It was supposed to be easy! I have known for a while that I would have to make some changes to the site to upgrade the infrastructure, because it was getting harder to maintain. I needed something that mirrored what I could test against.

So I did my research … really, I did. I tested the site on my local hardware against a similar set of hardware and didn’t have any problems. So I figured I was all ready to go. The process is automated on the site where the Canadian Great War Project is hosted, and it said “This process will take approximately 30 minutes. Larger sites may take longer.”

So I figured, well if it takes 4 times as long, then it’s only a couple of hours. So I set my alarm, and got out of bed at 3:00 AM, statistically the time with the least access, and started the upgrade.

… 2 hours later – site was still down.

… 4 hours later – same

… 12 hours later – I’m starting to get concerned

… 24 hours later – On the phone with tech support. Oops, the automated process stalled and left everything in limbo. “Don’t worry, we’ll straighten it out.”

So they reset things, and the site was back to its original state. Then a bit later today, they restarted the upgrade, and it worked smoothly. Except for that teeny little sentence, buried in the documentation “Applications may need to be modified after the upgrade.”

So the site came back on-line, and all kinds of error started to appear. There was a slight configuration difference between the old hardware and the new. Thankfully the error was easy to understand, and not too hard to fix … except that I had to change over 1,000 files and re-upload them to the server. My wife came in to ask me a question while I was desperately trying to get everything uploaded again. She quickly left saying “A leeeetttttlllllle bit stressed, are we?” Even Bodey Dawg took one look at me and scooted towards the other end of the room, sitting with his paws over his head!

But it all seems to be back running now.

Finally.

Some 40 hours after I started that “1/2 hour little task.”

I have a bit more checking to do, but I think I’ve got most everything running correctly. If anyone notices anything strange, please let me know.

This upgrade only affected the web pages that render the data, not the data itself, so nothing got lost … other than 40 hours.

Everyone has my sincerest apologies.

marc

In August, 2008, Marika Pirie and I contacted Veterans Affairs Canada about a soldier that we believed overlooked in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. 

Marika Pirie has, over the years, taken photo's of a number of soldier graves from the Veterans' plot at Prospect Cemetery (Toronto) and from  Hamilton Cemetery in Hamilton, Ontario. Some of these men may have died shortly after the war from non war-related causes. Private Laird stood out from the rest, though. He sailed with the First Contingent,  attached to the number 2 field ambulance, Canadian Army Medical Corps. His attestation papers are stamped "INVALIDED TO CANADA FOR FURTHER MEDICAL TREATMENT." from Ontario Military Hospital, in Orpington, Kent, England. He died in 1918 at the age of 23.

There is a photo of his grave marker (not a CWGC marker) here:

We had no information concerning his cause of death,  but given his age, and the fact that he was seriously enough to be repatriated from England, we thought that he should be considered for inclusion. The kind and co-operative folks at VAC tracked down what they needed, and Private Laird is now commemorated on the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

Thank you, Marika, for pulling all of the information needed to make the case, and to the folks at VAC for making this happen.

Have you ever wondered why most of the entries in Library and Archives Canada (LAC)  Soldiers of the First World War – CEF database have attestation papers, but roughly 8% do not? I know that I have, and I’ve also wondering if LAC would ever get around to adding them. I knew that they existed; I had ordered complete copies of some records from LAC for soldiers with no on-line papers, and the attestation papers were included in the packet. So why weren’t they on-line?

The answer comes from Arnie Kay, a former LAC employee who now does freelance record searches.

According to Arnie, some years ago the Military “vetted the CEF files and removed various non historical docs from these files.  They also removed all the surplus Attestation copies and put then into large binders.  You guessed it.  When they did the Attestation project they used the binders and of course there were many of the CEF files that only had one copy and this is the reason why so many gaps in the Attestation data base.   They have no intention of trying to resolve this oversight.

At least we now know why they are missing, and that LAC will not be attempting to fix this at any point in the future.

Note: if you are want to track down more information on any Canadian who served in the Great War, check with Arnie kay. He has very reasonable rates and a sterling reputation as a researcher.

Thanks to Ted Shaw, a teacher at Lower Canada College, another man gas been added to the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

Robert Anderson Gault had just finished studying at Harrow, in England when the war broke out.  He returned to Harrow to prepare for the army, and joined the Grenadier Guards in January, 1916.  He was promoted Lieutenant on September 10th, 1916, and was killed in action six days later.

Ted found the entry for Gault in the book “Harrow War Memorials” Volume IV, and sent me a note. I checked the Canadian Census and found that he was, indeed, born in Canada, and his parents were living in Canada. All the information was collected and set off to John Brehaut at Veterans Affairs Canada. John verified the information and added the entry.

Another World War 1 Canadian is now properly commemorated.

Thanks Ted. Thanks John.

Canada’s last  veteran of the Great War, John Henry Foster Babcock, died at the age of 109 at his home in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday, February 18.

Babcock enlisted in the CEF in February, 1916, at the age of 16. Because of his age, his service was restricted to Canada and England.

Babcock, who has lived in the United States for the past 60 years and had dual citizenship, will be will be cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Pacific northwest mountains.

The most commonly heard phrase around our house is “Gracey, get your brother’s head out of your mouth!”. Since we were adopted by 3 young Samoyeds one and a half years ago, our personal life has been turned upside down. We’ve always had dawgs in our house, but never three that are all, at the same time, healthy and energetic. These dawgs, have ensured that we never have a dull moment, and that there is a perpetual reason to smile. Bodey, the oldest, is the most affectionate. Dodger, in the middle, always needs attention, and finds the most creative ways to get it. Gracey is the youngest, and the only one that we know the actual birth date of. Her original parents got her from a breeder, and when she was a bit less than 6 months old, surrendered her to a rescue group because “she had too much energy”. Well, they were right, to our gain. There are two schools of thoughts on dawgs in a family. One says “Never let them outnumber you”, and there is a certain wisdom to that. But the other is that with three, they will always have someone to play with. And it woks that way with us. Gracey plays with Bodey until he gets tired, then she jumps on Dodger, then turns to us, and by then, hopefully, Bodey is ready to go again, because Gracey, like the Energizer Bunny, just keeps going and going.  Gracey is also the most elegant and graceful Samoyed I’ve ever seen, more like a Greyhound, or a gazelle, than a sled dog. She can easily clear a 3 foot fence, but chooses not to, she knows she has it good here. She can tell time, and barks within 60 seconds of 7:30 PM if they haven’t been fed. She is not a girlie girl, and loves to get in trouble, especially if she can blame it on Dodger. It’s hard to imagine anyone happier than Gracey and some mud! This is one of the more iconic photo’s of Gracie:

And today she is 2 years old. So, for all the joy that you bring to Penney and I, as well as Bodey and Dodger:

Happy Birthday, Gracey.

It seems that I am always late in getting things done around the Canadian Great War Project. External influences seem to crop up that I can’t avoid … I’ve used up more gas in my snow plow in the past week than in the past year (it seldom snows in Columbus, Ohio).

But I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone that has contributed to this site. The magnitude of what we set out to do in 2005 seemed daunting at the time … identify and profile over 650,000 Canadians that served in the First World War.

Over the past year we have added almost 17,000 names to the database, and over 1,300 War Diary entries. Special thanks to the following for contributing the bulk of the entries:

These include complete nominal rolls based on embarkation lists for some of the overseas battalions, and the database holds what is probably the most complete list of Canadian Nursing Sisters.

Thanks largely to Marika Pirie and Anne Hales we’ve added 78 new newspaper and letter transcriptions which go a long way to giving us a glimpse into the life of the men and women that served.  Almost 650 images were added to the site as well.

I’m sure that, at times, we wonder if the effort that we put into this is worthwhile. In 2009 there were 43,134 unique visitors to the site, with over 1,400 on November 11th. Both of those are huge numbers! Many were looking for ancestors, but in the past year I’ve had schoolteachers expressing their gratitude for making the information available, and the database served as a primary resource for a very creative project by the Toronto Star.

The bulk of my time with this site is in answering eMail from visitors (several hundred in 2009) and in maintaining the integrity of the data on the site. Thanks to TomCEF and RNWMP for your help in doing this.

Every week I get a few eMails from people expressing their gratitude for the content that we have in the Canadian Great War Project. I want to pass these on to all of you, and to thank you for all of your efforts. Together we’ve established a pretty site that helps preserve the memory of the Men and Women that served in the conflict, and at the same time provides a pretty good little research tool.

Thanks!

marc

I got an eMail from Mike Norton the other day. He was letting me know that, using information from the embarkation roll, the Libraries and Archive Canada site,  and the Nova Scotia vital statistics site, he had completed entering all the men that served with the 112th Battalion.

The 112th was formed in Nova Scotia between November 1915 and April 1916. They trained near Windsor, Nova Scotia, then departed for England on 23 July, 1916.

In England, the 112th was broken up with the men providing reinforcements for other combat battalions.

Thanks to the information that Mike has entered, we get a good profile of the men who formed the unit. They were largely Canadian born (91%),  and native to Nova Scotia.  They were of average height (5 foot, 7 inches) and ranged in age from 14 to 57 (average 23). The average age of the 189 men from the unit who died was 24 (oldest 46, youngest 16). The majority were Baptists (38%).

In total, thanks to Mike’s work, there are 1,207 men that are associated with the 112th Battalion that are in the Canadian Great War Project database.

Next up, he’s going to tackle the 25th Battalion.

Thanks Mike. We appreciate all this work!

Thanks to Marika for finding this and bringing it to my attention.

The Toronto Star had developed an interactive map showing the men from the Riverdale area of Toronto that died during the Great War. Web editor Patrick Cain developed the map using the Canadian Great War Project database to help in his research. He has identified over 180 individuals from the area that died during World War 1, and has put them on a map; a poppy signifying each location. The result is a very intense visual depiction of the direct impact that the war had on communities.

Please take a look at the map. Seeing the results visually is a very powerful way of seeing how the war changed lives in such a small area.

It’s also nice to see that the effort that everyone has put into this website is appreciated. Being able to search using any of the words or phrases that appear in either comments, or anywhere in the attestation papers, rather than just names or regimental numbers, was something that I had hoped would be of use to people, and something that doesn’t exist in other databases. This site is truly a community effort, and it’s good to see that the results of everyone’s efforts are being well used.

The servers that host the Canadian Great War Project are going to be undergoing an upgrade sometime between Midnight and 5:00 AM US Eastern time on September 24. During this period, the Canadian Great War Project will be unavailable for a period of approximately 15 minutes.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a necessary upgrade that our hosting company is implementing.