9 am: Annual General Meeting

10 am: Great Moments

From Penrhyndedraeth to Peterborough: Digging Deeper into My Welsh Ancestry, by Laurie Dougherty
A Cautionary Tale: How I Built a Brickwall with DNA, by Barbara Tose
A Genealogical Revelation: From an Only Child to a Family of Nine, by Andy Desjardins

Details are at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events

PLUS – A BOOK GRAB

Before the meeting and over the break at 9:30. Tables will be set up with extra books that have been donated by Patricia McGregor, and by the family of former member John Hay, that need to find a home. You never know when you will find a treasure. It is free; a token donation would be appreciated.

Thanks to the 100+ people who attended my presentation for the Bruce County Genealogical Society on Monday evening.

One of the questions asked was whether the drought in the Prairies in the 1930s, known as the Dirty Thirties or Dust Bowl, extended into Ontario. I didn’t know, although I  said I suspected it did.

Here’s a comparison between Regina’s and Toronto’s annual precipitation from 1929 to 1939, the number in the top line is the climatological average annual precipitation in millimetres.

Year	Regina	397.64		Toronto	789.9
	Annual	Diff	% Diff	Annual	Diff	%Diff
1929	283.1	-114.54	-28.8	939.8	149.9	19.0
1930	263.9	-133.74	-33.6	654.6	-135.3	-17.1
1931	262.1	-135.54	-34.1	694.1	-95.8	-12.1
1932	430.2	32.56	8.2	940.4	150.5	19.1
1933	480.8	83.16	20.9	605.4	-184.5	-23.4
1934	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	627.1	-162.8	-20.6
1935	486.1	88.46	22.2	680.9	-109	-13.8
1936	291.2	-106.44	-26.8	711.1	-78.8	-10.0
1937	218.6	-179.04	-45.0	835	45.1	5.7
1938	382.8	-14.84	-3.7	651.4	-138.5	-17.5
1939	334.3	-63.34	-15.9	703.7	-86.2	-10.9
Median	316.2	-81.44	-20.5	694.1	-95.8	-12.1

Both show a median annual precipitation deficit for the period. Regina had 6 years that were 20% below the long-term mean of 397 mm, whereas Toronto had two such years, below 790 mm. For only one of the years, 1934, did both cities have 20% less precipitation than the climatological average.

That is probably further into the weeds than most family historians care to venture.

In case you want to venture a bit further, for agriculture, precipitation is only part of drought. Hot, dry conditions mean greater evaporation, so less moisture for crops. That’s quantified by the Palmer Drought Severity Index. Decadal maps are available at https://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/fc-data-catalogue/read/4 . The earliest is for 1951-1960

Even over a 10-year average, conditions across the southern Prairie provinces ranged from severe drought to very wet. For annual and shorter periods, the variation would be greater. For instance, for 1929, there was a 29% precipitation deficit at Regina, a 40% deficit at Medicine Hat, but at Lethbridge precipitation was 17% above average. 

Check out current conditions, as of the end of May, at https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agricultural-production/weather/canadian-drought-monitor/current-drought-conditions#a5

Although chances are your Prairie ancestor had a hard time during the Dust Bowl, maybe they were among the few that Mother Nature blessed with just enough rain or snow to maintain a harvest.

 

 

Is it time to update your newspaper obit searches? On Monday, Ancestry added to the data on these Newspapers.com obituary indexes

Place	Records
Canada	47,187,373
Australia and New Zealand	5,842,149
UK and Ireland	32,051,053

 

This is to mark the founding of the United Church of Canada, inaugurated on 10 June  1925 in Toronto, Ontario. The Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and 70 percent of The Presbyterian Church in Canada entered into a union. Also joining was the small General Council of Union Churches, centred largely in Western Canada.

Find more about the United Church’s history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Church_of_Canada

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration may be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit conferencekeeper.

The British National Meteorological Office Library and Archives (NMLA) holds many ship weather reports. Included are a few Atlantic crossings to Quebec between 1869 and 1871, the early steamship era. They give an idea of how challenging the voyage might have been for landlubbers.

There are weather observations from vessels of the Allen Line, nine vessels across 36 separate voyages. The ships, with arrival dates at Quebec, are:

AUSTRIAN – Four voyages documented: June 6, July 18, August, and October 9, 1870

EUROPEAN – Three crossings available: July 25 and September 10, 1870; April 27 and June 20, 1871

HIBERNIAN – Four 1869 arrivals: May 24, July 5, August 16, and September 29

MORAVIAN – Seven voyages spanning two years: Five arrivals in 1869 (May 17, June 28, August 8, September 19) and three in 1870 (August 21, October 3 [two separate entries], November 13)

NESTORIAN – Five 1869 crossings: April 26, June 7, July 19, August 28, and October 10

OTTAWA – Four 1870 voyages: June 9, July 19, August, and October 12

PERUVIAN – Eight documented arrivals: Five in 1869 (May 31, July 10, August 23, October 4, November 16) and three in 1870 (August, September 26, November 9)

Find more details by searching ships meteorological log Quebec at https://library.metoffice.gov.uk/Portal/Default/en-GB/Search/SimpleSearch. The NMLA will send an image of the original records by email on request.

Manage your expectations — as shown by the extract below, the handwritten material can be faint and challenging to interpret. You should be able to discern from the winds, reported in the third column from the right on the Beaufort Scale, whether a voyage encountered rough weather.

Aside from the Peruvian, these ships were all of less than 2,500 tons, so passengers would have a hard time in heavy weather; that was my experience in a ship ten times the size.

I’d been hoping to be able to profile data from Global marine surface meteorological variables from 1851 to 2010 from comprehensive in-situ observations. However, for the past few days, there’s been a warning notice “Download form temporarily closed due to temporary issues reaching the data provider’s servers.” Could that data provider be affected by US government actions?

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Wildfire Smoke Forecasts and here.

UK Railway Work, Life & Death Project
On 5 June 69,000 records of railway staff accidents were added into the Railway Work, Life & Death project database – freely available as a spreadsheet at https://www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk/?sdm_process_download=1&download_id=429

Documentary Heritage Communities Program Awards 2025-26
In the recent round $1.425 million total was awarded to 37 projects
Three projects in the Atlantic provinces
Nine projects in Quebec
Six projects in Ontario
Five projects in the Prairie provinces
Twelve projects in British Columbia
Two projects in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon

In Ontario, the Grenville County Historical Society was awarded $48,933 for the Grenville County Newspaper Digitization Project.

Persephone is blogging this month.
https://postitnotesfromhades.blogspot.com/

Thanks to the following for comments and tips: Anonymous, Gail B, Glenn Wright, Nick Mcdonald, Teresa, and Unknown.

Under the headline Broken Records, Charlotte Grey has an opinion piece in Saturday’s Globe and Mail in which she laments that “The study of Canada’s recent past has become almost impossible. … Will a new national archives change things for the better?”

The article portrays LAC as an underfunded and understaffed institution whose core mission of providing access to the nation’s documentary heritage is being severely hampered by bureaucratic delays, restrictive legislation, and slow progress on digitization.

That was underlined by the notice on the LAC website in response to a collection search query I first experienced on Friday:

403 – Forbidden: Access is denied.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

Elsewhere, there’s a notice

“You may experience technical difficulties accessing online records. We are working to resolve the problem.”

Scotland, People of the Black Isle, Ross and Cromarty
Transcripts for 1338-1850 provide name, parish and notes for a total 7,239 records. Parishes included are Avoch, Cromarty, Killearnan, Knockbain, Rosemarkie, and Urquhart & Wester Logie.

Scotland, Poor Law & Poor Lists
Find 739 pages added to the collection, now totalling 138,726 entries. Years covered are 1821-1933. Each record includes a transcript and original printed record, where available. The records usually include a combination of: name, age, occupation, marital status, year, date of minute of parochial board authorising brief, place, denomination, residence, county, wholly or partially destitute, wholly or partially disabled, description of disablement, earnings, name and age of wife and children, name, age and weekly earnings of husband, children, amount and description of relief, nature of settlement, and register notes.

Newspapers
Among recent additions, the standout is the Weekly Times & Echo (London) from 1847 to 1912.

OGS President Christine Woodcock sent a message about new resources from the Ontario Genealogical Society of interest to those with Ontario roots.
The digitization team has been busy over the past few months getting records ready for upload to the Society website to be shared with our members. The first batch of records is now available. The plan is to release new records every month for the rest of 2025.

Here’s what’s available in this first tranche.

The Heritage Society Applications
These include applications for OGS heritage certificates: First World War Society, War of 1812 Society, 1837 Rebellion Society, Upper Canada Society, Honouring Our Heroes Society, Fathers of Confederation Society and the Centenary Society. For OGS members only. Mostly these are original documents, presented in alphabetical order by surname, with privacy redactions.

Parliamentary Divorces 1867-1930

For members only, this is a reproduction of a 2001 publication by
J. Brian Gilchrist and Nancy J. Duffy. Find the names of the parties, the locations mentioned and the years of marriage and divorce.

Overseas Deaths of Ontario Servicemen and Servicewomen. 

Open to all, this index is to the over 15,000 men and women who lived in Ontario just before they went overseas, and who died in the service of their country during and just after World War II. Seeing page after page is eye-opening, including 47 men named REID. Be sure to check the service file online from Ancestry or Library and Archives Canada (although it was not responding when I tried on Friday).

 

The Allen Collection of Ship Photos
I stumbled across this British collection of about six thousand photos of ships over a period of 60 years. It’s in the Ships and Docks section of the unlikely-named Benjidog Historical Research Resources website.

The photo collection was by Mr. W. Allen and his son Frank, “now saved for posterity by a group of dedicated volunteers, who wanted to make it available to everyone with an interest in Merchant Navy history, is told on the Background to Collection page.”

If your family history includes a voyage in the period, there’s a good chance you’ll find a photo, and perhaps more. I searched for the Empress of Canada. Three ships carried that name for CP Ships. Along with the photo was basic information about the ship and its history.

Some of that information may be from Gery and Sue Swiggum’s late lamented “The Ships List”, now resurrected in the Ships and Docs section, as well as being available through the Internet Archive.

Hidden in the Newsprint: UK Edition
You likely didn’t get up for 5 am on Wednesday for this Legacy Family Tree Webinars Down Under series presentation. Mia Bennett is a favourite speaker, so you may want to take the time to review the presentation. It’s free to view until 10 June.

CBC reports Ottawa’s new central library Ᾱdisōke could face delays

The Old Farmer’s Almanac for April
This May, the mean temperature in Ottawa was 13.3C; the OFA prediction was 12C
FAIL

Choose from these selected free online events. All times are Eastern Time, unless otherwise noted. Registration is assumed to be required in advance—check the links so you’re not disappointed. For many more events, mainly in the U.S., visit Conference Keeper.