Anglo-Celtic Connections

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Times are not so Great

Google Ngram shows a dramatic decline in the frequency of use of the word “great,” overtaken by “small” in 1970 and “little” in 1980. Little surpassed small in 2008.

Quebec, Canada, Notarial Records, 1637-1935
 Ancestry updated the collection on 29 August to contain 16,529,462 records.

Droughts don’t just dry up water — they drain livelihoods and weaken local economies

Deadline for OGS Presentation Proposals
To my friends with expert genealogical knowledge, a reminder that the Call for Speakers deadline for 2026 presentations for OGS provincial talks online is Monday, September 15. Details at https://ogs.on.ca/webinar-submissions/

America is a Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun,

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

Brian Bilston

Findmypast has added 5,827 new records to the British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials collection, bringing the total to over 2.7 million. These records are a consolidation of over 200 series from The National Archives (TNA) and 29 from the GRO. A related browse collection has also been expanded.

A quarter-million pages have been added to the newspaper collection this week. FMP no longer details these additions, but according to The British Newspaper Archive, the source for FMP, there are five new titles and updates to 11 existing publications.

Titles with over 10,000 pages added this week:

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is undergoing a significant workforce adjustment, with 70 indeterminate positions being eliminated. This follows earlier measures, including the termination of 90 fixed-term contracts on 31 March. The news, announced via internal email, affects all sectors of the organization.

These reductions are part of a broader trend across the federal government, with other departments such as the Public Health Agency, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Justice, and the Canada Revenue Agency also announcing workforce adjustments. This is the first round of cuts for LAC, stemming from the 2023 budget. Further adjustments are expected as part of the Comprehensive Expenditure Review, which was launched in July 2025.

The 70 cuts represent 6.5 percent of LAC’s total workforce of 1,137 in 2025. LAC’s core public administration staffing in 2025 is at its highest point in a decade, according to Treasury Board data.

The organization chart lists 53 people in senior positions, from Directors to Deputy Minister, which accounts for 4.7 percent of the total workforce. Applying a statistical analysis to these numbers, if cuts were applied evenly across all positions, there would be a 97 percent chance that at least one of the 53 senior positions would be eliminated. For the top 13 positions, from Director General and above, there is a 56% chance that one or more will be cut.

The federal public service, particularly professions like librarians and archivists, tends to have an older demographic with many employees nearing retirement age. This has led to speculation that this cohort may absorb a larger portion of the reductions, with concomitant loss of corporate memory.

These reductions will likely impact LAC’s operations and services, such as addressing the ATiP backlog and opening Adisoke.

Ancestry and FamilySearch have just updated their  Find a Grave® Index collections. FamilySearch has a total of 258,483,538 records, while the actual Find A Grave site boasts “Over 250 million memorials.”

For Ancestry, the breakdown in the table below totals 75,696,187 records. There’s no update yet for the (Dis?)United States of America, with 183,680,528 records, at the Find a Grave site.

Title	Records
Canada, Find a Grave® Index, 1600s–Current	11,637,307
UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s–Current	22,951,145
Germany, Find a Grave® Index, 1600s–Current	4,337,400
Australia and New Zealand, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	12,383,977
Brazil, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	206,723
Norway, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	240,879
Global, Find a Grave® Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s–Current	22,261,342
Mexico, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	90,789
Sweden, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	1,159,419
Italy, Find a Grave® Index, 1800s–Current	428,206

 

 

These four newly published “genealogy” additions (or soon-to-be additions) to The Ottawa Public Library’s collection demonstrate the field’s expanding scope beyond traditional record-hunting.

One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity by Amy Fish.
Maria, found wrapped in a blanket at the side of a road near Krosno, Poland, in 1942, thought her family ties were lost forever. The book shows how the late Montreal genealogist Stanley Diamond and an intrepid band of international volunteers compared photographs with genealogical records and smuggled DNA tests to provide her an identity.
Storytelling for Genealogists: Turning Family Lineage Into Family History by Doug Tattershall (currently on order).
In fewer than one hundred pages, it shows how to start and stay on track in transforming the skeletal outline of a genealogy into an engaging family story.”
Ancestors: Identity and DNA in the Levant by Pierre Zalloua
Explores how DNA analysis reveals migration patterns and ancestral connections across the Middle Eastern region. It traces human history in the region from 100,000 years ago to the present day, questioning the correlation between genetic heritage, ethnicity and nationalism.
The Fort McKay Métis Nation: A Community History by Peter Fortna
Exemplifies community-based genealogical work, documenting the history of this Indigenous community in Alberta.

Until 2 September, over 892 million U.S. and Canadian census records on MyHeritage are free to search. The Canadian datasets include censuses from 1861-1931 (ranging from 2.7M to 10.4M records), regional prairie province censuses from 1906-1926, and early Lower Canada censuses from 1825-1842.

Tuesday saw a couple of photo presentations come my way.

First came a YouTube video AI Photo Magic That Made My Mom Cry, the latest in a series Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy & Family History. The accompanying blurb is ‘When I enhanced a damaged 1920s photo of my great-great-grandmother using AI, my mom started crying. “It’s like meeting her for the first time,” she said. “I can see she has the same nose as me.”‘

The explanation was clear, starting with MyHeritage facilities. Although on YouTube it’s actually a podcast with just one title slide — a strange choice for a photo-oriented presentation.

In the afternoon, Legacy Family Tree Webinars featured Rick Crume with an explainer video on “5 Easy-to-Use Tools to Repair, Enhance, and Animate Your Old Photos on MyHeritage.”

Both presentations were careful to emphasize that the products should not be portrayed as the original. AI does not have any more profound insights into reality than are embedded in the image it’s fed. The modifications/ enhancements may or may not bring you closer to the truth, although they will likely appear more pleasing.

 

Ken McKinlay doesn’t post often to his Family Tree Knots blog. When he does, it’s always worth a look. This time, it’s News about Canada’s National Registration File of 1940.

A collection of about 1532 unique films has been transferred from Statistics Canada to the care of LAC, but is fragile 16 mm cellulose acetate film in poor condition. They will need to be kept in cold storage and digitized for public access. Will a third party be involved in the digitization?

LAC’s post Preserving the National Registration File mentions “We will be updating this page with new information as it becomes available, so please check back regularly.” Expect a lengthy wait. While that’s frustrating, we can appreciate that careful handling is needed to ensure the collection’s long-term survival and eventual accessibility for many future generations.

Wouldn’t it be welcome if LAC recognized the significance of this collection for genealogists, still the largest single client category, gave it priority and posted updates on the home page, rather than burying it under the sequence Canada.ca > Library and Archives Canada Collections access and research help > Research guides and tools > Military history > Second World War.

When we do get access, what will the registration form look like? Here’s a blog post with a sample.

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 conferencekeeper.org. 

The most detailed map in the David Rumsey Map Collection is “London Sheet II.100”, created by the Ordnance Survey Office in 1895 as part of the “London, Five feet to the Mile” series. It’s for the area near Hampstead Heath.

I found it by querying the Rumsey AI Search Assistant for “what is the most detailed map in the collection.” You can ask any question. Is there a map with your name?

The National Library of Scotland has a good collection of the “London, Five feet to the Mile” series.

The meetup will go ahead.

Forecasts for noon to 2 pm:

Environment Canada:  – Chance of showers (40%). Risk of thunderstorms.

The Weather Network: Partly Cloudy, 15%

AccuWeather:  Mostly Sunny, 47%.

A line of showers passed through this morning. As of 9:30 am, the weather radar shows no organized system approaching. Pop-up showers are always possible in an unstable aimass.

Be your own judge of the weather. I’ll be going to the Westboro Beach Cafe for noon, with a visitor.

Parking for Westboro Beach is on the south side of the Parkway on Kirchoffer Ave and adjacent streets.

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Electricity Prices
A  recent Hydro-Québec report (April 1, 2024) compares electricity prices in major North American cities, Montréal, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Ottawa were identified as the lowest cost Canadian cities for residential customers; Montréal was by far the lowest. Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, and Charlottetown were among the highest.

Swimming with the Tide

US 19th Century Military Forts and Voluntary Observers Weather Database

Battling deepfakes: How AI threatens democracy and what we can do about it

Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory.

Thanks to the following for comments and tips: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Brenda Turner, Bryan Cook, Christine Jackson, Gail, Kim Barnsdale, Teresa, and Unknown.