With the death of Gail Diane Collins on Monday 16 March 2020 Canada has lost a prominent contributor to improved understanding of British home children
After retiring from the Lincoln County School Board where she worked as a secretary for many years. Gail extracted information from a variety of documents on the children brought to Canada by movement pioneer Maria Rye. She, along with British colleague Chris Sanham, compiled an index of the Rye children, 1869-1879 which is included in Library and Archives Canada's Home Children Records database. It has information about the sources consulted and notes about the ships on which the children arrived.
Gail was always ready to help people researching their home child ancestor, in-person and online, and was involved in the making of a commemorative quilt to educate the public about the British Home Children.
Gail was also an advocate for support to ex-servicemen who did not receive their pensions
because they had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals.
20 March 2020
Gail Collins RIP
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Gail was a terrific friend to many. We volunteered together for an Ontario group with local chapters to save the original land records ledgers in various communities, as the Ont. Government decided to digitize them and destroy the historic ledgers. Genealogists everywhere volunteered. Gail and I worked on the Niagara North registers at Brock Universities Special Collections. What fun it was, and the group, APELROD, (I cannot recall what it stood for) saved these records for posterity.
RIP, Gail
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