Saturday, August 21, 2010

Vancouver's Herstory Cafe Picnic - Sunday August 22, 2010

It's time for the Herstory Cafe's Annual Picnic!

Sunday, August 22, 2010 starting at 11 am at Trout Lake.
(Cancelled if raining.)

Bring your favourite women's history book or photograph to share or discuss.
I''ll be bringing a 'new to me' book my sister in law just 'kindly found for me - Famous Sisters of Great Men by Marianne Kirlew.

Meet at Trout Lake in Vancouver at the South East corner (by the washrooms).
Look for the "Camp Vivian" banner.

Bring your own lunch, chair, blanket, or other picnic necessities and comforts.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Locomotion - Festival of Postcards 9th Edition

This edition of Evelyn Yvonne Theriault's A Festival of Postcards is dedicated to LOCOMOTION.

Here's a postcard that qualifies in a good number of ways, combining references to both water and rail transportation, and to transportation necessary for making a living and - making war. This is the kind of postcard that a collector like me loves to find - one with a great image and an interesting personal message with historical dimensions.

Fishermen in boat, New Westminster, on line of C.P.R. [Canadian Pacific Railway]. Views like this seem to have been very popular in the early twentieth century, combining a glimpse into the modern fishing and canning industry and the 'exotic' - First Nation cannery workers and fishers in their dugouts, working in and around the Fraser River canneries.
Publisher: A.L. Merrill, Toronto. #201336. Divided back; coloured card. Postmarked twice in 1917 at Halifax and Campbelltown in Nova Scotia and at North Vancouver, in British Columbia.


Addressed to: Mrs. J. J. Woods cor 2nd & St Patrick North Vancouver BC.
Back of postcard: 230 P.M. Saturday April 7th
We are about 2 hours out from Halifax. Have been on the train for 180 hrs. just a little over a week. It has been raining all day. Do not yet know when we will leave Halifax. Finished the box at noon. Jack.

John Jex Jr. (Jack) of North Vancouver, British Columbia, born in 1895, was then a soldier on his way to Europe. I can imagine that "the box" he refers to was filled with home cooked and home baked food that his mother had packed with a heavy heart for her son's long journey east.

J.J. Woods had signed up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916. At the time he was a bank clerk, but after returning from the war, he became a horticulturist on the Agassiz Experimental Farm in British Columbia's Fraser Valley. While working in Agassiz, he researched and wrote a history of the area (History and Development of the Agassiz-Harrison Valley, printed by the Agassiz-Harrison Advance, 1941.)

Soon after in 1941, John Woods was appointed Superintendent of the Experimental Farm at Saanich on Vancouver Island. He retired in the 1960s and died in 1981.

Monday, August 09, 2010

John D Reid - Anglo-Celtic Connections genealogy blogger - speaking in Burnaby Sept 18, 2010

John D. Reid of the Anglo-Celtic Connections blog is coming to British Columbia. He'll be speaking Saturday, September 18, 2010 all day in Burnaby.

His topics will include:
Early 20th Century British Immigrants to Canada, Find Your Family History in Newspapers Online, and, DNA Testing for Genealogy: not Just for Men.

John D. Reid is the author of Researching Canada`s Home Children, editor of The Ottawa Sharpshooters, author of magazine articles in Anglo-Celtic Roots, Families, Your Family Tree (UK), Family Tree (UK), Family Chronicle, Internet Genealogy and The Ottawa Genealogist, and he is a frequent speaker on topics in family history. He was President of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa from 2004 to 2006, is a member of the Society of Genealogists and, since 2007, a member of the Library and Archives Canada Services Advisory Board. He blogs regularly at Anglo-Celtic Connections on British (and Canadian) genealogy.

Sponsored by the British Columbia Genealogical Society: www.bcgs.ca

This all day seminar will be at the Scandinavian Community Centre,
6540 Thomas St., Burnaby, BC.

The BCGS Boutique will be there too with books, charts, maps and genealogy novelties for sale.

Doors open at 8:30 am. Seminar 9:00 am to 3:30 pm.

Early Bird Prices until September 8, 2010.
Tickets $40.00 for BCGS & Affiliate Society Members; $50.00 for non-members.
Lunch & refreshments included.

After September 9th, the prices increase:
$50.00 for BCGS & Affiliate Society Members; $60.00 for non-members.

To register, please contact Susan Snalam at 604-273-8209, email domers4 @ shaw.ca OR Eunice Robinson at 604-596-2811, email eunice @ dccnet.com. (T0 e-mail, please delete the spaces around the @ symbol.) Then send your cheque, made out to the BCGS, to PO Box 88054, Lansdowne Mall, Richmond, BC V6X 3T6 or you can pay at BCGS meetings. We will also accept payment by Visa by phone, mail or in person.

Call or check the BCGS website for more information: www.bcgs.ca