New Issue of OGS Families

As the new editor of the Ontario Genealogical Society's journal, Families, I have had the pleasure of my first issue being recently released.

In this November 2010 issue, I covered the fact that 2010 was declared as the Year of the Home Child, and I published the following articles -

"Young Immigrants to Canada: The Children's Friend Society" by Marjorie Kohli. This article gives a history of The Children's Friend Society, and lists two pages of names of children who came to Canada from Britain in the middle 18th-Century. A typical entry reads, "Smith, Jesse on Active, house servant to Rev. Thomas B. Fuller of Toronto".

"The British Child Emigration Scheme to Canada (1870-1957)" by Perry Snow. Read about the legacy left by his father, Fred G. Snow, as he made his way to Canada as a Home Child. This article appears as a reprint courtesy of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society.

'The Diary of Reverend William Bowman Tucker, 1859-1934" is an except from a diary of a Home Child, one who later went on to found the Montreal City Mission. Glenn Adams, his grandson, gave me his kind permission to reprint a small portion of the diary.

"Discovering the Story of Father" by John Fielding is a heart-warming story of a boy, Leslie Fielding, and how he made a life for himself after he came to Canada.

In the next posting, I will continue with Part II, telling you about more articles in this issue of Families, plus a special article in the OGS NewsLeaf.

OGS Provincial Office Reopens

From OGS Headquarters comes this news -

October 23, 2010

Provincial Office Reopens

The OGS Provincial Office is open for business once again. Our server, phones and fax machines are up and running and we have returned to our regular hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00am - 5:00 pm.

The incident that caused us to be closed happened around 12:00 on Friday October 8th. A worker renovating the library above the office drilled through the concrete floor and into a water pipe in the ceiling of our office. Water poured into our office and knocked out the power to our server and printer, also dumping water on parts of the machines. Sarah Newitt and Marsha Brown were the staff in the office that day and they worked quickly to remove as many objects as possible from the path of the flood that rapidly covered the office with an inch of water. Beyond some pamphlets and in stock OGS publications nothing was damaged that could not be repaired.

The building itself sustained the most damage and required that we empty and close the office so the bottom few feet of most of the drywall could be replaced as well as part of the ceiling. These repairs and the ensuing air quality check took longer than anticipated but are finally complete. Technicians have checked and reconnected all of our electronic equipment and found they were not damaged. The contractor's insurance will pay for the expenses incurred as a result of this.

If you have recently sent us an email that bounced back to you, please try again. The server was unable to receive messages during our closed period and we would like to make sure we do get your email.

Thank you once again for your patience and support during this period. We are happy to be returning to normal and look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at the office.

Happy Thanksgiving

Visit our website, www.GenealogyCanada.com, for some great stuff on Canadian genealogy, history, and heritage.

We have an article on Canadian Thanksgiving -

1. http://www.genealogycanada.com/October_News_2006.htm (with dancing turkey)

And we have two articles on Thanksgiving on our blog -

1. Canadian Thanksgiving - http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-thanksgiving.html (with football-playing turkey)

2. American Thanksgiving - http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2008/11/happy-thanksgiving.html

Enjoy the posts, and to all our readers, "Happy Thanksgiving!", no matter which one you celebrate!

Elizabeth

Friends of Laura Secord

(Click on image to make it bigger)

www.niagaraparks.com/heritage-trail/friends-of-laura-secord.html

Workshop - The Women in Our Past

Elayne Lockhart reminds us of an upcoming workshop co-hosted by the Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society and the Canadiana Department of the North York Central Library.

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Hi everyone.

If you’ve been thinking of coming to the workshop on November 6th, The Women in Our Past: Strategies and Resources for Researching Female Ancestors, I’m happy to tell you that even though the end of September has crept up on you, you haven’t missed the Early Bird deadline. We have extended it to next Monday, October 4th.

We hope to see many members there. We know that our speakers are going to be providing some great strategies to help us all learn to research “outside the box”.

Elayne

Vankleek Hill Family & Local History Day

Saturday, October 2nd will be Family & Local History Day at Vankleek Hill - a village about an hour's drive from Ottawa, right next to the town of Hawkesbury.

In the morning are talks given by the Ontario Genealogical Society and the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa on genealogical research. The afternoon session features Ancestry.ca and and their Library Edition, as well as a Q&A session for advanced genealogy. The Quebec Family History Society will also be there.

To register for either genealogy session, call the Champlain Public Library at 613.678.2216, or visit them online at www.champlaintwplibrary.ca.

There will be special sessions on the Tweedsmuir Histories, heirloom furniture, exhibits at the museum, a quilt shop, Gaelic lessons, and a Masonic Lodge tour. Even stuff for kids.

The Review newspaper www.thereview.ca will have a special exhibit all day long at the newspaper office. The paper is putting its archives online then—with free access all day—and their will be special guided tours of the Old Jail in L'Orignal.

Go to their site at www.vankleekhill.ca.

I will be there Saturday (all day), and if you see me - be sure to say "Hello!"

OGS Appoints Assistant Executive Director

From the OGS' e-Announce comes news that Sarah Newitt has been appointed as the Assistant Executive Director.

Congratulations, Sarah!

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September 24, 2010

Assistant Executive Director Appointed

The Board of the Ontario Genealogical Society is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Newitt as Assistant Executive Director. She will become Executive Director next April, on the retirement of the current Executive Director, Dr. Fraser Dunford

Sarah, age 28, has been the Society's Librarian for the past year. She holds a BA in German from Queen's and a MLIS from McGill. She has worked in a number of libraries in Ontario and in Montreal. She has had a life-long association with Girl Guides. A native of Mount Albert Ontario, she has lived in Japan, India and Germany.

She inherited family history projects from her father's father and her mother's mother (a project that requires fluency in German). One of her ambitions is to prove a suspected UEL link.