Genealogy Em

Old family photos are one of the most personal types of records. They tell us what someone looked like, how they dressed, and give us a valuable insight into their personality and everyday life. The main challenge is that many old photos were developed in greyscale (black and white). By adding colour we can bring the picture to life.  Currently MyHeritage offers four photo editing tools.  1. In Colour 2. Photo Enhancer 3. Repair 4. Animate For the scope of this post I'm only going to be discussing the first three.  In Colour: The tool itself is quite easy to use, all you need is an account (no membership required) and a picture that has been saved as a .jpg file. Once uploaded you will see half your picture in colour and the other half in the original greyscale. By dragging the slide bar left, you can reveal the full colour image.  There are a few limitations of the tool. More specifically, small patches of colour may be missed, or deep colours such as black may take on a purple/re

 As World War 1 waged on, Canada was faced with a major problem. The once constant stream of volunteers was drying up. The remaining men on the home front were hearing about the horrors of war and did not want to endure the same fate. Many of them had already experienced the loss of a brother, father, or friend. The government knew that they had to intervene if they wanted to keep supplying men to the front lines. They decided to enact forced conscription by passing the Military Service Act in 1917. This act allowed the government to force any man between the ages of 20 and 45 to report for active service. Some of these men were later deemed medically unfit, however the vast majority were pressed into service overseas.  So the question is, how can you tell if your ancestor served willingly? The answer lies on their attestation papers. Depending on if they were conscripted or not, they were presented with a different set of attestation papers. Those who were not conscripted were present

I wrote a post many months ago about the 1915 Niagara Trolley accident and have published several updates since then. Part of my continued research into this disaster involved compiling a list of names of the victims as well as those who were involved. Like my previous post, this one is likely to undergo several updates as I continue to further my research into this topic.  I first stumbled upon this disaster when I was researching one of my relatives. The entire event perplexed me. Like many things on that side of my family, the past was something that we just didnt talk about. I have since learned that this is an incredibly common trait in British families. The only reason that I made this discovery was because I have access to the ProQuest newspaper database. Hopefully this unofficial list will aid other researchers in learning their families role within this disaster.  The disaster involved two Sunday school church groups - one from St John Presbyterian, and the other from the Woo