Reminder: Canadian Week in Review

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

If you missed last week’s edition, it is at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2014/08/canadian-week-in-review-11-august-2014.html 

It has the most up-to-date news items covered History Week in Canada, Social Media, and Newspaper Articles. 

It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in country! 

It has been a regular post every Monday morning since April 23, 2012.

An Act of Remembrance: World War I Publicity Posters at the Nova Scotia Archives

Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-826 Copyright: Expired 

Before the advent of the radio, television, and the Internet, newspapers and posters were the way that people got their news. 

During the First World War, colorful posters were produced, and soon appeared everywhere that people would see them.

At first, they were produced as a "call to action" by the government to encourage people to enlist, as 620,000 people eventually did, and then to build ‘public support for war industries, food production, and the sale of war or 'Victory' savings bonds. 

The Nova Scotia Archives say that this will be the first in a series of “online exhibits to be developed by the Nova Scotia Archives over the next four years, to commemorate the province's contribution to and losses sustained in 'The War to End All Wars'”. 

To see the posters, go to http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtual/warposters/

Families - August 2014

The  August 2014 edition of Families, the journal of the Ontario Genealogical Society, has just been published, and there are six articles in this issue.

The first prize in the Keffer Writing Contest this year goes to H. Nancy Holder and her article entitled, Who was Hannah FOSTER?

We find out that the author is from Arkansas, and that much to her surprise, she discovered that her great-grandmother was from Ontario!

This year's winner of the 2014 Mike Brede Genealogical Essay Prize was Chelsea H. Meloche, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, for her winning essay, Genealogy in the Digital Age: A Beginner’s Commentary.

She wrote this article as a “newbie” who got caught up in the merry-go-round of online databases, and she wondered how new researchers will do in this world of instant genealogy. 

For Mom: With Love and Memories by Marianne Perry is the story of her family’s Italian heritage. The author has made two genealogical research trips to southern Italy, and writes about her Calabrian-Sicilian ancestry, and the new lives of her immigrant ancestors in Toronto and Ottawa. 

How a Toronto Bookbindery Girl Named Lizzie Wyllie Became a National News Headline in 1892 by Richard Deuel is a genealogical  mystery about Lizzie Wyllie, whose family migrated to the Michigan area from Bowmanville, Ontario in the late 1800s, and her supposed suicide which took place in San Diego.

The Petawawa Plains Land Clearances by Robb Gore is a piece about land clearances and the forced eviction of settlers by the Canadian government for the building of a training center in preparation for the First World War. The training centre eventually became Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, as it is today.

And the issue is completed with June Coxon's Family Stories, recollections about her mother growing up in Toronto in the early 1900s.

If you wish to become a member so that you can receive Families, along other benefits, please visit http://www.ogs.on.ca/become_a_member.php 

Quebec’s Civil Registers

Ever wonder why French-Canadian baptism, marriage, and death records are usually so complete, and that they go back to the 17th century?

Well, this year marks the 475th anniversary of the signing of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539, which stated that priests were required to register baptisms and burials. In 1579, another ordinance was signed which required that marriages be registered. 

And in 1667, the Ordinance of Saint-Germain-en-Laye introduced a practice that has proven to be very important to genealogists – that is, the practice of keeping duplicate copies of the baptisms, marriages, and deaths. One copy was kept by the priest, and the second was filed with civil authorities at the end of the year.

Furthermore, in Quebec, civil status registers have the following characteristics -

· There are three types of acts: baptism, marriage, and burial.

· The acts are drawn up by parish priests.

· They are presented chronologically, usually within a single register.

· They are subject to two separate regulations: ecclesiastical and civil. 

The Library and Archives Canada has a very good website explaining Vital Statistics: Births, Marriages and Deaths at http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/vital-statistics-births-marriages-deaths/Pages/births-marriages-deaths.aspx 

Ancestry.ca also has the Drouin Collection online, which contains Catholic baptisms, marriages, and deaths – including some Protestant records, also. 

The website is http://search.ancestry.ca/search/db.aspx?dbid=1091

County-Clerks.com Nominates GenealogyCanada!

County-Clerks.com, a new American website, has nominated this blog as one of the top 200 websites/blogs! How about that?

Who are they? As mentioned in their "About Us" webpage at http://www.county-clerks.com/about-us -

"Welcome to County-Clerks.com! We are excited to share with you a vast resource of county clerk and court record information. County-Clerks.com is home to contact information (telephone number, address, email and fax numbers and county clerk websites) for all county clerk and court record offices in each of 50 states of the United States’ 3,143 counties and county equivalents.

You might be in search of a county clerk to get information about various public records, file for a marriage license, make arrangements for a divorce, research arrests and related information, public information, judicial records, probate, criminal, court, and all other related county records. This also includes records related to birth certificates, death, weddings, county specific licenses."

Needless to say, it's a great resource worth looking at, and to top it off, have started a contest to win the “top genealogy site of the web”, and we need your vote to help us reach the top!

You can vote as many times as you wish (but only once per day) from now until September 30th.

The list of online genealogy websites and blogs is varied and interesting, and worth looking at. The link for this list, and for voting for your favourite website or blog, can be found here - http://www.county-clerks.com/genealogy-blog. (Note: The URLs are given, but they are not yet hyper-linked.)

Also, if you find a preferred blog or website missing from this list, you can send a request to add it to the list. So the list may even grow a bit - another reason to stop in for a visit!

If you like to read the Canadian Week in Review every Monday morning (such as the CWR post this past Monday - http://www.genealogycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/08/canadian-week-in-review-11-august-2014.html) to see what’s trending in Canadian news — genealogy, history, and heritage — then just go to the contest webpage, and hit the “like” button.

Or, maybe you like my post enough to retweet it, or add it to your Facebook page, as Elizabeth Shown Mills did yesterday with  my post, “LAC has updated the 1861 Census” at https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.shownmills?fref=tl_fr_box

So please drop in to check their website, and don't forget to vote for your favourite site, and vote often. We — the bloggers and website owners — would appreciate your encouragement!

LAC has updated the 1861 Census

Library and Archives Canada has upgraded the 1861 Census because there were apparently a “number of missing records and misplaced images were reported by Library and Archives Canada clients and staff". 

They have corrected over 133,000 entries! 

According to their blog, there were definite issues with the Canada West and Canada East.  

“In Canada West, the records for the cities of Hamilton, Kingston, London, Ottawa and Toronto were previously reported missing but the records did exist. The five cities, although enumerated separately in 1861, were tucked away amongst their neighbouring rural districts. For example, the city of Ottawa was listed under the district of Carleton and the city of Kingston was listed under Frontenac. The five cities are now correctly identified as districts and their respective wards are identified as sub-districts. 

Additionally in Canada West, the rural districts of Renfrew and Russell were also reported as missing. The records for those two districts and their sub-districts can now be searched. In the rural district of Kent, the sub-districts of Camden and Gore, the town of Chatham, and the district of Chatham have been correctly identified. The images in the districts of Brant and Dundas are now correctly linked.

In Canada East, several image linking errors were corrected, particularly in the districts of Argenteuil, Montcalm and St-Jean”.

It is good to see that the LAC is listening to our comments, complaints and they are correcting their databases. 

To go to the 1861 census, you can go to 

http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1861/Pages/about-census.aspx 

The Ottawa Genealogist July-September 2014 issue

The July-September 2014 issue of The Ottawa Genealogist is here, and the main article is Harry Waite Survivor of Vimy Ridge by John Patton.

Patton gives a very personal recounting of the life of Harry Waite, a veteran of the First World War originally from Hastings, halfway between Peterborough and Belleville. 

There is a write-up of Gene-O-Rama 2014 and a full page picture, plus a page of Ottawa people the Ontario Genealogical Society conference in Niagara this past spring, and Early Bytown Settlers Index for the letters ‘R’ and ‘S’, as put together by Jim Stanzell. 

The first meeting of the new season will be held on Saturday, 13th of September , at the City of Ottawa Archives, 100 Tallwood Drive in Ottawa.

Patti Mordasewicz, vice-president of the Ontario Genealogical Society, will be there to talk about the resources available at the Leeds & Grenville Archives in Brockville.

If you want to see more about the Ottawa Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society, you can go to their web page at http://ogsottawa.on.ca/

They have a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/237267743111732/?fref=ts 

They have a blog at http://ogsottawa.blogspot.com/