Vintage Photos: People and Their Pets

Well, it's been a busy fall, perhaps too busy, but one of the genealogical highlights of this season is always the Finding Your Roots all day seminar co-sponsored by the Abbotsford, Surrey and Vancouver Stakes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the three local Churches with Family History Centers. This year again the Seminar was well attended and very well organized. Everyone I talked to seemed energized by the many sessions given on a wide variety of topics and the opportunities to meet and talk with others - both beginners and experienced researchers. Save the date for next year - Saturday 15th October 2011!

One of my talks this year was about researching family photographs and, since one of my aims is to get people to 'make their own history' with family images, I was most interested to learn that one of the attendees already had a photographic project of her own underway.

Anna Camporese is collecting vintage black and white photos of people with their pets for an future exhibition - a fund raiser for animal welfare. This sounds to me like a great idea. I'm really looking forward to seeing her exhibit. The audience was enthusiastic too. To submit your photographs, contact her at Anna.Camporese @ shaw.ca (delete the spaces in the e-mail address first) or at 604 760 5235.

I do have a number of photographs of family with pets - mostly they had cats, I think, on my father's side, but more dogs on my mother's. Wish I'd asked my mum why we never had a dog. Probably there were some practical reasons, but maybe our cat Twink just wouldn't have stood for that! (I'm a cat person myself, in case you hadn't guessed.)

Now here is one of my family pet photos. I've posted this one before but it is my favourite - Dad with Blackie the cat, his younger brother, David, their mum and dad, Sarah (Saggers) and Joe Rogers, and (the mysterious) Viola on a visit to Vancouver in 1925. You'll see this one on Dead Fred too with some additional photographs taken during the visit.

Who To Blame? Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

It's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun over at his blog, Genea-Musings.

Here is this week's SNGF task and the questions we're to answer -

1) Read Brenda Joyce Jerome's post Who or What Do You Blame? on the Western Kentucky Genealogy blog. She asks these questions:

* Can you identify person or event that started you on this search for family information?

* Did you pick up researching where a relative had left off?

* Did your interest stem from your child's school project on genealogy?

So....

I don't think there was any one event or person that started me on my family history research and no, when I started, I knew very few doing genealogy research, certainly no one in my immediate family, although a cousin quickly 'found' me. And my children did no 'family trees' at school, although my grandson did.

Anyway, I wouldn't be blaming anyone, that's for sure. It seems to me that my genealogical interests were a natural outgrowth of my interest in Canadian history, particularly women's and British Columbian and prairie history. After researching historical individuals and families in the census and directories, etc., it was comparatively easy to start looking for my own family.

I can say, however, that my mother was always interested in Canadian and women's history, especially in western Canada, and also, that being a child in school during several centennial celebrations gave my interest in history a early and healthy boost - 1958 British Columbia centennial; 1966 centennial of BC mainland and Vancouver Island colonies merging; 1967 Canada's centennial; 1971 centennial of British Columbia's joining Canada; later there was the 1986 Vancouver BC centennial. (And, my father took me to Mountain View Cemetery regularly too where most of his Vancouver relatives were buried.)

My mother never did any family research, although I know she tried to check out some of her own memories of visits to 1930s Vancouver, but when I started 'doing genealogy' in the late 1980s, she quickly came up with lots of questions she hoped I'd answer (like what ever did happen to Samuel WOOD's first family and to that cousin, James SCOTT, who went to the US...) as well as some topics she might have wished me to forget (like that SCOTT d-i-v-o-r-c-e).

As for the centennial celebrations, I still remember going to City Hall in 1958 to talk to the legendary Vancouver City Archivist, Major James Skitt Matthews, about Vancouver, British Columbia's early history while doing research for a class project at Simon Fraser Elementary.

My parents knew him and Dad was the first to say 'you need to ask the Major, Diane' when I started reading and talking about the 1880s in Vancouver. (My Dad was born in South Vancouver so I thought he should have known all about the city's history. )

The Major was very tall - of course, I was little - and he was both very enthusiastic about Vancouver and very patient with my questions, as I recall, pulling open filing cabinets to show me things - a great introduction to archives research. And he gave me a pamphlet to use - my first citation!

So, thanks Mum, thanks Dad - and special thanks to the Major! Both my historical and genealogical interests have shaped and enriched my life.

City of Vancouver Archives, history: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/archives/about/history.htm

Great Art at Great Prices - The Retro Show, Vancouver, Oct 23-24 2010

The Retro Show - Art @ retro prices!
23-24 October 2010 at W2 Storyeum, Vancouver BC.


Art by a friend of mine, Mary Blaze, will be for sale at
THE RETRO SHOW, October 23-23, 2010 in downtown Vancouver at W2 Storyeum, 151 West Cordova Street in Gastown.
The show is open from noon to 5 pm, both Saturday and Sunday.

Read a bit about artist Mary Blaze and see a few of her pieces at the Coast Art Trust website.

Other artists participating will be Florence Debeugny, Valerie Arntzen, Pat MacBain, Sharon Burns and Bernadine Fox.