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Thursday, February 21
Big Beaver
by
Jason
on Thu 21 Feb 2008 11:23 PM CST
Like many places, Saskatchewan has numerous towns with unique names - for example, Moose Jaw, Elbow, Eyebrow, Climax (which is just down the road from Conquest)! Even my own hometown of Indian Head has provided the occasional laugh for the less politically correct among us (although the true reason it has that name is no laughing matter.) But there is one town that tops them all for "huhzawhat?" reactions in our province. In fact, I know a guy who dated a girl for six months before she admitted to being from this town and then, only because they were getting engaged and she realised she'd no longer be able to only arrange meetings with her family in Regina, in his hometown, at Moose Jaw and other neutral locations. The town? Big Beaver, Saskatchewan.I was in a nearby town today and had a couple hours for my lunch break so decided to take a little tour to see the Big Muddy badlands and then Big Beaver.It's a town of 21 people, most famous for an old-fashioned prairie general store named Aust's with the slogan "If We Don't Have It, You Don't Need It". They also sell cute t-shirts showing Canada's national animal with the words, "Big Beaver, SK" on it (which you can buy from the web site I linked to above.) I'm not saying whether I bought one for Pace or not but I do think he's going to be quite the hit at playtime in a couple years! 
Wednesday, February 13
Automated Genealogy
by
Jason
on Wed 13 Feb 2008 09:14 PM CST
Just the other day, I was thinking to myself "with all the social networking sites out there, when is somebody going to design an online genealogy site that works in a similar way - you enter the information you know about your family and ancestors and then connect to other family members who have entered information you don't have?" I surfed to MetaFilter that night and lo and behold, there was a link to a new site named Kindo that does something along that line, although not nearly as fully-featured as a hardcore genealogist would want. The comments in the MetaFilter have lots of good information about online genealogy resources including the mention of another Web 2.0 genealogy site named Geni (which also isn't as full-featured as you might want.)The highlight of the thread though was finding a site called Automated Genealogy, a volunteer project to type up digital versions of Canada's early censuses. I took a genealogy class in library school but have to admit that I frequently found it less than enlightening so I honestly don't even remember if this site was mentioned in class or not. It may have been but I don't remember seeing it. So I spent some time poking around and lo and behold, found this which is the record for John and Janet Brown, my dad's maternal great-grandparents who first settled the farm in 1883 that our family still owns to this day. My dad's grandpa, James Leslie Brown, isn't listed in the record but would've been 23 at the time of this census so presumably had left home. (Leslie would marry three years later, coincidentally in Weyburn, SK where my dad also got married and where I am currently living.) Anyhow, very cool anytime you come across records like this that give you a real connection to the people who came before you, doubly so when it's found almost by accident.
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