14 June 2025
From Penrhyndedraeth to Peterborough: Digging Deeper into My Welsh Ancestry
Laurie Dougherty
Laurie Dougherty explorded her search for her Welsh ancestors starting with her maternal grandparents Blodwen Evans and Robert Jones. Blodwen left her home at the age of 19 to work in Liverpool before marrying Robert Jones, a master baker from Bala. Laurie shared some of the challenges she encountered while conducting genealogical research in Wales as she follows her grandparent’s journey from Penrhyndedraeth in North Wales to Peterborough, Ontario.
A Genealogical Revelation: From an Only Child to a Family of Nine
Andy Desjardins
A Great Moment in genealogy can be funny, heartfelt, enlightening, or devastating. What really matters is how you deal with it. Here's a very personal story that has all of those elements and then some and how one senior dealt with a life altering discovery. It should also be a cautionary tale for new genealogists embarking on their research. Things may not be as they seem and be prepared for the unexpected. This story is about living your life as an only child with no siblings to waking up to being a family of nine! This is all thanks for the power of DNA analysis which can release skeletons from within closets that you never knew existed. Good, bad, or indifferent, it's all a matter of perspective.
A Cautionary Tale: How I Built a Brickwall with DNA
Barbara Tose
After 20 years of researching her family history and a perfect paper trail, Barbara tested family members’ DNA hoping to find more Tose relatives and perhaps solve a few minor questions. What was revealed was one very big surprise and a brick wall she never anticipated. The follow-up to this presentation will be given in October 2025.
10 May 2025
(From the Vaults) Copyright for the Family Historian
Marnie McCall
Marnie reprised the talk she gave in December 2016. It covered the basics of copyright, the meaning of public domain, copyright in your own work, using copyright material of others in your research or presentations, and copyright in family photos and letters.
Rebuilding the Body After the First World War
Kristen den Hertog
At the end of the First World War, wounded soldiers were returning to Canada in huge numbers, and the country was scrambling for space to treat them all. By 1919, near the corner of Christie and Dupont streets in Toronto’s west end, a military hospital opened in a renovated cash register factory. It was meant to be a temporary space, but in fact was still there when the next war began, and another generation of soldiers crowded into its wards.
In this presentation, author Kristen den Hartog gave us a glimpse of the fascinating work that went on at the Christie Street Hospital, and some of the people who were its patients and staff: a Liverpudlian home child who likely enlisted with the hopes of seeing his family again; a Scottish tuberculosis patient who married his nurse; a sculptor from Nottingham who became known as a "facial architect," making masks for men with facial wounds. Many of these people were new Canadians when war broke out, and they suddenly found themselves crossing the ocean again. With the help of old letters, diaries, newspapers, and military service records, Kristen explored the aftermath of war for some of Christie Street's men and women, and how they dealt with the ways war changed them.
12 April 2025
(30th Anniversary Spotlight) Introduction to No. 1 Canadian Casualty Clearing Station Project Nigel Lloyd and Sheila Dohoo Faure
Just over 10 years ago, BIFHSGO launched a new research project: transcribing the 879 World War I soldiers’ death records appearing in a diary maintained by chaplains at No. 1 Canadian Casualty Clearing Station. The diary’s information on these deaths was transcribed and, as a tribute to the centenary of WW I, BIFHSGO volunteers began writing biographies of the 879 soldiers. Nigel Lloyd and Sheila Dohoo Faure presented the background and approach to this project and some interesting soldier stories.
(30th Anniversary Spotlight) Research and Projects
Sue Lambeth
Sue presented the 30th Anniversary Spotlight on BIFHSGO's research and projects. She described initiatives undertaken over the past 30 years that highlight our collective achievements and the important work of our many volunteers. She reflected on how past and current initiatives have been helping us to develop new innovative projects and connections with others.
8 March 2025
Exploring the Official Government Newspapers: the Gazettes of the UK
Ken McKinlay
The official newspaper of the government, the Gazette, might not seem to be something we would use in our genealogy and family history research. However, you will often find military, civil honour, citizenship etc. announcements in the Gazette. In this presentation we explored the various government gazettes in England, Scotland, and Ireland to learn how to search them online and discover what they hold for our research.
Ripped from the Headlines: Death on the Forest
Marianne Rasmus
“Manslaughter at the Races”—This newspaper headline from July 1857 about a death at the Nottingham races proved to be the catalyst for breaking down a brick wall for Marianne Rasmus. Newspapers can hold a wealth of information and can be an incredible resource when putting flesh on the bones of our family stories. Marianne shared the research journey that led to the discovery of the news story; recounted how it, along with several other articles, shed light on a fascinating family and an event that had been lost through time; and explored life, and death, in 19th century industrial Nottingham.
8 February 2025
Excel and Family History: How they can work together
Paul Cripwell
Spreadsheet technology has come a long way since the advent of VisiCalc on the earliest PCs. Its application to genealogy and family history is appropriate for many areas of tracking and analysis. The average user is generally familiar with the basic capabilities but may not know about some of the more powerful functionality of this software. Paul took us through a couple of examples of his use of Excel.
E.F. Kelly and The Champagne of Ginger Ales
Dawn Kelly
Dawn Kelly’s Irish immigrant great-grandfather, Edward Francis Kelly, was a serial entrepreneur. After relocating from North Onslow, Quebec, he started out as a grocery store owner in Arnprior, then moved to Renfrew where he established a series of businesses before launching a ginger ale business in Montreal. Dawn set out on a mission many years ago to determine if the story her mother heard when she married into the family was true. Did E.F. lose a battle with Canada Dry over the slogan "The Champagne of Ginger Ales"? Dawn presented her research, including a mass of newspaper articles, documents on bankruptcy filings, an earthenware jug with Kelly's Wine and Spirits on it, and her deep appreciation for an ancestor determined to be a successful businessman.
11 January 2025
How Valuable are Valuation Rolls?
Robert Urquhart
1855 was the year that a property ownership register was established, in the form of valuation rolls listing the owners and occupiers of most buildings in Scotland. From 1855 until 1987, assessors compiled an annual valuation roll for domestic and commercial property in each county and burgh. This talk explained that these rolls can provide details of ancestors’ properties (their houses, business premises, workplaces and wedding venues) to bridge information for access to other records (such as property registers, estate papers and employment records) and explain why some people apparently vanish from census returns and civil registers. The precursors of the post-1855 valuation rolls, such as land tax rolls and assessment rolls compiled by parish heritors for poor relief purposes, were also covered.