Genealogy Canada

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Digitized Directory of Schools

This afternoon I was doing some research in Nova Scotia, and I came across the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development: Digitized Directory of Schools (1950s-present) at bit.ly/1Cn6wXE

They name the school, where it is located, and how many teachers were employed at the school, and starting in 1958, they give the principles names, and extra information about the schools. There are even notes in some of the books that may prove helpful.

They are organized by the counties, and then by school districts within the individual county.

Happy researching!

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.

The Town of Tecumseh has launched their historical archives

The Tecumseh Historical Archives is the result of an archiving project, undertaken by the Town of Tecumseh, in partnership with the Tecumseh Area Historical Society and Employment Ontario, to digitize the history of Tecumseh by photographing and scanning historically significant items and documents that were then uploaded into an online archive known as the Tecumseh Historical Archives.

The first thing that has been done is to put the Tecumseh Tribune online at http://ink.scholarsportal.info/tribune

You can choose any issue between January 30 1959 to November 11, 2010 to research.

At the Tecumseh Historical Society are deeds from Tecumseh, St. Clair Beach, Maidstone and Sandwich South area. They also have artifacts of medical supplies from Col. Paul Poisson, who was Tecumsehʼs first mayor, antique photographs of the old centre of the town, memorabilia from the Tecumseh Baseball Club, a Doherty pump organ, the telephone switchboard from Hotel Dieu Hospital, an Essex Scottish army uniform, and a photographic portrait of the townʼs first postmaster, Joseph Christe.

Follow the developments on their Facebbok page of the Tecumseh-Historical-Museum https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tecumseh-Historical-Museum-Ontario/303551066341121

BRAVO! The LAC has listened …

Attestation Paper for Thomas Cussons, regimental no. 675270, Canadian Expeditionary Force personnel files, RG 150, accession number Accession 1992-93/166, Box 2057 – 51; (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/image.aspx?Image=073302a&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fdata2.archives.ca%2fcef%2fgat1%2f073302a.gif&Ecopy=073302a); accessed 15 April 2015); Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Canada.

The Library and Archives Canada (LAC) today released the latest news on digitizing the First World War Service files. Not only did they say that 143,613 of 640,000 files are available online via their Soldiers of the First World War: 1914-1918 website, but for the first time, they have released the surnames of the soldiers that they have digitized.

Thank heavens! It was a never-ending guessing game whether I should go ahead and request a file, and go to the LAC and take photos of the record, or view it online. I never knew which I should do.

But I had written to them a month ago and asked them if they would tell us where they are on the digitizing scheme of things, and now they have. So bravo to the LAC!

The latest digitized box is #2057, which corresponds to the surname Thomas Cussons. I looked up the name, and it is there – the full service record!

So, hopefully, this little addition to the LAC blog will make a difference to researchers out there. Now I must write a letter of “Thanks” to the people who are working on the boxes.

The website for the First World War Service files is http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/canadian-expeditionary-force.aspx

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Durham Region Branch is expanding the scope of their meetings

The Durham Region Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society is adding more to their meeting, and they are expanding in a good way.

According to their website, they are going to have, in addition to their standard meetings, the following new items are being added before the meetings -

TONI Tidbits from this huge database of over 3 million genealogical entries

Brick Wall Bomb - a 15 minute brainstorming session on a problem from the audience, and a 10-minute Mini-Talk on a variety of subjects.

This sounds exciting!

Their website is at http://durham.ogs.on.ca/

They have a blog at http://durham-branch.blogspot.com/

You can join their Facebook page by going to https://www.facebook.com/groups/durhamogs/

There is so much genealogy here

The Oshawa Public Library in Oshawa, Ontario just have oodles of information which have been digitized and are online at http://localhistory.oshawalibrary.ca/

They have been categorized into the following subject areas -

Clubs and Associations

Education in Oshawa

**Directories**

Entertainment in Oshawa

**General Local History**

Military

**Oshawa Families**

**Religious Life in Oshawa**

This is a prized collection (especially the Directories) that the library has put together.

Their website is at http://www.oshawalibrary.on.ca/

Their Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/oshawapubliclibrary

Extra news items

Here are some news items which have come across the desk this week -

For those people who regularly follow the Dear Myrt's Beginning Genealogy posts here every week, there will not be a regular post today. Dear Myrt is attending the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium Conference in Providence, Rhode Island this week. She will return to her desk next week.

If you have not been following my posts, all of the posts are here at http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2015/04/dear-myrts-beginning-genealogy-sessions_9.html

Also, the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society usually has their yearly Conference in the spring of the year. But they have found it impossible to plan one for this year, so they have postponed it until next year – 2016. So keep posted for news as it comes to us.

You have to listen to this!

Essex County Genealogical Society now hold their meeting on a YouTube channel, and the first presentation that they had this week was given by George Pitfield and called Do You Know Your Family?

George always thought that he was English (even had the genealogy to prove it), but a surprising turn in his search that he is full blood Aboriginal – on both sides of his family. All of that English genealogy was wrong. Since then, he has been made an Elder, and has leaned the language of his people. Truly fascinating story!

The YouTube presentation is at http://www.ogs.on.ca/essex/?page_id=165#Apr2015Speaker

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

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/