The following is a request for responses to a short survey.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Canadian office is launching a National Volunteer Program in 2025!
We will invite people from across Canada to get involved—wherever CWGC markers are located. We’ll need to find volunteers who are willing to visit local cemeteries to help us inspect and maintain the war graves in their own communities.
We appreciate your feedback to determine the best way forward. Please take 5-10 minutes to answer a few questions. Your answers will help us plan and shape what a new volunteer program in Canada will look like. Thank you!

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CY7FTN2.

Professional Boxers
Ancestry has added Web: United Kingdom, Index of Professional Boxers, 1900-1979 with 70,938 entries.

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, gail benjafield, Gloria Tubman, Lynne Willoughby, Teresa, Sunday Thompson, Unknown.

 

In the past week, an estimated 16% of additional records have been added, all for the USA.

These Ancestry collections were updated as of 17 September.

U.S., 1800s-current, 322,404,104 entries
UK and Ireland, 1800s-current, 9,073,912 entries
Canada, 1800s-current, 8,761,838 entries
Australia and New Zealand,  1800s-current,  875,666 entries

FreeBMD Database was updated on Friday, 27 September 2024, to contain 291,560,221 unique records, up from 291,402,577.
Years with more than 10,000 additions are 1992, 1995-96 for births, and 1994-95 for marriages and deaths.

The Shannon Lecture Series is back at Carleton University this fall with the theme: Black Histories and Futures of Science and Technology. Curated by Alexa Lepera, Assistant Curator of Domestic Environments and Social Diversity at Ingenium, the series will explore the complex relationship between anti-Black racism and technology, highlighting how technology has both enabled Black resistance and contributed to community building and liberation.

This year’s lectures will bring together speakers from diverse disciplines to examine Black histories in fields such as transportation, agriculture, sports, science, and media. The first session, Ingenium’s Black and African Canadian Scientific and Technological Innovations Fellowship, will be held virtually on October 21 at 7 p.m. Additional sessions are planned for November, December, and January at the Dominion-Chalmers Centre.

Saturday, 28 September, marks British Home Child Day, honouring the achievements and contributions of these young immigrants.
The program brought around 100,000 young immigrants to Canada. Despite its flaws, it offered many opportunities for a better and healthier life than they might have had in Britain1. We must acknowledge the dedication of the leaders of the charitable agencies who, lamenting the plight of needy children on Britain’s mean streets, took action to move them into a more promising situation.

The children’s stories of resilience and achievement are a notable part of Canada’s immigrant heritage.

We should not sugar-coat the challenges these young immigrants faced adapting to a new country, culture, and rural lifestyle — experiences shared by many immigrants throughout Canadian history.

Many British home children found educational opportunities, developed skills, and built successful careers and families in Canada. Their contributions to Canadian society were significant, particularly in agriculture, rural development, and the military.

This nuanced understanding, free of the label of unwilling victims, allows us to appreciate the variety of home children’s experiences. Historical events often have mixed legacies.

The Canadian government actively supported and facilitated the immigration of home children, viewing it as a means to address labour shortages and contribute to nation-building. It must share credit for the successes as well as the shortcomings.

1. As a measure of health, in 1900, the infant mortality rate was 20% higher in the UK than in Canada.

From 26 to 30 September 2024, Généalogie Québec offers a 25% discount on annual subscriptions. 

This offer is available exclusively at  https://www.genealogiequebec.com/en/subscription-offer-fall2024

On Monday, I visited Ingenium’s Library and Archives, which supports museum staff and the general public in researching the history of science, technology, agriculture, food, aviation, and space in Canada.

This was my first opportunity to visit the new facility, several quantum leaps up from their cramped quarters pre-pandemic. Both visits were to explore the CP Ships collection, much of which is available on Ancestry as of June this year. Find my blog posts here, here, and here.

Although Ancestry was able to digitize most of the collection a few items proved too large, notably the plan of the various decks and some posters.

In case you’re wondering, digitization by Ancestry took about seven months at an estimated cost in excess of $200,000 if done in-house. As it was interrupted by COVID the project took longer than normal. Now, Ancestry has exclusive access for five years, after which the collection will be released and made available on the Ingenium site.

Adele Torrance(right) and Sian Jones, two staff involved, explained some of the intricacies. Marcia Mordfield (not pictured) was also on the team. Sian found herself mentioned in a document for a 1966 voyage on the Empress of Canada when as a young child she bumped her head.

The Library and Archives have a vast collection of resource material, much of which is available through interlibrary loan. Check the Library catalog and the archives’ holdings at Archeion, or email for advice on whether they have a resource useful to you.

The September update to Ancestry’s Find a Grave Index sees 156,761 additions to the Canadian collection and 334,413 to the UK and Ireland.