LAC and Ancestry.ca partnership

The following is a press release from Library and Archives Canada

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA PARTNERS WITH ANCESTRY.CA

Partnership allows unprecedented online access to Canadian historical records

Ottawa, November 10, 2008 – Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce a collaborative partnership with Canada’s leading online family history website, Ancestry.ca, which will allow the two organizations to provide unprecedented online access to the most comprehensive collection of Canadian historical records available.

As part of the agreement, Ancestry.ca will digitize and index microfilm and original records held by LAC and make these available to Ancestry.ca members. All of the digitized records will eventually be available free of charge to users of the LAC website.

Mr. Ian E. Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada, comments: "Library and Archives Canada is pleased to be part of this collaborative agreement with Ancestry.ca, which will allow our institution to offer our users access to many of our important collections, some of which have not been previously accessible online.

“It will truly enhance Canadians' ability to fully explore their documentary heritage and will also be of great interest to those around the world with ancestors who immigrated to or visited Canada.”

Josh Hanna, Senior VP, Ancestry International, comments: “This is a win-win relationship for Library and Archives Canada and Ancestry.ca as the partnership will enable Ancestry to offer a wide range of Canadian collections to its members and in turn LAC will receive the expertise, experience and person hours that are required for imaging and indexing these records.

“The partnership will create a seamless flow for digitizing and indexing vast Canadian records and will be a huge benefit to family history researchers in Canada who will soon have the opportunity to access more collections than ever before.”

Library and Archives Canada is the holder of an unparalleled and inestimable collection of Canadian published materials and archival records. This collection is accessible both online and in its facilities in Ottawa. Ancestry.ca offers access to both Canadian and worldwide genealogy records—seven billion in total—as well as family-tree building tools and community sharing applications.

Ancestry.ca recently launched more than 70 years of fully indexed Canadian Passenger Lists to its members and these records will also be available on the Library and Archives Canada website (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca) in the next year.

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FamilySearch Record Search - Coming Soon

Datasets keep getting added to the pilot site for FamilySearch Record Search.

I've been wondering what happened to the indexed records for Irish civil registration which were the subject of an online FamilySearch Indexing project earlier in the year. According to information I picked up at the Genealogy in London event in Toronto last Saturday we shouldn't have much longer to wait.

Civil registration in Ireland started in 1864, too late to capture events during the famine, but still useful even for those whose migrant ancestors had already left if relatives remained behind. The indexes haven't been widely available, except through holdings in the Family History Library and Family History Centres so online availability will be a boon for the ever data-starved Irish researcher.

Ottawa Room Improvements

When researching local history in Ottawa and vicinity a must visit destination is the Ottawa Public Librry's Ottawa Room on the third floor of the main building at 120 Metcalfe in downtown Ottawa.

The Ottawa Room provides a centralized information resource about Ottawa and the surrounding area, both past and present, plus a large collection of municipal documents, including all current and past city by-laws. Currently, the holdings of the Ottawa Room collection consist of:

• more than 25,000 books, documents and reports – in English and French
• over 1,200 maps – from 1856 to the present
• an extensive vertical file collection – approximately 1,550 local subjects
• 109 preservation microforms
• a collection of community newspapers
• over 500 high school yearbooks from many local schools

As the collection grows space has become an issue. At present you need to be an acrobat to see what's on the bottom shelves they are so tightly spaced.

OPL managers plan to expand The Ottawa Room into adjoining space, adding more than 500 square feet. At the same time the entrance will be relocated to give the Ottawa Room much greater visibility and prominence. More study space and computer workstations will be added and the collection is being rearranging to bring the parts relating to genealogy together into the most visible and accessible area.

To assist the rennovation the OPL Foundation is holding a literary fundraiser, An Evening with Sir John A., at the Fairmont Château Laurier on Thursday 20 November which will showcase three of our country’s leading popular historians and novelists. Our featured authors are Richard Gwyn, author of John A: The Man Who Made Us and Roy MacSkimming, author of the novel Macdonald. Charlotte Gray, celebrity advocate for Sir John A. on the CBC’s Greatest Canadians series will be the moderator.

Go here for further information about the event.

See you in Toronto

I'll be presenting in Toronto on Saturday at the Toronto Branch OGS event GENEALOGY IN LONDON: A workshop about searching for Londoners and other British ancestors.

My presentation is:

Bereft of Life, They Rest in Peace. But Where?

Finding a burial can mean extending your family tree by discovering a relative or relatives buried in the same or a nearby plot. But in his book Ancestral Trails Mark Herber succinctly states: "It can be very difficult to locate an ancestor's place of burial in London..." Unlike English BMDs, there is no single national registration of burials. The difficulty is compounded for those of us an ocean away who can't just hop on a London Transport bus to search in cemetery or local record offices. Now the Internet genealogy database revolution is starting to help the search. In overview, 18th century and earlier burial records for London and suburbs are scarce. More than 350,000 burials from the 19th century, before the closure of central London churchyards under the Metropolitan Burials Act of 1852, have been indexed and are available online. Of the commercial cemeteries established in the 1840s only Abney Park has an online database. Indexes of burials from municipal cemeteries established as a result of the 1852 Act are starting to become available online, but mostly still require searching in original chronological records. A process to help narrow the search for candidate cemeteries will be described.

There are more readers for this blog in Toronto than anywhere else, although Ottawa and Gatineau together have more readers. If you're coming to the Toronto event do introduce yourself.

For the Ottawa people, I've tentatively agreed to make this presentation for BIFHSGO in April.

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Service Records

The (UK) National Archives have made available on their Documents Online pay per view service about 40,000 World War One service records belonging to those who served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. You can conduct a free search.

The service records of RNVR ratings contain details such as name, division and service number, date of birth, former occupation, whether formerly in the Royal Navy or Royal Marines, a physical description, date and period of engagements, ships or units served in, period of service, and remarks about character and ability. Very occasionally a record may reveal the place of birth.

Find an explanation of the record set here.

Grosse Île online exhibition and database

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announces the launch of In Quarantine: Life and Death on Grosse Île, 1832-1937, a project funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage through its Canadian Culture Online Program. The quarantine station at Grosse Île was located in the St. Lawrence River downstream from the City of Québec.

Featuring a variety of documents preserved and digitized by LAC, such as lists of births and deaths at sea, hospital registers, journals, letters, photographs and maps, this virtual exhibition tells the story not only of the quarantine station, but also of the individuals who experienced life on the island.

The database includes information on 33,026 immigrants whose names appear in surviving records of the Grosse-Île Quarantine Station between 1832 and 1937 from sources such as baptisms, burials, memorial lists and hospital records at Grosse Île, and births and deaths at sea. Some information is linked to images of original documents.

Find the site at: www.collectionscanada.ca/grosse-ile.

Based on an announcement from Library and Archives Canada.

Virgile 1914 - 1918 Virgil

We are approaching the 90th anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

This year the names of those killed serving in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Canadian Merchant Navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps will be projected on the National War Memorial in Ottawa, in Trafalgar Square in London, and at various sites across Canada.

Starting at 5 pm, for 13 hours each night, from 4 November to the morning of 11 November The Vigil will be streamed live from the National War Memorial at Virgile 1914 - 1918 Virgil. More than 9,700 names will appear each night and each name will appear only once.

It's easy to forget how devastating was the loss. Make it personal. The database shows 19 Canadian soldiers named John Reid killed during the Great War, and three of them with middle initial D.

Look up your last name or that of your spouse at the site. For more information about each of the 68,000, including their place of burial, you can explore the following sites: www.cwgc.org or www.warmuseum.ca and look up their attestation paper at: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/index-e.html.

Thanks to Arlene Halme for suggesting this item.

Indexing the 1916 census of the Prairie Provinces

Expect to hear within the month of the start of a volunteer indexing project for the 1916 census of the Prairie Provinces through FamilySearchIndexing.org.

A microfilm version of the 1916 census became available in-house at Library and Archives Canada in mid-August, but the lack of online images and any nominal indexing has been a frustration.

Comments by Brian Gilchrist at the OGS Ottawa Branch Ryan Taylor Lecture indicate the project for 1916 to be part of a larger arrangement between Library and Archives Canada, FamilySearch and The Generations Network (TGN) which will see them tackling the remaining unindexed Canadian censuses too. An announcement on details should be made soon.

The Ottawa News and Times 1865-1877

Sitting on a trolley in the Canadian Genealogy Centre during my last visit was an unpublished manuscript, abstracts of birth, marriage and death announcements in the Ottawa News and successor Ottawa Times between 18 December 1865 and 8 January 1877. The copyright notice indicates the authors to be Joan McKay and Dolly Allen. It is dated July 2007.

The contents are organized in three sections, 32 pages of births, 33 pages of marriages and 120 pages of deaths, many of which date from before the establishment of the Ontario civil registration system. Each section is alphabetical by last name, with marriage entries under both bride and groom surnames.

Here are some sample entries:

REARDON. At Nepean on May 16 to Mrs Patrick REARDON, triplets - 2 girls, 1 boy. All well (May 18, 1866, p2, col7)

PATTERSON - ELLIOTT. At St. George`s church, Montreal on Nov 15 by Rev Canon BOND MA, Incumbent, James PATTERSON, Esq, Finance Dept, Civil Service, to Ellie daughter of Joseph ELLIOTT (Nov 24, 1866, p2, col 7)

LAFRANCOIS. At Lorette, Prov. of Quebec on May 18, Catherine AUDY, widow of the late Dominique LAFRANCOIS, Notary Public of that place and sister of J. H. Audy of this city, age 75 years (June 11, 1873, p2, col 7)

Some of the entries are surprisingly frank - froze to death while intoxicated.

The manuscript is catalogued as CS 88 ON 38 088 2007 fol. GENE Ref

I hope the authors can find a way to make this locally valuable resource more widely available.

Safely stored but not forgotten

How do you preserve the fruits of your genealogy labour? Of the materials you've collected over a lifetime what do you keep? What do you consign to the materials afterlife?

On a trip to Montreal I picked up a recent, thin, 64 page, 7-1/4" by 4-3/4" format book from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The title in English "Safely stored but not forgotten" is not quite as creative as in French "À l'abri de l'oubli." In either language it's a guide to conserving your personal and family documents.

For each type of document you might have it recommends either keeping or disposing of it after a specified number of years or at the end of a defined useful life. How long do you keep your income tax records, utility statements, education and employment records, school yearbooks, real estate records, letters from your grandmother and so on. For more than half the document types considered the book recommends disposal although in some cases the specific recommendations are for the Quebec or Canadian legal regime.

The content is hardly groundbreaking. You won't find novel information, more frustrating conformation of your delinquency if you, like me, have a large backlog of materials to deal with. Also recommendations don't seem to recognize the realities of aging. Do you really need to "keep documents relating to your schooling all your life" once you're into retirement?

What impresses most about the volume, aside from the Archives initiative in publishing it, is the design by orangetango.

Métis Nation seeks genealogist

Elizabeth Lapointe has posted on her blog about a job opportunity at the Métis Nation of Ontario's head office in Ottawa. They are seeking a full-time genealogist/historian.

Global Genealogy to focus resources on its online business

Rick and Sandra Roberts are well known to attendees at genealogy conferences in Ontario, for their website globalgenealogy.com and support for information sharing through their Global Gazette. On October 29 they announced they will be closing their physical storefront in Campbellville as of November 15 to focus the business online.

They explain that the growth in online orders from customers who enjoy the convenience of online shopping, even those who live within a thirty minute radius of their physical store, made keeping open the store increasingly uneconomic.

The good news in the announcement, especially for those of us too remote from the physical store to have ever visited, is the promise that "Global Genealogy will publish more new books and CDs in 2009 than in previous years. More genealogy workshops and lectures, are planned, both locally and at a distance. And we will be able to get out to exhibit at more genealogy and history conferences than we have been able to in the past."

Best wishes to Rick and Sandra as they move with the times.

Developing a research strategy lecture

J. Brian Gilchrist, historian, genealogist, author, radio & TV commentator will give the Ottawa Branch, OGS, second Annual Ryan Taylor Memorial Lecture Memorial Lecture "Developing a Research Strategy" this coming Saturday, 1 November 2008, in the Auditorium of Library and Archives Canada.

Every one of us reaches a point in our research when we think we are stuck. This session will present options: options based on a review of your own notes, and learning how to ask questions of people who can help: be it from networking with other genealogists, or with archivists and librarians, or on-line resources. There is a whole world of untouched resource material out there, and Mr. Gilchrist will help you learn how to access it.

Admission to this lecture, which starts at 10am, is free.

Canadian city directories from Ancestry.ca

Ancestry.ca issued a press release on Tuesday. It starts:

In a world-first, Ancestry.ca today launched online the fully indexed Canada City and Area Directories, 1819-1899, which feature the names and addresses of more than 5.2 million people who lived in Canada during the greater part of the 19^th Century.

In total, 19,764 pages of directory pages were scanned and are now available to search online.

A pre-cursor to phone books, these historic directories feature an alphabetical listing of the majority of heads of households in major cities across Canada along with their address and occupation. It also lists businesses, town officers, schools, societies, churches and other public institutions.

Sounds comprehensive. How extensive is this collection?

For British Columbia directories are for New Westminster for 1890, for Revelstoke for 1897 and 1898, for Vancouver for 1888, 1890, 1896 and 1899, and for Victoria for 1860.

For Ontario there are directories for Hastings County for 1869 and for Ottawa for 1891, 1893, 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898.

For Quebec directories Montreal has extensive coverage: 1819, 1820, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1852, 1854, 1861, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1868, 1869, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, and 1895. For Quebec City coverage is 1822, 1847, 1855 and 1857.

In addition there are "All Provinces" directories for 1851 and 1857.

For several years Library and Archives Canada has offered, free of charge, Canada Directories: who was where with more comprehensive coverage.

For Ottawa, for example, the LAC collection includes 21 directories from 1863 to 1899. The Ancestry.ca collection is for just six years, but is fully searchable. Furthermore it's searchable across the whole directory collection. The LAC volumes are indexed so that you can go the the start of an alphabetical section but must then scan through to the person or address you seek volume by volume.

New online exhibitions from LAC

The election embargo on announcements is at an end and we can look forward to the appearance of the backlog. Three new panels, one replacing the announcement on the 1881 census, and two announcing new online exhibitions, appeared on Monday on the LAC homepage. One is about Canadian Library Month, now nearly over.

Famous Canadian Physicians celebrates the achievements of Canadian doctors who have gained fame in Canada or internationally: Dr. Emily Stowe, the first Canadian woman to practise medicine and a lifelong champion for women's rights; Sir Frederick Banting and the discovery of insulin; Sir William Osler; Dr. Wilder Penfield; Dr. Gustave Gingras; and Dr. Lucille Teasdale-Corti. Each essay is accompanied by digitized images, textual documents and audio visual material.

An exhibition Reflections on a Capital Photographer profiles the work of William James Topley, one of the most important visual records of Canada during the first 50 years after Confederation. Active between 1868 and 1923 Topley's studio, which started as a branch of Notman's in Montreal, is a vast collection of street scenes in Ottawa and landscapes farther afield, portraits of our political leaders and average Canadians. There are just over 107,000 catalogue entries for the Topley collection, still not the whole collection, of which some 11,000 have digitized images. If you have an Ottawa ancestor you may find a portrait by checking the Topley collection using the Basic Search or the Advanced Search options of the LAC catalogue.

Both exhibits are funded in part by Canadian Culture Online, a funding source LAC is moving away from as it has failed to recognize the importance of funding large-scale digitization initiatives favouring more superficial content.

Paul J. McGrath

Canadian genealogists will be saddened to learn of the death last Friday, October 24, in Scotland of Paul James McGrath, the result of a heart attack. Paul, born in 1959, was best known as staff genealogist for the family history television show “Ancestors in the Attic.” He was in Scotland shooting a segment for the program.

Paul was a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, principal of OntarioRoots.com specializing in exploring early Ontario and Toronto roots. He was Chair of the Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society and a Director of the Friends of the Archives of Ontario.

A popular speaker he was editor of OGS Toronto Branch publications "The great contest for responsible government : the City of Toronto poll book of 1841" published in by in 2004, and "Toronto in the 1850s : a transcription of the 1853 tax assessment rolls and guide to family history research" published in 2005. He had a particular interest in the history of Toronto and was author of the article "The Lost Village of Norway" in the September 2005 issue of the Toronto Branch publication Toronto Tree.

FreeBMD reminder

A reminder to check the FreeBMD Database which was last updated on Sat 18 Oct 2008 and currently contains 156,886,636 distinct records (202,109,955 total records).

For those not familiar with FreeBMD, it's an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales.

Most of the additions are in the 1920s, although there are still gaps in prior years. Work is starting on the 1930s.

Digital newspaper collection in Quebec

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec are aiming to digitize the whole of the published and archival documentary heritage produced in Québec since the 17th century, including materials of foreign origin related to Québec. All categories of documents: printed and handwritten material, photographs, sound recordings and so on and included.

To date some eight million objects (book pages, magazines, newspapers or handwritten material, photographs, postcards, etc.) have been digitized. The resources are available free of charge on the Web or will be in the next few months. Priority is being given to newspapers and magazines from all Québec regions.

The material are available for viewing online, but are not full text searchable

The full list of newspapers is here. The English language newspaper material available with long runs are:

Canadian Illustrated News (1869-1883)

Daily Witness (1860-1913)

The Montreal Witness (1845-1938)

The Quebec Chronicle (1847-1924)

Quebec Mercury (1805-1903)

LAC Proposed Exhibitions

The government announcement log-jam is broken. Library and Archives Canada have made a substitution on their main page drawing attention to a survey on possible future programming.

The topics being considered are the lives and careers of Canada’s Prime Ministers; Canadian achievements in radio, film, television, and music; Canada’s founding documents; Sir Winston Churchill; and the Rocky Mountains.

The survey asks for additional suggestions. Mine were: Canada Builders, A Nation of Immigrants, Canada's Ten Greatest Musicians, Canada's Ten Greatest Engineers, Captains of Industry, Who Do You Think You Are Canada?

I'm wondering if such suggestions are a waste of time. The impression I get is that some anonymous public servant looks them over and then discards them. Maybe the penultimate step is skipped. Wouldn't it be better public relations if LAC listed all the (printable) suggestions on their website and gave an opportunity for a further round of feedback with ongoing public availability of the vote results.

Attleborough in War Time

Archive CD Books Canada has just released a CD version of an obscure title "Attleborough in War Time" written by Major John Henry Kennedy and published privately in 1919. This is the first British book they have issued, a possibility open to the Canadian partner now that the original Archive CD Books in the UK is no longer in operation.

Attleborough, in the great (I may be biased) county of Norfolk, sent 550 of the town’s men, out of a population of 2,500, to serve at the front and at home during WW1.

In his latest newsletter Archives CD Books Canada owner Malcolm Moody tells the story of how he came to gain access to the book, courtesy of BIFHSGO member Caroline Herbert who is a relative of Kennedy.

Malcolm writes "The book keeps alive the memory of these brave souls by recording the names and service records of each one as well as separately listing the Roll of Honor of those who gave their lives in the conflict. Not that the remaining inhabitants stood idly by. A good part of the book records the happenings in Attleborough in support of the war effort, the raising of funds, the establishment of hospitals and the special contributions by both individuals and local companies, all ably set, by the author, against the larger background of the progress of the fighting."

Apparently the book was privately printed in such limited numbers that no copies of the original are to be found in internet-accessible library catalogues. The new availability through Archive CD Books Canada is an example of the benefits of digitization for genealogy, and the long tail marketing capability afforded by the web.