I was thinking about eMail quite a bit over the last few weeks, mainly because it takes up a lot of my time on a daily basis (here’s where peals of laughter erupt from people that haven’t heard from me for very long time). But it is true. I get about 8,000 email’s a year to my CGWP address, which is about 20% of what I get at work, so in total I’m going through about 120 eMails on a daily basis. Granted a lot of them don’t take a lot of time … I have decided that I don’t want to get rich by helping someone who has secreted money out of <insert name of 3^rd world country here>, so click those are gone. The same for the complaints I get from the Better Business Bureau. The ones I’m referring to are those written by someone who speaks English as a 14^th language and that tell me I really need to click on a very suspicious link to find out what the complaint is. Click – those are gone. They take a bit linger, because I find it humourous to read them. Then there are the ads from various services that want me to buy their products, so they don’t take long to select and delete.

The remaining ones fall into several categories:

1. Problems with the web site. I try to address these pretty quickly (OK, the problem with uploading images dragged on for much too long), and thankfully they are fairly few.
2. People tracing family members. These are pretty common, most are looking for information on how to trace an ancestor’s war experience, but occasionally they want to know a bit more than what is on the attestation papers. One was along the lines of “You say that my great-uncle 4 times removed was married to Jane, but her name was Margaret Jane, and they divorced in 1922. Do you know why?” Sorry, but no I don’t know why. One of my favourites from this category was “I’d like to know more about my great-grandfather. Can you tell me what he did in the war?” That was it, no name provided. The follow up was “Oh, sorry, his name was John Smith, but maybe he used Smythe. I think he may have lived in Ontario.” Humm, not much there to go on.
3. People complaining about the accuracy of the information. Actually most aren’t complaining, they are really helping us build up the accuracy of the data and providing corrections, which are always very much appreciated, but it’s the ones that are somewhat belligerent that stand out. “My great uncle was born in Glyndyfrdwy, not Glyndyford! Everyone knows that there is no town called Glyndyford!” Well, I’m not sure that either the clerk that was trying to write it down on the attestation form knew that, and apparently the person who tried to decipher his handwriting to enter it knew that either.
4. And my favourite, the ones who don’t find a name they are looking for. Most politely provide the information or ask how they can enter it, but a few get quite animated: “How can you say that you have a database when my wife’s 14th cousin 6 times removed isn’t in it? I’m very, very disappointed.” Knowing how hard everyone that volunteers time is working to get names added, I find these hard to answer, or at least answer politely. Occasionally, I get one that ends with something like “… and I know this because my grandmother has a picture of him that was taken in uniform. There is a date of 1944 on it!” Ummm, wrong war.
5.  And then the ones that make it all worthwhile. “Thank you for helping me find more information about my grandfather. My mother knew he was in World War 1, but that was all. Thanks to this wonderful resource we know a bit more. Thank you for commemorating all the men that served, not just the ones that died.”

And that’s really what this is all about: having a place to remember the men and women that served. And thanks to everyone who volunteers and helps the database grow by about 500 new entries, and 300 updated entries every week. Through your efforts this great resource keeps getting better.

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

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.

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.

Sometimes fate gives us a chance to do things that we might otherwise miss.

A couple of weeks ago I was updating the cause of death for all the Nursing Sisters in the Canadian Great war Project. When I got to Henrietta Mellett, I noticed that the Cause of Death in Ed Wigneys Roll of Honour was listed as “Drowning”.

Henrietta Mellett was born in Galway, Ireland in 1883, and enlisted in London, Ontario in January, 1918. She appears on the 1911 Census, so she immigrated to Canada sometime prior to 1911.

As with any attempt to reconstruct events from over 90 years ago, there is some degree of speculation, but it is likely that her family had moved from Galway to Dublin and was living there in 1918. It is likely that Henrietta Mellett was returning to England on 10 October 1918 after visiting them. She was aboard the mailboat R.M.S. Leinster, with a crew of 77 and 694 passengers, bound for Holyhead, Wales  when it was attacked and sunk by the German submarine UB-123 just before 10:00 AM. The Leinster went down about 6 km outside of Dublin Bay. The official loss of life was 501 personnel, and it was possibly higher.

Fate came in to play when I saw that her body had been recovered and she was buried in Dublin. My wife and I were planning an Irish vacation, so last Tuesday, 3 weeks after looking up her cause of death, on a drizzly morning, I found myself in Mt. Jerome Cemetery in Dublin. I located her grave, as well as the grave of Private Fryday, the only other Canadian buried there. Nursing Sister Mellette is buried with her brother and sister, with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission marker atop the grave.

It is very satisfying to be able to be fortunate enough to have found that she was buried there, and to be able to make the trip to the Cemetery to honour her memory.

Perhaps you’ve noticed, but the link to the entries in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) database is no longer displayed at the bottom of the soldier display forms.

Sometime over the Labour Day Weekend, the CWGC updated their web site, and the result is that it is no longer possible for me to automatically generate a link to the CWGC pages. I’m not sure why CWGC made this change, but it is likely to cause problems for many people who have links to specific entries on  many different web sites.

I’ll continue to look at this, but in the interim you can go to the main CGWC search engine(link here) and search for the name yo are looking for.

Update 12 September.  It seems that the CWGC has seen the error of their ways, and the old link format is back working again, so it is once again available from the Canadian Great War Project.

In a little town in rural England is a churchyard with a single Military grave, Private Edward Smith of the 3rd Battalion, CEF. Guy Ellis has done extensive research on this soldier and written up his history in the British publication “History Journal”. Please give it a read, it’s a fascinating look at what happened to some of the soldiers who enlisted, and fell ill while in England. And a great way to honour a Canadian soldier.

Note: The article, “Wellington Down”, accessible on the same site, deals with the Second World War Flight Sergeant (Pilot) James McCausland from Marysville. New Brunswick.

Dion Loach has completed another Nominal Roll, this time for the 159th Battalion.

The 159th, also known as the 1st Algonquin's,  was based in Haileybury, Ontario, in the Temiskaming region of Northern Ontario. The unit began recruiting in late 1915 in the districts of Nipissing and Sudbury. After sailing to England in November 1916, the battalion was absorbed into the 8th Reserve Battalion.

Thanks to Dion for providing yet another Nominal Roll.