As we celebrate Veteran’s Day in the United States, our American brothers and sisters to the north are celebrating Remembrance Day. A bit more like our Memorial Day, Remembrance Day is observed in commemoration of Canada’s dead from armed conflict. In a poignant reminder to not only remember those who have served their country, but also to remember those who have served in one’s own family, a great article appeared today in the CBC News Canada:
How to uncover your family’s military roots
Digitized records help Canadians leaf out family tree military history
By Ian Johnson, CBC News
Researching a family’s military history used to be a real challenge, but as more and more paper archives go digital and are transferred to the internet, it’s becoming possible for anyone to leaf out a family tree in surprising detail by using a few tricks and knowing where to look.
“The biggest thing that’s changed is the ability to find digitized documents through simple things like Google and search tools specific to military family histories,” says Alex Herd, lead researcher for the Historica-Dominion Institute Memory Project in Toronto that aims to increase the public’s knowledge of Canadian history.
“There almost seems to be some prestige involved with finding an ancestor who served in the military and particularly in any wars, and a lot of information that was difficult to get before has become available,” adds Jeannine Powell of Duncan, B.C. Her day job is with a secretarial company, but an “18-year obsession” with genealogy has made her an expert (her nickname is GenQueen, a play on her name), and she’s involved with groups ranging from Genealogy Helplist Canada, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ Family History Centre, to an array of historical websites.
“Two of the highest things people use the internet [to search] for are pornography and family ancestry. One will tear a family apart, the other will build it up,” she says with a laugh.
What’s out there
There’s a growing collection of personal military minutiae available through paid websites that cater to people researching their family trees.