Anglo-Celtic Connections

The headline from the new episode by Mark Thompson and Steve Little is: Browser Wars Heat Up, What AI Can Learn from AOL, Anthropic’s Speedy New AI Model, Simple Path to Better Prompts.

For me, the gem was hidden in a short section on major improvements in transcribing old handwriting. There’s a link to a blog post Has Google Quietly Solved Two of AI’s Oldest Problems? by Canadian historian Mark Humphries.

He found that a Google AI Studio transcription model that was tested on five documents (~1,000 words, 10% of total sample) achieved 1.7% character error rate (CER) and 6.5% word error rate (WER)—roughly 1 in 50 characters incorrect, including punctuation and capitalization. Most errors were punctuation and capitalization rather than actual words, with many involving ambiguous cases. Excluding these ambiguous punctuation and capitalization errors, the modified rates dropped to 0.56% CER and 1.22% WER—approximately 1 in 200 characters wrong when only counting substantive word errors.

Further analysis revealed that what began as a test on the readability of old documents may now be uncovering, by accident, the beginnings of machines that can actually reason in abstract, symbolic ways about the world they perceive.

The model that produced those results was available for only a short while as a test. If it’s generally as successful as described, it will surely become openly available. and stimulated even better performance in other facilities that rely on handwriting recognition technology, like FamilySearch Full Text Search.

Each year, organizations federally registered as charities in Canada for tax purposes must file returns with the Canada Revenue Agency. Financial and other information is available on the CRA website. Search for individual society reports at https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/hacc/srch/pub/dsplyBscSrch?request_locale=en.

Alberta Family Histories Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $330,267.00 and liabilities of $14,280.00. The total revenue was $112,858.00. Expenditures totalled $66,052.00. Membership fee information not available.

Alberta Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets were $1,044,448.00 ($988,796, $1,041,398), and liabilities were $205,018.00 ($176,915, $212,232). Total revenue was $229,365.00 ($246,265.00, $614,488.00). Expenditures totalled $201,816.00 ($263,550.00, $199,863.00). The individual annual membership fee remains $50 for a digital journal subscription.

British Columbia Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $226,720.00, ($226,340, $216,503) and liabilities of $12,185.00 ($28,665, $20,517). The total revenue was $31,454.00 ($27,239.00, $27,392.00). Expenditures totalled $28,164.00 ($25,550.00, $28,201.00). The individual annual new membership fee remains $65.

British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $115,722.00 ($117,792, $119,762) and liabilities of $16,398.00 ($15,526, $16,770). The total revenue was $31,489.00 ($34,687.00, $28,096.00). Expenditures totalled $34,431.00 ($35,413.00, $31,405). The annual membership fee remains $50.

Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets and liabilities were not reported. The total revenue was $29,799.00. Expenditures totalled $29,042.00. The membership fee is $45.

Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $309,092.00 and liabilities of $1,243.00. The total revenue was $115,687.00. Expenditures totalled $84,792.00. The membership fee is $59.

Manitoba Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-03-31, total assets were $75,899.00 ($72,957, $87,173) and total liabilities of $7,993.00 ($3,701, $13,100). Total revenues were $89,163.00 ($76,848.00, $69,300.00) and expenditures were $90,522.00 ($81,675.00, $58,815.00). The individual annual membership fee remains $60.

New Brunswick Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets and liabilities were not reported. The total revenue was $2,900.00. Expenditures totalled $8,774.00. Membership fee begins at $40.

Ontario Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $1,957,257.00 ($2,105,846, $2,034,220) and liabilities of $209,829.00 ($302,835, $280,466). The total revenue was $727,335.00 ($584,120, $1,004,580). Expenditures totalled $781,892.00 ($534,363.00, $556,489.00). The individual annual membership fee remains $63.

Quebec Family History Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-07-31, total assets of $15,239.00 and liabilities of $0.00. The total revenue was $18,333.00. Expenditures totalled $30,244.00. The membership fee remains $75.

Saskatchewan Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending 2024-12-31, total assets of $184,571.00 and liabilities of $24,749.00. The total revenue was $234,510.00. Expenditures totalled $193,435.00. The basic membership fee is $70..

Société de genéalogie de Québec

For the reporting period ending 2024-04-30, total assets of $295,467.00 ($294,804) and liabilities of $295,467.00 ($294,804 (sic)). The total revenue was $126,081.00 ($131,549). Expenditures totalled $125,418.00 ($123,705). The individual annual fee remains $50.

Victoria Genealogical Society

For the reporting period ending May 31, 2024, Total assets and liabilities were not reported. Total revenues were $27,802.00 ($21,680.00, $25,410.00), and expenditures were $28,342.00 ($26,507.00, $28,230.00). The individual annual membership fee is increased to $65.

Key observations from the additions:

• Alberta Family Histories Society had an impressive surplus of $46,806 (70.8% surplus ratio)
• Saskatchewan Genealogical Society had a healthy surplus of $41,075, heavily supported by provincial government funding ($170,000)
• Quebec Family History Society had a significant deficit of $11,911 (65% deficit ratio), reducing their already modest net assets to $15,239

The latest annual report highlights how TNA is not just a consumer of technology; it combines traditional custodianship with the development of new technologies to preserve, interpret, and share its vast collections. Organized around three themes—Collections & Archives, Digital & Data, and Conservation & Heritage Science—it showcases partnerships, community collaborations, and innovations in optical character recognition, handwritten text recognition, and AI-driven approaches, to make records more accessible and relevant.

Of particular interest for family history:

• The Material Culture of Wills, 1540–1790 project, using handwriting recognition to reveal everyday lives and possessions in early modern England,.
• Digital initiatives, such as Project Odyssey and AI-driven text recognition tools, enhance access to historical documents and metadata.
• Public engagement programs, such as “Weather in the Archive,” connect archival materials with environmental and historical themes that are relevant to genealogical storytelling.

The Untold Stories on Cenotaphs

On Monday evening, at 7:00 pm via Zoom,  a timely presentation for OGS Leeds and Grenville Branch by Blake Seward,

Irish Accent Challenge

Ancestry updates Find a Grave Index Updates

End of month updates for Germany, Norway,  Sweden,  Global, Italy, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico,

Archives of Ontario RG 1-100 Patent Plans Update

Ken McKinlay has posted a highly detailed description of the new access to these early Ontario land records.

Reclaiming wellness: Key factors in restoring optimal well-being in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

According to this study reported in PLOS One, one-quarter of older adults with suboptimal well-being can improve to the point of regaining optimal well-being. Strategies for regaining optimal well-being include engaging in an active and healthy lifestyle —such as maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, becoming physically active, finding ways to address sleep problems, preventing and managing chronic diseases, maintaining psychological and emotional wellness, and fostering social wellness.

A poem by Thomas Hood

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day.
No sky – no earthly view –
No distance looking blue –
No road – no street – no “t’other side this way” –
No end to any Row –
No indications where the Crescents go –
No top to any steeple –
No recognitions of familiar people –
No courtesies for showing ‘em –
No knowing ‘em!
No traveling at all – no locomotion –
No inkling of the way – no notion –
“No go” by land or ocean –
No mail – no post –
No news from any foreign coast –
No park, no ring – no afternoon gentility –
No company – no nobility –
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

Thanks to the following individuals for their comments and tips: Alison Hare, Ann Burns, Basil Adam, Brenda Turner, Glenn Wright, John Webb, Ken McKinlay, Kyla Ubbink, Leslie Anderson, and Unknown.

Leicestershire Electoral Registers 1836-1970

This collection of 10,420,906 records documents voters across Leicestershire for over a century. Find names, addresses, years, and districts for residents of Leicester city and the surrounding towns and villages, great for extending the coverage and filling in between censuses.

Leicestershire Monumental Inscriptions

From the 1400s to the 2000s, 414 records for burials in churchyards, cemeteries, and mentions on war memorials. Transcripts and images may reveal other family members buried in the same plot.

Lincolnshire Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes 1837-1902

These 10,529 records document residents and applicants for poor relief. The minutes note out-relief payments, apprenticeships, settlement cases, and doctors who treated sick paupers. The Lincolnshire Family History Society compiled this collection.

Twelve Newspaper Titles

Five new titles join the archive, including Allen’s Indian Mail (London, 1843-1891) and Y Celt (Wales, 1881-1891).

I purchased a 150-year-old book at last weekend’s Ottawa Antiquarian Book Show. It had never been read. How do I know? Most of the pages were “unopened”, meaning pages were still connected at the edge.

I’ve had previous experience botching the job of cutting the edge, so I sought advice from the ever-helpful Kyla Ubbink, of Ubbink Book & Paper Conservation. She said I needed a very sharp knife, then offered to do it for me. I was delighted to take advantage of her professional expertise. The knife is at the lower left of the image.

The 1871 Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland is now available through TheGenealogist.

This Burke’s is not about the titled peerage. It focuses on the “Landed Gentry,” the influential families who held land and local power but had no hereditary titles, notably the squires, magistrates, or clergy who effectively ran the parish.

The entries, in alphabetical order, include detailed pedigrees that may trace a family back several centuries. There’s extensive information on marriages, which helps connect to other families, university attendance, military service, and lists of children. They also name the family estates, which is a crucial clue for land records.

Finally, be a bit skeptical. L. G. Pine, who edited Burke’s in the mid-20th century, derided the fanciful family trees he published. He is quoted as saying:

“If everybody who claims to have come over with the Conqueror were right, William must have landed with 200,000 men-at-arms instead of about 12,000.”

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Tuesday, 28 October 2025, to contain 294,344,983 unique records, up from 294,106,424 at the previous update.

Years with more than 10,000 additions are: for births, 1993 and 1995-6; for marriages, 1995-6; for deaths, 1991, 1996-7.

A new, more modern FreeBMD website, with new features and more accessible, is now available. Try it at https://www.freebmd2.org.uk/

The original FreeBMD remains online,

Ancestry has just added an extensive set of Church of England parish records for Doncaster and about 50 nearby parishes  (e.g. Balby, Hexthorpe, Cantley), covering more than four centuries of baptisms, marriages, and burials, with over 2 million entries

The newly released collections include:

• Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1558–1812 (737,000 records)

• Marriages, 1754–1950 (652,000 records)

• Births and Baptisms, 1813–1925 (950,000 records)

• Deaths and Burials, 1813–2000 (183,000 records)

Block Review (BR) is the systematic review of a series of archived government records currently held in LAC’s permanent collection. BR was initiated in 2010. A post on the LAC website, dated 11 September 2025, lists 250 projects that examined closed government records to determine whether they could be made public. Each entry includes archival details, sample size, pages reviewed, and final or interim decisions.

Records Successfully Opened (151)

Many projects were completed with records fully released to the public. The Privy Council Office and Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition had particularly high success rates, with entire blocks opened when no exemptions were found.

Other significant collections were opened after reviewers identified and redacted information protected under the Access to Information Act. This included substantial holdings from the Department of Trade and Commerce and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Some blocks containing personal information were released under section 8(3) after review, including records from Finance and Veterans Affairs.

The BR sampling process accelerated decisions. For projects that resulted in release, typical sample rates ranged from 0.9% to 100%, with a median of 10%.

Stopped or Cancelled Reviews (40)

A large portion of reviews were halted when sampling revealed disqualifying content. Common reasons included solicitor-client privilege, affecting records from Finance, Transport, and Treasury Board, and sensitive personal information.

In several cases, initial samples showed no problems, but a deeper review uncovered too many potential exemptions to proceed efficiently.

Administrative & In-Progress 

As of 11 September 2025, 27 projects remain incomplete. There were 33 mystery projects, identified only as Unknown/No comment. One review was deemed not possible. Seven reviews were cancelled after discovering the Mikan database had incorrect information, and the records were already public.

It’s unclear how many of the 250 projects date back many years, potentially to 2010. How many are processed quickly and how many may have been languishing, perhaps for years? The BR system isn’t perfect; there is no perfect system. Would you rather err on the side of releasing information that should have been withheld because a sampling process was used, or withhold or delay the release of information that should be available?

In this episode, Mark Thompson and Steve Little cover: Nano Banana Comes to Photoshop, ChatGPT Projects Now Free, Citation Best Practices for Nano Banana, Sora 2 Goes Social, Claude Writes MS Office Documents.

Another insightful episode, recorded on 8 October. Find it here.

I’ve said it before; it bears repeating. Don’t delude yourself that just because a photo portrait is from the 19th century, it’s a true representation of the sitter. Photos were routinely touched up to make people appear as they would want to be seen. No wrinkles. If you insist that images manipulated by AI have to be cited as such, shouldn’t you also do the same thing for those old studio portraits?