Dion Loach has been a very busy man. In the past couple of months he has transcribed the nominal rolls for the Railway Supply Detachment (1915), Borden's Armoured Battery and the 1914 and 1915 Nursing Sister embarkation rolls. Each of these contains a link to the completed entry in the Canadian Great War Project, the Library and Archives Canada attestation papers page, and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial. These provide a great, easily searchable reference. I’m guessing, but perhaps we may see the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps sometime in the future.

Several weeks back, Ryan Shepard finished the embarkation roll for the 19th Battalion. Ryan started this as a way of honouring his grandfather, and I don’t think he realized the amount of work that was involved, but he persevered over the course of 18 months, and finished it. I asked Ryan if he was willing to take on another. He said that “He’d get back to me” on that.

I’m becoming quite a bottleneck for certain rolls. Chris Henzler has been plugging away at the men from the 31st Battalion. Chris started working on the Canadian Great War Project several years ago, trying to find the men on the Hedley, British Columbia monument. Chris isn’t from BC, in fact he is U.K. born and bred. He had seen the memorial once, got interested, and started to transcribe attestation papers. Chris has also taken photographs of a number of U.K. cemeteries. I need to update the links on the 31st Battalion nominal roll with all the entries that Chris has put in.

Marika Pirie has been quietly entering information on the Canadian Nurses. The Canadian Great War Project has the largest searchable list of the Canadian Nursing Sisters that served during World War 1. I have a lot of work to do to update the links based on the entries that Dion, Marika and others have put in.

And there are others that are working their way down some of the awards lists. Again, these are being entered faster than I can keep up with.

Gary Silliker, when not on active duty with the Canadian Forces, has been entering the men from the Miramichi, New Brunswick Memorial, and is starting on the Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia men. Gary is going to be overseas this summer/fall, and we all wish him safe travels.

And there are many others that I haven’t mentioned, that are busy working on their own projects. I don’t hear much from them, they just plug away. The result is that we are compiling a truly valuable resource for both researchers and the folks that want to know a bit about their past.

As with any posting like this, I run the risk of missing important contributers. Obviously this isn't my intention, there just are a lot of you out there.

Many thanks to all of you for your efforts. Please take a minute and add a comment to this post describing what you are working on.

And, if you haven’t been there lately, take a look at the Rolls and Awards page. I think you’ll be impressed.