Posted by conference on October 22, 2009 under Blog: New Postings, Canadian Records, Novice Researchers Stream, Speakers and Program | 
Dave Obee of Victoria, BC, will speak on newspaper research and passenger lists.
Unusual among high-profile genealogists, Dave Obee has an unrelated day job. He’s editorial page editor of the Times Colonist in Victoria, the culmination of a newspaper career dating back to 1972. And family history isn’t his only mission. He was one of the founders of the annual Times Colonist book drive, which has raised more than $1 million in support of school libraries and other literacy projects since 1998.
Still, we know Dave best as a genealogist—and an entertaining and informative one at that. Attendee evaluations consistently rated his lectures at Conference 2009 as among the best. That’s why we invited him to reprise this success at Conference 2010.
Dave was born in British Columbia and has lived in many parts of both BC and Alberta. His BC roots go back to the arrival of his great-great-grandfather from Manitoba in 1890, although he also has ancestry in New York, Ontario and Russia. He’s been researching his family history since 1978, when he took a night course through Camosun College in Victoria. He has visited 17 countries in Europe, and has done genealogical research in most of them. He also has a keen interest in the world war battle areas in France, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Dave has compiled eight books for Canadian family historians, and has given more than 300 talks about genealogical and historical research to society meetings and conferences, libraries and community groups. He is a past president of the Federation of East European Family History Societies, a columnist for The Beaver and a member of the advisory panel for Ancestry.ca.
He is also one of the owners of Interlink Bookshop and Genealogical Services of Victoria. Interlink runs the Genealogy Unlimited website, which sells books and maps from Canada, the British Isles and Europe.
At Conference 2010 Dave will be presenting three lectures.
Posted by conference on October 15, 2009 under Blog: New Postings, Delights Stream, Italian Research Stream, Pro/Advanced Stream, Speakers and Program |
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.
Posted by conference on October 8, 2009 under Blog: New Postings, Speakers and Program, Tours and Events |
Karolyn Smardz Frost will speak at the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference 2010 in Toronto, May 14 to 16, 2010.
We are delighted to announce that Governor General’s Award winner, Karolyn Smardz Frost, PhD, will speak at the Ontario Genealogical Society’s Conference 2010 banquet on Saturday, May 15.
Karolyn is an author, historian and archaeologist. (For 10 years she was Canada’s representative to the World Archaeological Congress!) She holds a BA in Archaeology, a master’s in Classical Studies and a PhD in Canadian History (Race and Slavery) and has won many research fellowships in both Canada and the US. She describes one of her greatest honours as presenting Canada’s Underground Railroad story at Robben Island, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was a prisoner for so long, on behalf of UNESCO in 1998.
We know her best as the person who spent more than 20 years piecing together the stories of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn. Starting with the 1985 excavation of the Blackburn site, she poured another 20 years of historical detective work into researching her account of the fugitive slave couple’s dramatic and precedent-setting escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. The resulting 2007 book, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, was the first original fugitive-slave biography published since the 19th century and won not only the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, Canada’s top literary prize, but numerous other accolades.
Among Karolyn’s most memorable accomplishments was the founding of Toronto’s Archaeological Resource Centre. For a decade, this unique facility provided hands-on excavation and educational opportunities for more than 100,000 schoolchildren, tourists and volunteers. She is a founding member of the education committees of the Society for American Archaeology and the Society for Historical Archaeology and has served on many other committees to further the cause of heritage education.
Formerly the executive director of the Ontario Historical Society and a past vice-chair of the Toronto Historical Board, Karolyn has lectured around the world. She is currently a Research Associate with the York Centre for Education and Community, Faculty of Education, York University, where she has also taught night school courses on primary research for Toronto’s 19th century history and African Canadian history.
