The Memory Jar

The North Shore News has something of interest in an article entitled "Homemade gifts a good option" during this holiday season.

A number of gifts are mentioned, but one that caught my eye is the gift of a memory jar. This is where you can put “meaningful photograph, an old report card, a forgotten letter, the sheet music of a beloved song, maybe even an old edition of a favourite book, those can all go in the jar”.

What a neat idea!

Read more at www.nsnews.com/life/Homemade+gifts+good+option/7686488/story.html#ixzz2F7y1uZ57

TD Hogmanay Party 2012

The Scottish Society of Ottawa and the City of Ottawa is having an inaugural event that is set for New Year’s Eve 2012 – a Hogmanay street party at Ottawa City Hall! It aims is to replicate the excitement of Edinburgh’s world famous Royal Mile as the clock strikes midnight and we enter the New Year.

It will be held at the Ottawa City Hall (Outside at Marion Dewar Park) on Dec. 31th, 2012 from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The result is a FREE, Edinburgh-style party that will have fireworks, Celtic bands, ice-skating on the Rink of Dreams, ice-sculpting, Highland dancing, Scotch-tasting. And there will be bagpipes. Music will come from local folkies Ecosse, Celtic fusion Cape Breton-style from Sprag Session and surprise special guest headline act, whose identity we’ll release closer to the big night.

We’ll also have the Sons of Scotland, Glengarry, and Kemptville Legion pipe bands, the Celtic Cross Dancers and the Katharine Robinson Dancers. Did we mention it’s all free.

Bring the family down to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Scotland at 7pm EST. Or hang around until midnight, enjoy a dram or a pint of McAuslan beer, hear the bells, sing Auld Lang Syne and watch the fireworks bring in the New Year. Sláinte mhath

The hope is that this event grows to become an Ottawa institution.

The website of The Scottish Society of Ottawa is www.thescottishsocietyofottawa.com/events/hogmanay-party-2012

Library and Archives Canada’s Travelling Exhibitions

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is on the road!

With four travelling exhibitions on display in different venues across Canada, including one in the National Capital Region, LAC is showcasing the richness and diversity of its collections. This is an excellent example of LAC’s commitment to making the country’s heritage and history accessible to all Canadians—regardless of where they live.

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, in British Columbia, is hosting the exhibition Beyond Likeness: Contemporary Works from Library and Archives Canada until January 6, 2013. Through the works of 23 contemporary artists, the exhibition explores the evolving concept of portraiture from more traditional representations of likeness to works that challenge the conventions of the genre.

The New Brunswick Museum in Saint John is presenting the exhibition I Know You by Heart: Portrait Miniatures until December 31, 2012. Showcasing 35 recently restored portraits, the exhibition highlights the intimate, personal nature of portrait miniatures, and the reasons that such images are commissioned, created and carried. In March 2013, the exhibition will make its way to the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.

The McMichael Art Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario, is showcasing LAC’s most recent exhibition Double Take: Portraits of Intriguing Canadians until January 20, 2013. Double Take presents 50 Canadians who have left—and are leaving—their mark on our country and our culture.

Finally, the exhibition Faces of 1812 is on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa until January 6, 2013. A commemorative exhibition, Faces of 1812 presents some of the men and women who experienced the War of 1812. LAC’s curatorial YouTube video and Faces of 1812 podcast will introduce you to the selected works that document this significant historical event.

Keep following this blog to find out where these exhibitions will travel next. It could be your hometown!

The website of the LAC is at www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx

Library Books are Vandalized

A blog at the Windsor Star (Windsor, Ontario) has an unsettling post  about books at the Leamington Library being vandalized with urine.

And they weren’t just any book – they were genealogy books!

To read the post, go to
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/12/10/library-books-vandalized-with-urine

Further Update: More Ontario Unregistered Cemeteries sent to Registrar

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the OGS registration of unregistered cemeteries across the province, and the committee has an update.

This week the committee sent to the registrar the lists of unregistered cemeteries for the counties of Cochrane, Dundas and Durham so that they can be registered and protected.

To read my original post, go to http://genealogycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/11/update-on-ontario-cemeteries-act.html

© Elizabeth Lapointe All Rights Reserved

The Canadian War Museum Travelling Exhibit

The Canadian War Museum will soon reach more people than ever with its popular exhibition of the War of 1812. It will be available via a virtual exhibition that launched this week, and a travelling version that will travel to venues across Canada the exhibit closes January 6, 2013 in Ottawa.

The 1812 virtual exhibition, like the physical version, presents the War of 1812 from four distinct perspectives—American, British, Canadian (including Canadian First Peoples), and Native American.

The virtual exhibition can be found at www.warmuseum.ca/war-of-1812

The smaller travelling version of 1812 is now fully booked until May 2015 at venues in Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba. Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan.

Here are the places and dates where you can see the exhibit -

April 6 - August 18, 2013 St. Catharines Museum St. Catharines, ON

September 7 - December 1, 2013 New Brunswick Museum Saint John, NB

December 21, 2013 - March 16, 2014 Chatham-Kent Museum Chatham, ON

April 5 - June 29, 2014 Royal Canadian Artillery Museum Shilo, MB

July 19 - October 12, 2014 Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Halifax, NS

November 1, 2014 - January 25, 2015 Eptek Art & Culture Centre Summerside, PEI

February 14 - May 10, 2015 Diefenbaker Canada Centre Saskatoon, SK

And the places and dates where the text and images only will appear -

October 6 - December 30, 2012 Museum on the Boyne Alliston, ON

June 1 - August 25, 2013 Arthur Child Heritage Museum Gananoque, ON

September 14 - December 8, 2013 Peterborough Museum and Archives Peterborough, ON

January 4 - April 27, 2014 Grimsby Museum Grimsby, ON

May 17 - July 13, 2014 Fort Wellington National Historic Site Visitor Centre, Parks Canada Prescott, ON

August 2 - October 26, 2014 Vancouver Island Military Museum Nanaimo, BC

July 1 - August 30, 2015 McLeod's Lake Post McLeod, BC

© Elizabeth Lapointe All Rights Reserved

Governor General’s History Awards

His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, presented the 17th annual Governor General’s History Awards, where he honoured Canadian teachers, museums, research facilities, and other institutions for the work that has been done in history.

The Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media - the Pierre Berton Award - went to two very deserving recipients - Réal Bélanger, Directeur général adjoint, Québec, Quebec, and John English, General Editor, Toronto, Ontario. They are the people behind the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (DCB/DBC).

The University of Toronto and the Université Laval, started the dictionary in 1959, and it has fully sourced biographies written about people who have died between the years 1000 and 1930 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years.

May I say that I have used the dictionary many times for the biographies of the people, and as a guideline for the sources of the material that is used in the biographies. It continues to be one of the best places on the Internet to conduct Canadian research.

To read about the dictionary, you can go to the http://www.biographi.ca/index-e.html


© Elizabeth Lapointe All Rights Reserved