Highlights of Gene-O-Rama

This almost-annual OGS Ottawa Branch event was held on Friday and Saturday last. Friday evening saw featured speaker Jane MacNamara presenting the Pat Horan Memorial Lecture "Inheritance Interrupted: WWI reflected in Ontario Estate Files."

Notwithstanding snow and greasy road conditions on Saturday morning there was a good attendance to hear each of the two parallel presentations in four sessions. Several BIFHSGO members were speakers. The society also supported the event with a table/display, here seen staffed by Barbara Tose, placed at the back of one of the presentation rooms which made a convenient location for listening to talks.
Although some exhibitors didn't make it through the snow the major ones were there. I was interested to see a series of eight publications with an early Ottawa connection from Global Genealogy, "Genealogical Abstracts from the Perth Courier and Bathurst Courier Newspapers 1834-1929" by Louise Hope. The Perth Courier, the second oldest weekly newspaper in Canada, at various times, published as The Bathurst Courier and Ottawa Gazette and The Bathurst Courier and Ottawa General Advertiser.
The event ended with a banquet at Algonquin College where the Honorary Patron of The
OGS, the Honorable Peter Milliken, PC, UE, BA, MA, LLB, LLD spoke of his experiences as Speaker of the House of Commons.
Congratulations to Doug Grey and Heather Oakley who took the lead in organizing the event.