Reminder: Canadian Week in Review will be posted tomorrow

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

It has the most up-to-date news items covered in New/Updated Websites, History, Social Media, and Newspaper Articles.

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

If you missed least week's edition, it is at posted at
http://genealogycanada.blogspot.com/2014/07/canadian-week-in-review-28-july-2014.html 

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

New Acadian research guide

Got this email from Janice Hamilton yesterday, the blogger who does the Genealogy Ensemble blog, and she told us the following -

“If you are researching Acadian heritage, you might find the recent research guide, Acadians of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, compiled by Jacques Gagné, of interest. It will help you find Acadian Parish Registers under the French and British regimes, as well as links to websites that shed light on various other aspects of Acadian history. 

The link can be found on the Genealogy Ensemble blog, at http://genealogyensemble.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/the-acadian-congress/

This is the latest of Jacques’ contributions to the genealogy community. He has put together similar research guides on Genealogy Ensemble, including the Catholic Churches of Quebec http://genealogyensemble.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/irish-catholic-churches-of-quebec/ and an online guide to researching your ancestors in archives in France, http://genealogyensemble.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/learn-how-to-research-french-archives/ ”

Janice

The OGS picks their theme for the 2017 conference!

Our Canada-Your Family: Building A Nation is the theme which has been chosen for the 2017 Ontario Genealogical Society's conference, and what a fantastic title!

And the reason that the title of the conference was chosen is that 2017 will be the 150th birthday of the founding of Canada. It will be a super busy time in Ottawa, so why not plan at attend the conference and do some sightseeing along with your stay? 

This will be the sixth time (plus they co-hosted the 2012 conference in Kingston) that Ottawa (the nation’s capital) will have hosted the conference.

They already have a small group of volunteers, but they can always have more people join them in this effort. 

You can contact them at conference2017@ogsottawa.on.ca 

Watch for news in this blog and at the Ottawa blog at http://ogsottawa.blogspot.com/ and their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/237267743111732/?fref=ts 

The webpage is http://ogsottawa.on.ca/

OGS puts on “Ontario Locator”

The OGS has put on their website every municipality in Ontario (city, town, village, township, regional municipality) and all of the geographic townships which have belonged to a municipality.

Current and historical townships are on the website, but not the unorganized townships.

At a future date the list will be expanded to include the former Police Villages and the current hamlets.

If you are researching historical land records, the "Ontario Locator" can be used to this purpose.  

You can go to http://www.ogs.on.ca/ontario_locator.php?name=5

Will Héritage index their records? Maybe.

Ever since Héritage, a division of Canadiana, put on all of those records from the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) over a year ago, I was asking “Where are the indexes that go with the digitization of these records?”

Héritage has the objective of digitizing 40,000 reels of microfilm from “Canada’s most important archival collections”. 

They hope to comprise 60 million page images when the project is completed next year. 

But not one of these records has been indexed! Not one! So what good are they to me? -

They say that they “would like to enhance access to this content by partially transcribing select collections. Once transcribed, researchers can conduct key-word searches on a collection, allowing them to find specific personal names, geographical locations, events, etc. within a document. We need your help in choosing which collections to transcribe first”. 

So, they have put together a short survey to ask our opinion. I clicked every one of the records that they have included in the survey. 

They say that “By participating in this short survey, you can have a voice in telling Canadiana which collections are important to you. If interested, please share this widely with your members, branches, and other contacts to help us get the most feedback”. 

Please take a minute to go through the records, and click the ones you would like to see indexed.

The website for the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DGkADDA1hN%2fpX6Ab5IKFgw%3d%3d

The website for Canadiana is http://www.canadiana.ca/

Family associations

One way to discover your French-Canadian roots is to join a family association. It all has to do with collaboration, doesn't it? 

The Library and Archives Canada says that “The main goal of a family association is to perpetuate the memory of these ancestors and preserve the cultural heritage associated with them, such as the land that was granted to them in New France, or the ancestral house, if it still exists”. 

The association members organize meetings and reunions, small or large, and publish newsletters, and of course, many have a website and a Facebook page.  

On a personal note, I see where my husband's paternal surname (Lapointe dit Audet) and his maternal surname (Jobin) are there. 

The website is at http://www.genealogie.org/associations.asp 

If you have Acadian roots, go to http://www.fafa-acadie.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=40 for a list of Acadian surnames. 

FamilySearch to improve its Research Wiki pages

FamilySearch.org is improving its Research Wiki pages.

They say that "There will be more space on the web page to view enriched text and images. There will also be increased editing capabilities for contributors and several other useful changes".

You can go to the Testing: Wiki Usability page at https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Testing:_Wiki_Usability to give your opinion of the proposed changes.

Meanwhile, they have added more indexed Catholic Parish Registers, Quebec 1621-1979 to their records.

This collection contains images of Catholic parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. It also includes some confirmations and some index entries for Montréal and Trois-Rivières.

Go to the website at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1321742

If you want to index, you can go to https://familysearch.org/indexing/get-started-indexer