Month: August 2023

Just out, the September issue features: –

• Sort your photos
  We give our verdict on the different online tools for organising and sharing family photographs
• The end of the census?
  We spoke to the ONS about their plans to modernise the census
• How to visit local archives
  What you need to know about visiting local archive services to research your family history
• The history of women’s education
  Discover how our female ancestors fought for the right to learn
• Family hero
  Terry Sheppard‘s ancestors fought in the English and American Civil Wars
• Caribbean ancestry
  How to research Caribbean family history online

Read it free online through an Overdrive Magazines subscription by many Canadian public libraries including OPL.

The post How should LAC meet budget cuts? prompted an email pointing to the National Accounts. They are online from 1995 to 2022. In thousands of dollars, the graph shows the LAC expenditure trend year-by-year, adjusted for inflation using the Bank of Canada CPI tool.

In real terms over the whole period LAC has lost an average $766,000 each year. It’s not easy to explain the fluctuations as specially-funded initiatives come and go. Most notable is the decrease from 2009 to 2016, the final years of the Harper government and during the disasterous tenure of Daniel Caron as Librarian and Archivist from 2009 to 2013.

The Heritage portfolio which is dominated by culture and sport concerns. Heritage is the poor cousin, I’m told LAC is often an afterthought. Only when problems arise, such as access to information and indigenous documents is much attention paid by oversight bodies like the Auditor General and Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

 

Volume 55, No. 2 of this OGS Ottawa Branch publication is out. Feature articles are:

*Journals added to the OBOGS Library: March 1, 2023 –
June 30, 2023 – by Pam Cooper
*Journals Held at the OBOGS Library, Part 2: The Rest of Ontario and Quebec, and Other Provinces – by Pam Cooper
*Life on Gardner Street, Part 1 – by Noreen Tyers.
Gardner Street she describes as a neighbourhood in Eastview that was considered, not the wrong side of the track, but almost.

Regular columns are:
*Electronic Notebook, by Mike More
*Interesting Web Sites, by Heather Oakley
*Here, There & Everywhere, by Heather Oakley.

Branch members need to log on to read the issue online.

You don’t need to be a branch member to attend the season’s first monthly meeting, a presentation “Restorations of Biblical Proportions” by Kyla Ubbink on Saturday, 16 September 2023 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Be their in person 100 Tallwood or online https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/

On 18 August, Ancestry updated their Index to Find a Grave version to contain 233,352,264 records. That’s a median increase of 3.5%. Increases range from 54% for Sweden to 0. 78% for the US which represents three-quarters of the total entries.

Area	Records Aug 2023	Records May 2023
US	174,219,998	172,857,217
UK and Ireland	18,201,134	16,712,454*
Global	15,090,205	14,604,632
Australia and New Zealand	11,297,318	11,044,654
Canada	9,808,392	9,646,273
Germany	2,822,677	2,520,011
Sweden	1,110,094	719,305
Italy	329,383	318,700
Norway	220,413	216,182*
Brazil	186,642	165,727
Mexico	66,008	62,956

The previous figures for UK and Ireland and Norway are for the prior March 2023 update.

The actual Find A Grave site has additional entries.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission describes the played the major role Canadian Forces played in the First World War-winning Hundred Days Offensive.
https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/canada-s-hundred-days-the-canadian-contribution-to-great-war-victory/

One project report progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges; 14 report no progress.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 27% complete, was 26% complete last month.

Expo67 remains 2 % complete.

Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.

Women in the War remains 1% complete.

Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains 0% complete.

John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 94% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% complete.

George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.

Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.

Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.

Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.

Japanese-Canadians: Second World War remains 3% complete.

The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 93% complete.

Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.

Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges have seen progress. There are currently 3,718 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab only contributions, an increase from 3,710 last month.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Aerial images reveal 6,000 years of history in the South Downs

Stones made for Victorian project to help Irish workers given listed status

Saint Patrick was ‘Somerset man’

The Canadian government’s poor track record on public consultations

The Connecticut Genealogy Index
Reclaim the Records does it again. Free indexes to 576,638 births, 2,180,700 marriages, 2,086 civil unions, and 2,772,116 deaths from the state of Connecticut, spanning three centuries.

 Art, History and Race

Innovations in toilet design

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright, Robert Ross Halfyard, Teresa, Unknown.

This register contains the names of more than 700 soldiers from various regiments. It also details, where available, each soldier’s rank, service number, regiment, battalion number, date of admission and date of discharge (date when they officially left the hospital).

Included are 32 men serving with the Canadian Infantry or Canadian Field Artillery. Don’t rely on the transcribed name, Fairbairn became Fairburn. Fortunately regimental numbers are included.

Ancestry uploaded the data from PRONI at  https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/royal-victoria-hospital-register-1914-1916

Focus this week is BMB records from the ancient rural English county of Herefordshire. The Leintwardine History Society transcribed some of the records from original records. Other portions comes from the Herefordshire FHS and FamilySearch’s International Genealogical Index.

Baptisms
This addition is 231,270 parish baptisms from 1433 to 1950. From Abbey Dore to Yazor, the 269 parishes total is 906,149 records with Hereford city parishes accounting for over 53 thousand. Ross, Bromyard, Leominster, Ledbury, Cradley, Madley, Kington, Bosbury, Much Marcle, Lyonshall, Walford, Leintwardine, Pembridge, Mordiford and Kingsland each account for more than 10,000 baptisms in the collection.

Marriages
Additions are 86,782 records from 1433 to 1949. The marriage collection total is now 584,267 records from 707 places.

Burials
With the additional burials the total is now 337,974 from 1541  to 1995.

Newspapers
The collection has reached the 70 million page mark with three new Welsh and six updated English titles.

Today is the anniversary of the one-day Dieppe Raid in 1942, in which 916 Canadians died. Unlike the commemoration of battles at Juno Beach and Vimy Ridge, both of which are marked by impresssive named bridges in Ottawa, the best we can do for Dieppe is a non-descript dead-end street in Vanier.

This month’s update is short. In the past month, the only additions to the newspapers.com collection are 14 US newspapers, six of those Kansas-based.