Anglo-Celtic Connections

The news pages on the LAC website provide a history of opening and closing of LAC on-site service at 395 Wellington. The latest is a 27 January closing — Temporary closure of services to the public at 395 Wellington, Ottawa.

This must surely be as frustrating for LAC management and staff as for clients.

What lessons has LAC learned from the past couple of years of experience which has caused many organizations to rethink business practices?

Perhaps LAC might be more open about the reasons for closure. “Due to circumstances beyond our control” for the latest closure keeps clients in the dark.

UPDATE: Several people commented that the closure is due to the so-called trucker’s protests.  While the closure is likely prudent why hide the real reason?

Perhaps LAC might recognize that digitization, with its many other benefits, is something to be enhanced and not reduced as has been the case since the end of the digitization of First World War service files. Would you like LAC to provide free and timely digitization on-demand as happened in Australia with TROVE? Does LAC management have enough initiative to try a pilot project?

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Equations built giants like Google. Who’ll find the next billion-dollar bit of maths?

The Winter of Our Discontent
January has been awful. The good news is we’re past 19 January which is the coldest day of the year (on average) in Ottawa.  Although there’s still scope for colder weather, the coldest temperature recorded in Ottawa, at the Experimental Farm, is -38.3C on 17 February 1934, we could have a bit of a respite in the middle of the coming week.

Traditional phrases sent to the knacker’s yard – the 50 UK ‘endangered’ sayings

How to read old handwriting and Transcription Tuesday
From WDYTYA magazine

Ottawa’s Many Peoples’
In 1965 the Ottawa Journal ran a series on the various immigrant groups in Ottawa. They are:

Thanks to this week’s contributors. Anonymous, Bob Jones, Brenda Turner, Ken McLeod, Nancy Frey, Teresa, Unknown.

The People & Portraits collection from the National Portrait Gallery in London is now available through Ancestry. From the years 1547 to 2018, Ancestry has 156,645 items in this picture collection.
They are also available directly, and free, from the National Portrait Gallery website along with another 65,000 works documented in its catalogue.

There’s a collection of over 535,100 publications, including more than 414,300 digital publications available from Government of Canada Publications.
Most published prior to the 1990s are in digital form. Since 2000 most documents have been born digital.

What’s of interest? It’s a real mixed bag, and there’s a catalogue to help find what you need. You may well find things you didn’t know you wanted, especially in the older items.

Organizations, such as Statistics Canada digitized historical documents, in Statscan’s case summaries of census findings back to 1851-52.

The Statistical Yearbook of Canada 1890-1905

Sessional papers of the Dominion of Canada  1868-1925.

Directories of Marine Scientists in Canada during the 1980s

Directory of private schools in eight provinces (elementary, secondary and commercial) 1947, 1944, 1937.

Give it a try.

With the 26 January update, there are now 6,996,449 entries in the Canada, Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-current. The latest appears to be for October. 2021. The US index now has 265,548,230  entries.

This week 2.1 million Berkshire baptisms, burials, marriages and banns transcripts have been added to FMP.

The over 1 million baptism records, between 1538 and 1917, often include sources from both the parish records and bishops transcripts. While that means fewer events than records it’s good to have both as you may get more information in one than the other. I found another sibling for my 2xgreat-grandmother.

With these additions, there are now 1,456,503 burial transcripts and  956,431 marriages and banns in this Berkshire collection. Again expect more than one record for the same event. 20 marriage events for a surname of my interest were in 33 records.

False claims of ancestry are nothing new. There was a living to be made a century and more ago in producing false personal genealogies back to notable people.

These days the motivations may be different, but the practice remains.

On Monday evening, in an OGS Toronto Branch presentation, Daryl Leroux, an expert on French-Canadian Genealogy, shared findings from his 2019 book Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity. He examined the increasing numbers of white French-Canadians identifying as Indigenous on the basis of false genealogies back to women like Marie Sylvestre who were not aboriginal but are claimed to be.  Leroux stated these are used to justify claims to aboriginal rights, such as fishing rights and land claims, and by organizations to inflate numbers of Indigenous employees.

Leroux was quick to state he would not enter into the discussion of what should be the criteria for “status” He was pointing out the numerous cases where the ancestry was false.

An article in today’s The Conversation Canada,  We are facing a settler colonial crisis, not an Indigenous identity crisis, provides further food for thought.

“The issue is that in their rush to “indigenize,” universities have created the conditions whereby someone who has mined the genealogical archives can access a position reserved for an Indigenous person, displacing those of us who are connected to and claimed by a living community/Nation of people.”

Subscribers will know I’m a fan of the work done by the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives on newspaper digitization. So I was pleased to see their comprehensive blog post Behind the Archives’ Door: The Newspaper Project. It celebrates the completion of a project funded by the New Horizons for Senior’s Program of Employment and Social Development Canada.

To access the search function on the Archives’ website and the finding aids, click here.

On 5 January LAC posted a tweet with this before and after image of the August 1922 Dominion Government Telephone Directory. LAC added that after 100 hours of conservation it is in excellent shape to be digitized and can remain on the consultation shelf for a while longer.

Why would LAC not immediately digitize and withdraw the original from routine consultation?

Did you know there are 19 directories in the series, from 1922 to 1948. All are indicated in the catalogue as “not available”, some temporarily, some permanently?   Why is LAC not digitizing them, or making them available for digitization, just as it has with its Vernon Ontario directories?

Those with a long memory may recall that in February 2009 LAC issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) “in order to identify collaborative opportunities for the digitization of its diverse collections. Arrangements could include digitization and/or the creation of nominal indices or other research tools.” https://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2009/02/lac-opens-doors-wide-for-collaborative.html

More recently Leslie Weir promised “enhanced digital presence” when she became Librarian and Archivist of Canada. https://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com/2019/09/more-digital-promised-at-lac.html
What has been done?  Should LAC look again at issuing a Request for Expressions of Interest?

On Tuesday Ancestry posted the following updates. Notice Norway and Mexico posted decreases.

Choose from free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Those in red are Canadian, bolded if local to Ottawa or recommended

Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed.

Tuesday 25 Jan. 2 pm: Virtual Genealogy Drop-In, from Ottawa Branch of OGS and The Ottawa Public Library.
https://ottawa.ogs.on.ca/events/.

Tuesday 25 Jan. 2 pm: New Records on MyHeritage, by Mike Mansfield for MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/new-records-on-myheritage-2/

Tuesday 25 Jan. 2:30 pm: Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, by John Beatty for Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/6010585

Wednesday 26 Jan. 2:30 pm:  Flappers, flights and freedom: a social history of the 1920s, by Kate Williams for the (UK) National Archives.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/flappers-flights-and-freedom-a-social-history-of-the-1920s-tickets-221285630277?aff=hp

Thursday 27 Jan, 7 pm: Optimizing Your Searches on the Internet – It’s More Than FamilySearch and Ancestry, by Maureen Brady for Brigham Young University Family History Library. Click on the link at the time of the webinar byu.zoom.us/j/97185943513?pwd=TkUyRkhucTJPMDVmRUROSm1RbWdlZz09

Saturday 29 Jan. All Day. Family Tree Webinars offers five presentations, fours from their archive, one new, as the first in a series of free monthly online genealogy conferences in 2022.

www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com/Conference

There were 307,205 deaths in Canada in 2020, the year in which the COVID-19 pandemic began, an increase of 21,935 (+7.7%) over the 285,270 deaths observed in 2019. Life expectancy fell by more than half a year in 2020, the largest single-year decline in Canada since national vital statistics started to be collected in 1921

That’s the lead in Monday’s release Deaths, 2020 from Statistics Canada.

The pandemic has had a significant impact on mortality in Canada, contributing to, but was not the only reason for, the decline in life expectancy.

For the 50-75 cohort the gain in life expectancy since 2016 almost compensated for the loss in 2020.