This is the second time we have welcomed support for genealogical education from the Netherlands Consulate General in Toronto. In 2007 the Consulate General supported the Dutch ancestry workshop staged by OGS Toronto Branch. For information about other consular activities, including those involving culture and the arts, visit the website at http://www.cgtoronto.org/homepage.asp.

Support in the Italian community comes via the Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano di Cultura), the Cultural Section of the Consulate General of Italy in Toronto, established in 1976. The main facility is on Huron Street in downtown Toronto, and there is a suburban location in Woodbridge. The Institute promotes cultural events and exhibitions, and offers language classes. For more information, visit http://www.iictoronto.esteri.it/IIC_Toronto/Menu/Istituto/.

For more information about, or to register for, the Dutch or Italian lecture streams at Conference 2010, visit: http://torontofamilyhistory.org/2010/dutch and http://torontofamilyhistory.org/2010/italian respectively.

We express our deep gratitude for this support from both Consulates General.

John Phillip Colletta of Washington, DC.

We are fortunate that John Philip Colletta, PhD, will be a mainstay of the Ontario Genealogical Society’s Conference 2010. Entertaining, knowledgeable and experienced, John is one of America’s most popular genealogical lecturers. People are still raving about his 2008 appearance in Toronto, where he spoke to the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Conference organizers jumped at the opportunity to bring him back to Canada.

We will all get to hear John’s humour and wisdom during the closing plenary on Sunday afternoon. His topic promises to be quite a sensation: “Hacks and Hookers and Putting Up Pickles: Snares of Yesteryear’s English”.

But John’s contribution to Conference 2010 actually begins on Friday afternoon when he will present two lectures in the Professional/Advanced stream: “Stories that Instruct: Using Case Studies to Teach Genealogy Methodology” and “Principles of Good Writing and Good Storytelling”.

Then on Saturday, for a special group of family historians, John will be hard at work providing the backbone of the Italian ancestry program. After all, he literally wrote the book on researching Italian ancestry.

Sunday won’t be a day of rest, however. In addition to the closing plenary in the afternoon, John will give a two-part morning lecture on “Writing a Narrative History”.

Based in Washington, DC, John taught classes for the National Archives and Smithsonian Institution for 21 years. Now he lectures nationally and teaches at Samford University and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. His publications include dozens of journal articles, two manuals, They Came in Ships and Finding Italian Roots, as well as a narrative family history, Only a Few Bones: A True Account of the Rolling Fork Tragedy and Its Aftermath. This most recent book is a history of the German-speaking merchants of the Mississippi Delta during Reconstruction; it is written around the mysterious destruction of John’s great great grandfather’s country store, and its five unfortunate inhabitants.

You can read more about John at his website.

The two streams will begin with an exclusive joint lecture on preparations for a European research trip to the Netherlands or Italy. Then the groups separate for in-depth two-part lectures on researching Dutch and Italian records. After lunch, each group will hear a case-history presentation from North American researchers who have successfully used both Canadian and Dutch or Italian records to construct a family history.

For each of the last two sessions of the day, attendees can choose from five different lectures from the full Conference program such as Canadian immigration and passenger list records, using newspapers in genealogical research and deriving ancestral clues from old photographs.

These streams will appeal to experienced family history researchers who’ve never gotten around to their one Dutch or Italian ancestor, as well as to those in the Dutch and Italian communities who’ve always been curious about their family histories but have not had access to the quality information necessary to get them started.

Speakers and full program will be announced in this blog in upcoming months. To register to receive an e-mail alert when the program and registration form go online, please contact us at conference2010@ogs.on.ca.

*The Dutch and Italian streams will be offered in addition to the usual compliment of five concurrent lectures during every session.