Monday, November 9, 2015

FREE - Soldiers of WW1 Canada

Library and Archives Canada has been digitizing personnel service files from WW1, and making them available, online and free. Here's the blurp for today 9th Nov., 2015

"The digitization of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) service files is underway and a substantial number of digitized files have been added to our website as part of the Government of Canada First World War commemoration activities. We will add new files every two weeks, as the CEF digitization initiative is a priority for us. LAC will ensure that Canadians have access to the files throughout the digitization process, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018.

As of today, 205,064 of 640,000 files are available in the database."


Many of the normal pay-for-view, or subscription sites have been offering free searches from Sunday (yesterday) until Nov. 11th. They're easy to find. But LAC's website is ALWAYS Free, although not nearly as progressive due, in large part, to political influences from our last federal government. Anyway, these service files have amazing information in them. I am not normally interested in military records, but my Scottish grandfather had a nephew that followed my Granddad to Canada and ended up back in the British Isles, and France, in WW1 where he lost a leg. I remember him very well. He had a peg leg ... AND a parrot!! True story. Anyway, his service files have been digitized and I read through all 81 pages! Incredible amounts of information ... some details were more than I really wanted to know.

So while they're not even half way through the digitization process, have a look. Best of luck everyone. And Thank You to all those brave young men, women, and animals. We are FREE. http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/canadian-expeditionary-force.aspx


Cheers,
Pat

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