, but last fall they really put a push on to have as many books as possibly scanned and put on the Internet - and I am glad they did!

FamilySearch Looking for Volunteers!

FamilySearch International is going to make the indexes to the 1861, 1871, and 1916 census available online for free with the help of online volunteer indexers, and an agreement with Ancestry.ca.

The press release says that "Online volunteers are needed to help transcribe select information from digital images of the historical documents into easily searchable indexes."

The completed indexes will be available for free at <www.familysearch.org>.

If you want to become a volunteer, you can start right away by registering online at <familysearchindexing.org>, by downloading the free indexing software, and selecting the 1916 Canada Census project.

It will take about 30 minutes to finish one page of the census, and the volunteer has one week to finish it, if need be.

"The 1916 census was selected first because it is the most recent and smallest of the three census targeted in the first place. It included three of the western provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta), and has about 1.7-million names - so it will not take long to complete," said Stephen Young, FamilySearch Project Manager.

It is interesting that they have picked three personalities known to people, that is; Arthur Gordon Kelly (Art Linkletter), Sir William Samuel Stephenson (real-life inspiration for James Bond), and Elvina Fay Wray (Fay Wray) who appeared in the 1916 census as example of people you can meet along the way to indexing the census - to make it more interesting to transcribe, I suppose.

The Library and Archives Canada (LAC) owns, and is providing the digital images for, the Canada Census Project.

Virtual War Memorials

With news this weekend that they have found the remains of another unknown solider in Europe—and that he has been buried at a Remembrance Day Ceremony at Vimy this past weekend—brought home the fact that the wars in which they have fought will never die. It is our duty to remember them.

Canada now has 5,890 Vitual War Memorials that you can visit online on the Canada's Veteran Affairs website. Go to <www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=memorials/memcan>.

On a personal note, Mario Lapointe, my husband and a full-time reservist in the Air Force, will be in the Remembrance Day Parade tomorrow at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

I will be there, too, and afterwards we will go to a reception at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel to mingle with the veterans and with fellow sailors, soldiers, and airmen/airwomen who marched in the ceremony that morning.

There also won't be a blog on Wednesday because it will be Mario's birthday! I've got a full day and evening of activities planned for him, so I won't be home at all on that day.

If you wish, you can go to the Juno Beach Parade article that both of us wrote for that day five years ago <www.genealogycanada.com/Juno%20Beach.htm>.

So I'll see you Thursday when I will talk about the "partnership" between the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Ancestry.ca!