Anglo-Celtic Connections

Every natural thing our forebears could not understand was ripe for superstition, and some of it we inherit. This follows our earlier post on birth and marriage superstitions.

At the Deathbed

Open the doors and windows and unlock all locks when a person is in their last extremity, so the departure of the soul is not hindered.

People will not die easily if anyone stands in front of them, or over them, in the last ten minutes.

“Wishing” or “crying back.” A dying person, it was said, cannot get their time over with ease if someone in the room will not give them up. Those who cannot bring themselves to part with a loved one were advised to withdraw, so that death might enter and claim his rights.

A good omen. Among Jewish communities, to die on one’s own birthday is considered a good omen.

Doors Left Open

Once a death had occurred, the front door was commonly opened and left ajar, night and day, until after the funeral. The belief was that the deceased’s spirit, having left the body, wandered round the dwelling and could not re-enter at will if every door and window were shut.

A related warning concerned the funeral procession itself. When a funeral leaves a house, the front door must not be shut until the mourners return, or it will soon be opened again for another corpse. Leaving the door open for several days was also said to prevent further deaths following.

Telling the Bees

If a member of the family died and the bees were not “put into mourning,” they would leave their hive. The hive might be draped in black crepe or cloth.

Funeral Omens

You will be sure of toothache if you eat while a funeral bell is tolling.

Two funerals on the same day lead to quarrels.

The Churchyard

It was thought unlucky to be the first person buried in a churchyard.

Which side to be buried on. The south and east sides of the churchyard were favoured for burial. Strangers, those who had suffered capital punishment and those who had taken their own lives were segregated to the north.

The watcher of the kirkyard. In Scottish and northern tradition, the spirit of the last person buried watches over the kirkyard until relieved by the next interment. This explains the belief that two funerals on one day lead to quarrels, since the spirit of the person last buried must keep watch over the place until the next burial releases it from its lonely vigil.

Further Reading

Sources for superstitions of all kinds from around the world include Biren Bonnerjea’s 1927 A Dictionary of Superstitions and Mythology, available on the Internet Archive, and Iona Opie and Moira Tatem’s 1989 A Dictionary of Superstitions.

On 23 October 1956, demonstrations began in Budapest, demanding political freedom and democratic reforms. On 4 November, the USSR  launched a major military offensive, overwhelming Hungarian resistance. Of the more than 200,000 Hungarians who fled the country during the uprising, 37,566 reached Canada by the end of 1958. Among them were five of particular note:

Frank Hasenfratz (1935–2022), who founded major automotive-parts manufacturer Linamar in 1966.

Gábor Szilasi (1928–2026), documentary photographer, known for his photographs of rural Quebec.

Andrew Telegdi (1946–2017), MP.

Anna Porter (born 1944), founder of Key Porter Books.

George Jonas (1935–2016),  columnist, poet and author.

Miscellaneous items I found interesting this week.

Irish Medical Dictionary Daffynitions
Artery — The study of fine paintings and sculptures.
Bacteria — The back entrance to the staff cafeteria.
Barium — What the undertaker does when modern medicine fails.
Benign — What a child turns after being eight.
Caesarean Section — A prestigious residential district in ancient Rome.
Cardiogram — An overly affectionate Valentine’s Day greeting card.
CAT Scan — Searching the back garden for a runaway family pet.
Cauterize — Making direct eye contact with someone across the room.
Colic — A breed of working sheepdog prized in the Scottish Highlands.
Coma — A punctuation mark indicating a brief pause in a sentence.
Dilate — To live a remarkably long and fulfilling life.
Enema — Someone who is decidedly not on friendly terms with you.
Fibula — A small, harmless white lie told to avoid trouble.
Hangnail — A small coat hook affixed to the back of the front door.
Impotent — Distinguished, prominent, and commanding great respect.
Labour Pain — Getting injured on an active construction site.
Medical Staff — A walking stick kept beside the physician’s umbrella stand.
Morbid — A higher offer placed at an estate auction.
Nitrate — Considerably cheaper than the standard daytime telephone charge.
Node — Was fully aware of the facts beforehand.
Outpatient — A person who fainted in the waiting room chair.
Pelvis — A distant cousin of the famous rock-and-roll singer Elvis.
Post-Operative — A retired delivery driver from the local postal service.
Protein — Strongly in favour of adolescent young people.
Secretion — Keeping a private matter safely to oneself.
Tablet — A small, ruled pad of lined writing paper.
Terminal Illness — Catching a nasty head cold while stuck at the airport gate.
Tibia — An exotic country situated along the North African coast.
Tumour — A quantity that is two units higher than the previous estimate.
Urine — The opposite of “you’re out.”
Varicose — Located in very close physical proximity.
Vein — Possessing an excessively high opinion of one’s own appearance.

OGS Toronto Branch Meeting 
The Branch monthly meeting, at 7:30 pm on Monday, 26 October via Zoom,  kicks off with author Susan Goldenberg profiling her new book, Will Power: the Most Baffling Bequests, Ludicrous Last Wishes, and Daft Declarations in Final Testaments. It showcases some of the most astonishing, eccentric, funny, and vindictive bequests and last requests found in wills, both past and present, including a few memorable family feuds.

For the main presentation, Drew von Hasselbach will explore Canadian battlefield wills. Over the centuries, special rules allowed military personnel to make informal wills, from oral “nuncupative” declarations whispered from deathbeds to hastily scribbled notes from the trenches, all carrying the same legal force as a formal will, along with procedures for administering the estates of those who never returned. 

BIFHSGO Conference
The video recordings from the 2026 BIFHSGO Conference are now posted in the Registrants’ Portal, along with handouts (scroll down on the main page to the Handouts and Videos section). You will find the speakers’ presentations and the discussions from the Expert Connect Q and A breakout rooms. The links to the video recordings and handouts will be available until midnight on 30 November.

60 Years Ago
Today I’m celebrating the anniversary of the day I landed in Montreal and took the train to Ottawa, arriving at the newly opened train station.

MI5
Over 100 Security Service (MI5) files are newly released by The National Archives (UK)  covering a wide range of subjects and individuals for the period from the 1930s to the 1970s.

EL&P
I’d be amazed if you don’t enjoy this.

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Anonymous,  Christine Jackson,  Gail, Helen Gillespie, Glenn Wright, Ken McKinlay, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, Unknown.

Here’s an online archive library that hosts thousands of historical photos, over 58,000, documenting the people, places, and landscape of Derby, Derbyshire and Nottingham.
Additions to the collection were highlighted in PhotoFriday – August/September 2026 Digest.

If that’s too geographically limiting, try:

Historic England Archive

Francis Frith Collection

Wikimedia Commons

Britain From Above

Geograph® Britain and Ireland

This updated collection, now with 346,269 entries, contains petty session records from Monmouthshire, Wales, dated between 1861 and 1932. The court records in this collection, from the Gwent Archives, include registers for criminal cases and business licenses. The collection also has court orders delivered to defendants by local constables and records of ejectment oaths whereby landlords swore they had delivered eviction notices to tenants delinquent in rent payments.

UK Civil Service Appointments, Promotions and Transfers 1871-1942 covers 872,731 entries published in The London Gazette. You’ll likely find the entry for the person you seek in a linked list as published. I didn’t see any genealogical information, such dare of birth or parents’ names.

Next Saturday and Sunday at St Paul’s University, don’t miss the opportunity to “Enter the world of books and experience a Bibliophile’s best day out!”

Experience: 20+ Book Dealers, Book arts and binding demonstrations, 7+ Live Presentations on Collecting Books, and Tours of the Rare Book Room at Saint Paul University.

Free parking.

Find out more and purchase your $10 entrance at https://ottawabookfair.ca/

• Orders in Council
  You might not think of these as a resource for researching family history. Think again. There are many examples of individuals identified by name in the OICs, lighthouse keepers, post office employees and in the 19th century, appointments/promotions in the civil service, military, Mounted Police, lists of individuals, with background information, admitted to Canada in the 1930s, etc. There’s information on every CEF pension granted before the creation of the Bureau of Pension Commissioners in 1917;  that pension information is not otherwise easily accessible. Find out more at LAC’s research guide Orders-in-Council, 1867 to 1940.
  What’s new?
  For many years nothing changed. LAC is now working to add post-1926 IOC information to Collection Search. But NOT the actual document. Instead, they selected Transkribus software to process titles from the OIC registers, indices created by the Privy Council Office to facilitate their access to the records. Obtuse abbreviations and acronyms were widely used.
  Combining the PCO index and Transcribus can produce a muddy bluddle.

Here are three examples:

1940
Agreement with the Government of New pundland se taking and transmitting of meterogrial
observations Min. T. 10-4-40

1939
Mease lights of pewart on Active service in Pritish A. Oilied forces to be Left free from real of
cancellation until Co. Le to be to Min M&R 6 Oct 1939|

1927
Distruction Int & Post Act. Amendment to Regulations re importation of peacher. Mursery stock
&c Min Agri 26 July 1927.

Such distortions are particularly troublesome for searching proper names and places. What could be done? I prompted Gemini with “You are an expert in finding errors in transcribed text. Examine these one line resignation notices from Canadian Orders in Council that were transcribed using Transcribus, suggest where there may be errors, suggest a better transcription or transcriptions, and give a confidence level for each. Format as a table.” Here are a few examples of the original (Transcribus) and Gemini suggested versions.

It wouldn’t take a lot more effort to process the output of Transcribus through a Large Language Model and include the result where the change is suggested with high confidence?

Even better, given the state of technology, why not process the original OIC documents?

This post has benefited from the advice of two anonymous researchers with in-depth knowledge of OIC records.

• Nazi war criminals in Canada
  Ottawa declassifies new details about CIA’s role in resettling Nazi war criminals in Canada
  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-declassifies-new-details-about-cias-role-in-resettling-nazi-war/

• What’s in Collection Search?
  As of 20 October, there are 7,954,478 (7,954,212 on 13 October) items in the Archives section of Collection Search, 8,227,688  (no change) in the Genealogy section,  4,442,785  (4,441,736) in Library.
  There was a huge increase, to 391,058 from 353,363 in Images last week. Browsing that collection sorted by Date (newest) makes me question the selection criteria. Why these three images?

As of February this year, there were 7,586,650 records under this Ancestry title. Now there are  7,794,437 records.

A couple of things of note.

Births in 1919, 66,169 according to the Ancestry collection, are down from 70,699 in 1918, and from 69,751 in 1917. That’s likely an impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The Ancestry database consistently contains more births than reported in the Annual Report of the Registrar-General (published in the Ontario Sessional Papers).  For 1919 the Ancestry database has 66,169 birth registrations; that’s compared to  62,774 by the Registrar-General.

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—please check the links to avoid disappointment. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit the ConferenceKeeper Virtual Calendar.

Tuesday, 20 October

2:30 PM: Beyond the Census: Uncovering Ancestor Stories, by Regan Richardson for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/17011957

8:00 PM: ¡Eureka! Confirmación del Lineaje Ancestral: DNA and Documents Prove a Mexican Ancestral Line (a 2026 Reisinger Lecture), by Karen Stanbary for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/eureka-confirmacion-del-lineaje-ancestral-dna-and-documents-prove-a-mexican-ancestral-line-a-2026-reisinger-lecture

Wednesday, 21 October (Trafalgar Day)

Thursday, 22 October

6:30 PM: Investigative Genetic Genealogy: What Genealogists Need to Understand, by Suzanne Harmon for the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. t
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/17012088

7:00 PM: Remembering The Canadian Army and World War Two’s Fallen Canadian Soldiers in The Netherlands, by Peter Holt for OGS Ottawa Branch
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/faces-of-liberation-the-groesbeek-canadian-war-cemetery-ottawa/

Friday, 23 October

2:00 PM: Essential Skills for New Genealogists 5 of 12: Let Your Fingers Do the Walking—Local Directories of All Sorts, by Dave Mc Donald for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/essential-skills-for-new-genealogists-5-of-12-let-your-fingers-do-the-walking-local-directories-of-all-sorts

7:00 PM: History and Reconstruction of the Morningstar Mill, by Carla Mackie for OGS Niagara Peninsula Branch
https://niagara.ogs.on.ca/events/history-and-reconstruction-of-the-morningstar-mill-with-carla-mackie-niagara-peninsula-branch-webinar-series/

Saturday, 24  October

New Ontario and New Brunswick titles are recently added to newspapers.com.

Leading the pack, with over 1.1 million pages, from 1913 to 2011 is Ottawa’s francophone Le Droit.

Another major addition is Maclean’s, the quintessanial Canadian weekly news magazine published in Toronto.  Added are 94,367 pages from 1944 to 1986. It became monthly in 2017.

Also from Toronto are 563,342 pages of the Sunday Sun from 1973 to 2015, and 166,224 pages from the Saturday Sun from 1986 to 2015.

For New Brunswick there are three 21st century publications.

Info Week-End, also known as Info Weekend, from Edmonston, NB has 15,169 pages from 2007 to 2026.
Journal La République, also from Edmundston has  1,808 pages from 2006–2010
L’Étoile, from  Caraquet,has 896 pages from 2024 to 2026
The Bargain Hunter,  St. Andrews, has just 389 pages for 2024 to 2025.

Updates, mainly for recent years, have been made for BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick newspapers.