Second Annual Genealogy Workshop

On Saturday, May 11, 2013 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, there will be the Second Annual Genealogy Workshop at 536 Wellington Road 18, between the villages of Fergus and Elora.

Presenters include:

Gwen Armstrong, Family History Centre, Getting the Most out of FamilySearch.org

Rick Roberts, Global Genealogy, Beginning a Family History Project: 12 Steps for Success and Researching Your Ontario Roots Using Traditional and Online Resources

Susan Dunlop, Curator, Wellington County Museum and Archives, Exploring Lesser Known Resources: A Case Study of the Hollinghead-Everson Family of Wellington County

Registration: $35.00, light lunch included

Call 519.846.0916, X 5225 or Toll Free 1.800.663.0750 X 5225 to register.

Email at karen@wcm.on.ca, and the website is at http://www.wellington.ca/museum

Inheritance in Ontario: Estate Files and Beyond

On 27th of May 2013, at 7:30 p.m., there will be a meeting at the Burgundy Room, North York Memorial Community Hall, 5110 Yonge Street, Toronto, and the topics will be Inheritance in Ontario: Estate Files and Beyond, and the speaker will be Jane E. MacNamara.

She will review how to find an estate file and how it can lead to other, and she will explain sources both inside and outside the court system.

This will be a warm-up lecture to her workshop at the OGS Conference on May 31st staring at 9:30 Friday morning when she will talk about wills and her her new book Inheritance in Ontario - Wills and Other Records for Family Historians

There will be an additional short presentation by Jean McNulty A Photographic Puzzle

For more info, go to www.torontofamilyhistory.org

Waterloo Region Branch OGS Township Records

Do you have ancestors in Waterloo and Perth Counties in Ontario? If you do, they have Township Records onsite.

Waterloo County

1840 Wilmot Township Census, transcribed by Laurie Strome

1851 Waterloo Township Census
Perth County

Wallace Township 1861

Wallace Township 1871

Go to www.waterlooogs.ca/waterloo_data.htm

UPDATE: LAC releases a new version of the Census of Canada, 1881 database

The following notice just came in from the Library and Archives Canada -

Library and Archives Canada is pleased to announce the release of a new version of the Census of Canada, 1881 database. This second general census covered the seven provinces and one territory that were then part of Confederation: British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories.

This new version includes suggestions for corrections that were received from users in recent months, as well as revised district and sub-district information.

Did they make the corrections that you suggested?

Go to the search page at
www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1881/Pages/1881.aspx

May Events at the Quebec Family History Society

My thanks go to Susan for letting me know about these following events.

On Wednesday, May 8, at 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm there will be a meeting on Brick Wall Solutions (Special Interest Group) QFHS Heritage Centre and Library, 173 Cartier Avenue, Pointe-Claire.

New and experienced genealogists are invited to join us at our monthly meeting to discuss brick wall problems in a friendly and informal setting. This month, we will learn how to improve our online research skills to find family trees, newspapers, and books. We will also review how to use wild cards when searching for ancestors on websites, such as Ancestry, Family Search, and Free BMD.

On Saturday, May 11th, there will be a Guided Tour of the Chateau Ramezay (Tour) at 10:30 am at 280 rue Notre-Dame est, Montreal.

This guided tour is $8 per person and open to QFHS members and non-members. To attend, you must register and make your payment at the QFHS Heritage Centre and Library.

The Château Ramezay is the province's oldest private history museum. It was built in 1705 as the residence of the Governor of Montreal Claude de Ramezay and his wife Marie-Charlotte Denys, whom he married in 1690 in Quebec. Their home changed hands over the years and has had an interesting history. The building was enlarged in 1756.

The Château Ramezay Historic Site and Museum was selected by a team of experts, in collaboration with UNESCO, as one of the 1001 historic sites you must see before you die.

On Wednesday, May 15th, there will be Celebrating Our Female Roots Day (Roots Day) from 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm at the QFHS Heritage Centre and Library, 173 Cartier Avenue, Pointe-Claire.

Half of our direct ancestors are women, and since Mother's Day takes place this month, this is a good time to celebrate our female ancestors and learn how our ancestors lived.

Join us to chat about how to learn what life was like for your female ancestors. What was home life like during the time they lived? Do you own any letters or diaries? Share with others the challenges you face when researching your female ancestors.

On display will be books from the QFHS collection about social history that help us better understand our ancestors’ lives.

Drop by for coffee, tea, and informal conversation to talk about some of the favourite women in your family and how our ancestors may have lived. Bring your own books, resources and memorabilia on social history that have helped you in your research, a friend, or just bring yourself.

Before Roots Day, please drop off copies of photos of your female ancestors for the display with Joan Benoit at QFHS. Remember to caption the photo with name, date, and description. If you live out of town, please send your photos by email at qfhs@bellnet.ca.

Open to members and the public. Free admission.

On Wednesday, May 22th Family History Writing (Special Interest Group)

To be held from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm at the QFHS Heritage Centre and Library, 173 Cartier Avenue, Pointe-Claire.

Join us any month! Together, in a friendly and informal setting, we encourage each other to write and discuss each month's mini-project.

This monthly meeting is open to QFHS members. We meet the fourth Wednesday of each month. If interested in joining, call 514.695.1502 or email qfhs.web@gmail.com.

More info: http://qfhs.ca

Canadian Week in Review

29 April 2013

I have come across the following Canadian websites, blogs, Facebook, and newspaper articles this past week that were of interest to me, and I thought you might be interested in them, too –

Websites

No websites this past week.

Blog

CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt' http://canadagenealogy.blogspot.com Read Diane’s comments on the release of the 1921 Canada Census by Library and Archives Canada.

Using Maps in Genealogy http://brantcountyogs.blogspot.com/2013/04/using-maps-in-genealogy.html Christine Woodcock tells us about a meeting she went to recently, where the topic of the talk was Using Maps in Genealogy. It was given by Denise Kirk of the Genealogy Club at the Brantford Public Library.

Facebook - Video – You Tube

Selkirk Settlers: A Rich Collection of Records http://canadashistory.ca/Magazine/Trading-Post/Trading-Post-List/Articles/Selkirk-Settlers-A-Rich-Collection-of-Records Anna Shumilak of The Hudson's Bay Company Archives, writes about the records available to the public at the Archives of Manitoba, and they are explained in an accommodating video.

Newspaper Articles

Learning about Canada’s Irish settlers http://www.haliburtonecho.ca/2013/04/23/learning-about-canadas-irish-settlers Grosse Ile, located in the middle of St. Lawrence River, Quebec, is known as Canada’s Quarantine Station, but according to Ellie MacNeil, it is not known well enough by the public.

Read what she had to say about Grosse Ile, and Irish immigration to Canada, at the Friends of the Haliburton County Public Library’s Lunch and Learn event on April 17th, 2013.

You can go to htto://www.collectionscanada.ca/grosse-ile to see the databases, which are online at Library and Archives Canada.

Historic P.E.I. resort lost to fire www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2013/04/25/pei-f-stanhope-fire-history-584.html When Stanhope Beach Resort burned to the ground on Tuesday, Prince Edward Island lost an historical landmark. It opened as a hotel in 1855, making it the oldest on the Island.

New Brunswick students participating in regional heritage fairs www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/news/news_release.2013.04.0363.html Eleven regional heritage fairs are taking place throughout New Brunswick in April and May.

Genealogical conference coming in May www.oshawaexpress.ca/viewposting.php?view=4657 The Oshawa Express covers the OGS Conference which will be held in the city at the end of May.

Pictures and Story of the Week

Doors Open

Doors Open started in Glasgow, Scotland, and has been in Canada since 2000. It is a national program by Heritage Canada Foundation, based on the Doors Open Days concept. It welcomes everyone to come out to visit those hidden historical, architectural and cultural gems in their area. These buildings are normally closed to the public, or which charge an entrance fee, welcome visitors to look around for free.

The event which started it all off was Doors Open Ontario, which has run continuously since 2000. Other provinces having since been joined them, including Newfoundland and Labrador (2003), and Yukon and Saskatchewan (2005), for instance.

“Communities across the province open the doors to hundreds of historic buildings, places of worship, museums, private homes, industrial areas, green buildings, heritage gardens and other interesting venues,” said Liane Nowosielski of the sponsoring Ontario Heritage Trust.

This year, the theme is Cultural Expressions, recognizing the “relationship between heritage and the arts.”

Venues for the arts, including theatres, opera houses, art galleries, artist studios, recital halls and recording studios, are open for tours.

Trails and natural heritage sites are also included with walking, hiking and cycling trails, many of which feature special tours and activities.

Go to www.heritagecanada.org/en/visit-discover/doors-open-canada

The next Canadian Week in Review will be issued Monday May 6, 2013

LAC issues a report on itself

Late Friday afternoon, on April the 26th, the LAC put on its website a report entitled Library and Archives Canada makes Canada’s documentary heritage more accessible than ever.

Through this report, it expresses how the LAC is helping Canadians to access their heritage through different programs that have been instituted by the LAC.

For instance, it says that “To this end, LAC has developed a suite of tools that have efficiently contributed to this unparalleled access to Canada’s heritage. In fact, Canadians showed great interest in accessing LAC’s collections on their computer screens and handheld devices, as observed by the popularity of its Flickr sets (over 350,000 views), its podcasts (over 149,000 listens) and the size of the readership of its blog (over 63,000 views). In addition to these new tools, LAC’s website receives an average of 500,000 visits monthly. The popularity of these channels, enabled by modern technology, demonstrates how promising LAC’s approach is in reaching Canadians, regardless of where they live”.

So what do you think? Is the LAC fulfilling its mandate?

To read the full report, go to http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/news_releases/Pages/2013/documentary-heritage-more-accessible.aspx