A City Goes to War

The lack of a search feature in NextGen gallery creates a bit of a problem for us, now that there are over 4000 pictures in the galleries. After a considerable amount of banging my head against a wall I have a query that I can run against both the images table and the custom fields table and return sensible values. For posterity, this is the query (looking for 'currie'):

SELECT pix.pid,pix.galleryid,pix.description,pix.alttext,ref
FROM wp_ngg_pictures pix
INNER JOIN (
   SELECT cf.pid,group_concat(cf.field_value)AS ref
   FROM wp_nggcf_field_values cf
   GROUP BY cf.pid
   ) cfv ON pix.pid = cfv.pid
WHERE (
   pix.description LIKE '%currie%' OR 
   pix.alttext LIKE '%currie%' OR 
   ref LIKE '%currie%'
)
ORDER BY pix.galleryid ASC

Next up is to figure out how to create an on-the-fly gallery out of the results that looks and feels like the other galleries.

I spent some time today figuring out how to display the custom fields with the images - you need to edit the template(s) being used. For example, in the

wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/products/photocrati_nextgen/modules/nextgen_basic_gallery/templates/thumbnails/index.php

template, I changed the display of the thumbnail to include the source field by adding this:

<br/>Source: <?php echo nggcf_get_field($image->pid, "Source");

to the existing title attribute. I expect this will be transferable to other templates and fields.

In preparation for an elegant search tool for the site, I've begun trying to find simple methods of including scrapers for the Library and Archives Canada site and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site. This post is just some documentation for how to scrape these sites. The scraping was done in Linux.

Straightforward retrieval of CWGC info: if you know the CWGC id (in this case 922332 - Eric Bowen-Smith) of the soldier use
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty-details.aspx?cid=922332

Not-so-straightforward retrieval of CWGC info, scraping soldier info from page:

curl --silent "http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty-details.aspx?cid=922332" | tr '\n\r' ' '|sed 's/  //g'| grep -o 'dottedBoxContent"><h2 class="redText">.*<div class="casualty_buttons">' | sed 's/dottedBoxContent">\(.*\)<div class="casualty_buttons">.*/\1/'

Which returns some HTML like:
<h2 class="redText">BOWEN-SMITH, ERIC</h2>
<dl>
<dt>Rank:</dt><dd>Private</dd>
<dt>Service No:</dt><dd>13152</dd>
<dt>Date of Death:</dt><dd>02/06/1916</dd>
<dt>Age:</dt><dd>23</dd>
<dt>Regiment/Service:</dt><dd>Canadian Infantry</dd>
<dt>&nbsp;</dt><dd>"D" Coy. 5th Bn.</dd>
<dt>Panel Reference</dt><dd>Panel 18 - 26 - 28.</dd>
<dt>Memorial</dt><dd><a href="/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/91800/YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL">YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL</a></dd>
</dl>
<h3>Additional Information:</h3>
<p>Son of Sidney C. and Jessie M. Bowen-Smith, of 2247, Albert St., Regina, Saskatchewan.</p>

which is totally digestible for inclusion in a report. It might be useful to use as a simple method for checking on a suspect record.

~~~~~~~~
Straightforward retrieval of LAC info: if you know the LAC id (in this case 236439) of the soldier use
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/001042-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=236439

Not-so-straightforward retrieval of attestation record images, creating two links (note that I'm using an actual LAC ID here - in this case 105755):

curl --silent "http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/001042-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=236439" | grep -o 'image_url=.*\.gif' | sed 's/image_url=\(.*\)&.*">.*=\(.*\)/<a href="\1">First page<\/a> - <a href="\2">Second page<\/a>/'

Which returns something like:
First page - Second page

Some files have been digitized, and a PDF can retrieved by running this:

curl --silent "http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/001042-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=236439" | grep -o 'href=.*\.pdf' | sed 's/href="\(.*\)">.*/\1/'

Which returns something like:
http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/cef/9001-10000/9032-35.pdf

Hi folks, sorry about being late to get this update up, I have stopped checking emails on the weekends. Here are my hours updated for the past four weeks.

July 15-19: 30 hours (Short week because I had the Paint-In that weekend and required time off to do volunteer training).
July 22-26: 40 hours (with the city council meeting being a long day).
July 29-Aug 2: 37 hours (this is when I finished the microfilms).
Aug 5-9: 34 hours

Total: 141 hours or 8,460 minutes

Since I last posted, I have continued working in the microfilms at UVic and have sent out permissions documents to all of the archives and museums I've worked with so far. Only one has responded - the 5th Regiment Museum - and Jim was able to convince him to accept our preferred license. I'll try to get ahold of the rest of my contacts before the end of this week, but all have granted verbal permission on previous occasions. As for the website, I've used feedback from team members to change things up a bit. We currently have a khaki color theme, a header featuring a photograph of marching soldiers, and a background of the mud at Passchendaele. I've found out how to remove the sidebar from the home page slideshow, but have left off further tinkering with the slides until we decide what images we would like to have there. There are several ways we can do that, and I thought it would be something we could discuss at the meeting on Monday. Three of my write-ups are uploaded, footnoted, and set up with images, there are submenus on my navy pages, and I've started work on some extra navy history articles. I'm really hoping to have kicked my flu by Monday, but at least I now have full-time internet access again!

Just in case anybody needs them, here are the hex codes for the website's color scheme: Dropdown Menu Background, Ubermenu Hover Background, and Content Links: 778260 Container, Ubermenu Background, and Submenu Hover Links: f5f2e4 Ubermenu Titles, Content Text, and Submenu Static Links: 222409

July 19: Microforms
July 21: (I worked a Sunday so I could have some time off when my family came to town) Filling in some gaps on my articles and learning about wordpress.
July 22: Meeting and microforms.
July 24: Microforms in the afternoon
July 25: microforms
July 26: microforms
July 29: meeting and microforms
July 30: microforms and spent some time answering emails and hunting for a profile figure for Jeremy.

This is not counting time spent at City Council, as I just wanted to do that for the experience.

Monday:Meeting. Finished microfilm.
Tuesday:Central Saanich Archives. Prepared for meeting.
Wednesday: Answered emails. Followed up with archives re: copyright. Submitted BC Archives Remissions Form and Image Request Form.
Thursday: Made a plan for archive structure.
Friday: Built some Wordpress pages. Explored galleries more.

Next week I will continue with the newspapers, provide the museums I've already visited with copies of our permissions agreement, and take a few trips into B.C. Archives. See you all tomorrow!

Walter Liddiard - conscripted in Victoria in 1917, was wounded in action and still in Europe in 1919 when the Spanish Flu epidemic began. A collection of transcribed letters, photographs, postcards, and documents is available here: http://www.canadianletters.ca/collectionsSoldier.php?collectionid=483&warid=3 The director of the Canadian Letters and Images Project said that he was very interested in connecting his project with ours, but he has not gotten back to me re: usage rights. He's a professor at VIU, so he may just be caught up in work... or he may have forgotten. I'll email him a copy of our permissions agreement and see what happens.

W. H. Lettice - served with the 5th (BC) Regiment, CGA before the war, enlisted in 1915, and re-enlisted with the 5th on his return to Victoria. He took part in local and international shooting and artillery competitions and represented his militia unit at such prestigious occasions as the coronation of King Edward VII. See KH0126, KH0127, KH0128, KH0129, KH0130, and KH0240. Mr. Cotter of the 5th Regiment Museum says they also have his Bisley hat and some other tidbits hiding in storage somewhere...

W.C. Warren - a veteran of the Boer War who enlisted with the 2nd Regiment, Canadian Mounted Rifles in 1914. He was wounded twice, ultimately losing his left leg. His brother, Robert Warren, was killed in action. William returned to Victoria after the war - I am hoping to find out more about his post-war life in the B.C. Archives fonds associated with the Returned Soldiers' Aid Commission. See KH0265, KH0266, KH0267, KH0268, KH0269, KH0270, KH0271, KH0272, KH0273, KH0274, KH0275, KH0276, wcwarrenfront and wcwarrenback.

R.H.B. Ker - son of a successful business family, Robert went to Victoria's University School and a college in England, where he served as a cadet before returning to Victoria. He joined the Gordon Highlanders upon their creation and enlisted when the war began. Eventually he transferred into the Royal Flying Corps. Robert was posted back to Canada in 1917 to lead a pilot training squadron at Camp Borden. He came home to Victoria after the war. See KH0277, KH0278, KH0279, rhbkerfront and rhbkerback. There's a huge fonds associated with him and his family at the B.C. Archives, I'll report back with a list of what is worth acquiring.

My hours for last week and this week.

Monday (July 8) Meeting and then theme edits with Kirsten.
Tuesday: Research to fill in some holes in my write-ups.
Wednesday: Went to Victoria City Archives to finish compiling a list of desired images. Then to Victoria Police Museum to get some digitized photographs from our time period.
Thursday: Finished typing up my final list for Victoria Archives, and compiled a shorter list of 10 top priority items for fee assessment.
Friday: Dropped off list at Victoria City Archives and did write-up work.

Monday (July 15): meeting plus time catching up on emails and contacts with various archivists.
Tuesday: Had to re-do Victoria City Archives submission, and then did some work in microforms in afternoon.
Wednesday: Editing write-ups.
Thursday: Spoke to Victoria City Archives about additional information they desired, managed to contact the archivist at Brentwood, who had previously been away, and had to contact Michael Carter regarding the Research Agreement, and then worked in microforms.

Hours and such for last week:

Monday:Meeting, editing themes, microfilm work
Tuesday: Microfilm and editing themes
Wednesday: Esquimalt Archives in the morning and some research I had to do for theme edits
Thursday: microfilm
Friday: editing.

Thanks for your patience this week as I wasn't able to answer questions too quickly because my dad was in town. Back to normal this week!

Jeremy, some names for you:

Arthur Douglas Crease: famed Yacht Club member and Victoria social elite, member of St. Mary's in Oak Bay, and Lieutenant with the 88th in France 1916-1918. Lots of letters home from him to his brother Lindley.

Lindley Crease: Arthur's brother, an older gentleman who stayed home during the war, important member of the Union Club and Christ Church Cathedral, a lawyer by trade who was also an MLA after the war. Plenty of documents in the BC Archives from friends overseas, his brother, and things from Victoria. Helen Crease could also have enough information, she has letters and church documentation from the era as well.

Joe Bayley: Canadian Amateur Lightweight Boxing Champion from Vic West and Esquimalt who toured the world during the doing challenge fights. Newspaper articles and Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame info.

G.H. Andrews: Chaplain with the 48th (I think) and rector at St. Mary's in Oak Bay. Photos, secondary source history from the church, flags and a plaque in the Church. He had served 25 years in British forces before the war.

Another potential is Francis L. Gull, died in France, but all I have is letters from him to Lindley Crease. I will keep my eyes open for others in the coming week as I visit the Union Club and continue reading.

Hi all,

Monday:Meeting, editing themes.
Tuesday: Microfilm.
Wednesday: Esquimalt Archives.
Thursday: Editing themes.
Friday:Microfilm.

I've gotten through almost a year of my 2 years of microfilm newspapers.

Jeremy:

Sorry I forgot to tell you about the possible individuals you could highlight.

Blayney Scott: Was a well know rower, boxer,and swimmer before the war. Enlisted with the CMR and transferred to the RFC. He was awarded two medals, one for carryign messages across no man's land, and one for climbing out on the wing of his plane to plug the hole in his gas tank. I have quite a bit of information on him including letters and photos.

Gertrude Scott: Sister of Blayney Scott. Was a member of the Sugar Plums, who made candy and socks to send to soldiers. She worked as a teacher at the James Island School for most of the war. She was also a nurse during the Spanish Flu epidemic.

I have some information about a Victorian who was a POW in Germany for almost 4 years. He worked in the mines, for most of that time. Some of the most interesting information is more anecdotal from his family, so I'm not sure if it would be suitable, but he is a unique case!

Have a good weekend!

Listed below are some possible Identity Projects for Jeremy. Unfortunately, while there are a good group of Victorian soldiers that we could track through the war thanks to military records and labelled photographs, I've only been able to find a few who recorded their reasons for joining up, and most don't have that much historical material associated with them. Almost all of them discussed the question of enlistment in oral histories currently in UVic's Special Collections. If there are other artifacts associated with them (besides attestation papers), I have not been able to locate any so far. One actually shows his interviewer photographs, but they don't seem to be in UVic's collection!! Aaaagh!

There are items on the theme of enlistment in the trench papers, but the articles are not about a particular soldier's reasons for enlisting. There are poems that reflect social shaming, national and imperial patriotism, righteous vengeance, a hunger for adventure, and other factors that motivated soldiers to enlist... but it'd be an assumption to say that the poem's reasons are the poet's. They could still be useful for students, though, as reflections of an aspect of Victoria's social climate during the war...

I'm sorry!! Here are the ones who explain their reasons for joining up. Please let me know if any of them will work, if not then I'll see what I can do to find more! Available attestation papers are listed by the titles they appear under in Dropbox (because of repetition of names, I haven't always used a "jsmith" style title).

Obviously, the Victorian soldier with the MOST material available is Arthur Currie. A project on Currie would be something for an ambitious high school student... but, given the amount written on him and his career's mixture of scandal and celebrity, he represents a great opportunity to look at primary vs. secondary sources, and for students to read multiple narratives and come to their own conclusions. There's all the photos in his dropbox folder (Archive > Kirsten > General Sir Arthur Currie); arthurcurrie1, arthurcurrie2, arthurcurriefront and arthurcurrieback in the Attestation Papers folder (the first two are HUGE pdf packages from L&A Canada, they're various service documents); there was also discussion about the possibility of creating audio recordings of some of his letters.

T. F. Baxter - a member of the 5th (BC) Regiment who volunteered when the war began. He manned the battery at Duntze Head until he volunteered; in the first part of his oral history (KH0020) he states that it was news of the death of Edith Cavell, executed by the Germans for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium, that motivated him to enlist for overseas service. His oral histories are under KH0020 (33:13) and KH0021 (9:49), and his attestation papers are tfbaxterfront and tfbaxterback.

A. D. Corker - a member of the 5th (BC) Regiment who volunteered when the war began. His first oral history (KH0022) includes some great comments on Arthur Currie and life in the militia. Around 17:30 in his first oral history, he starts discussing the reason that he joined up, the day after the war began - he notes the influence of his schooling in Britain and the patriotic feelings that inspired, and a general dislike for Germans, a certainty that they were "in the wrong." He states that the amount of British-born volunteers in the CEF, while great, is often overestimated; there were many Canadians in his unit and others that he encountered. His oral histories are KH0022 (50:51), KH0023 (36:16), KH0024(33:18), KH0025(21:17) and his attestation papers are under adcorkerfront and adcorkerback.

J. McKenzie - enlisted in 88th Battalion when underage, but his mother made him cancel his application; when he turned 18, he was allowed to join the Canadian Army Medical Corps. At 2:30 on his first oral history he starts discussing his enlistment, mentioning his family's patriotism and his own sense of duty. He also discusses recruiting tactics in Victoria, such as building model trenches in vacant lots in the center of town! His oral histories are under KH0030 (33:15) and KH0031 (16:02), and his attestation papers are listed as jmckenziefront and jmckenzieback.

T. Sehl - tried to join the Royal Flying Corps, turned away at first because he was underage. He was motivated to enlist in the RFC primarily by the fact that most of his friends (who were older than he was) were enlisting. While waiting to get into the RFC, he was white-feathered. His oral histories are under KH0032 (50:09), KH0033 (48:24), KH0034 (21:24). Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate any other materials related to him - except for a mention in the MA thesis of Arthur Tylor Richards, "(Re-)Imagining Germanness: Victoria's Germans and the 1915 Lusitania Riot." According to Richards, Sehl's grandfather Frank, a German immigrant to Victoria, managed the Teutonia Hall and Saloon during the 1860s. By his grandson's time, this very German family had, in Richards' words, "become British."

R.W. Day - a cartoonist and member of the 88th Regiment, Victoria Fusiliers. Although I have no photos of him personally, his sketchbook - in the Dropbox as KH0125 "Shrapnel - War Poems and Other Rhymes" - is full of drawings, poems, and clippings that have a lot to say about his motivations for enlisting. His attestation document is under rwdayfront.

Archie Wills - an artilleryman who has a HUGE collection, lots of photographs and some artifacts, all digitized, in UVic's Special Collections. He does describe his reason for enlisting in his memoir, but he's spectacularly brief - his description, in full, is that he "came to the conclusion that I should join the army and do my bit." His attestation papers are listed as archiewillsfront and archiewillsback.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Here are my hours for the first week of July:

July 1: Canada Day, no work
July 2: Theme secondary source research
July 3: BC Archives
July 4: BC Archives
July 5: Theme writing and dropbox work at UVic

July 7: Theme writing

I apologize for not keeping up to date on the blog - the minutes noted are from the 24th of June to today. I spent most of the week researching and writing my themes. I have posted four .rtf files in a folder labeled "Write-ups" in my "Team Members" folder, and an adjusted version of my theme map. I'm afraid that a few are over-long, but I thought it might be best to discuss length issues and possible subject divisions before going in there and chopping away too much. I am happy to do a few more write-ups if the team thinks that there are more topics in my areas that should be covered! It was hard to pick only a few!

Besides write-up work, I've been talking to the library about getting trench maps digitized. Apparently it's possible to use the Fine Arts scanners, so I will get in touch with them and then head back out to collect some maps! I've also been going through the lovely heap of digitized photographs and documents sent to me by Mr. Craig Cotter at the 5th Regiment Museum, as well as the material I found in UVic Special Collections. All of the trench newspapers I've located are now in the Dropbox. As most of them were printed while their regiments were still in Victoria, they include local ads and information about entertainment in the city - neat stuff! There are summaries of their contents in my archive spreadsheet.

This week I will head back out to the BCAM and Ashton Armoury. The archivist at Royal Roads should be getting back to me soon, as should the director of the Canadian Letters and Images Project - really looking forward to getting my hands on that stuff! Thanks for pointing out those items, Ashley! The documents on aid for wounded soldiers are especially interesting.

See you all tomorrow - hope everyone's been out enjoying these sunshiney days!

Monday: Wrote history of medicine theme.
Tuesday: Went to Central Saanich Archives. Theme research.
Friday: Finished themes. Made a plan for BC Archives and looked at Saanish Archives online photos.

I took a weekend in the middle of the week because I had friends in town. I hope everyone had a good few weeks and I'll see you all Monday morning!

I hope everyone had a nice Canada Day weekend!

Last Monday, after our meeting, I researched and answered some correspondence relating to the research agreement. I also called some more schools whom I had learned had archives.

I then went down to BC Archives on Tuesday, and discussed the research agreement again. I asked whether some archives staff could take out the sections relating to juveniles in some of the documents I requested; sadly, I was told that this was impossible. I finished up by researching there for the day.

Wednesday morning I was at UVic researching, and then in the afternoon, I went to the Victoria Police Museum and Archives, where I got some wonderful photographs, and got to look through their files relating to the history of the department.

Thursday was spent at BC Archives again, primarily looking at the Public School Reports.

Friday was spent uploading and entering the data for images in the Humanities Computing and Media Center. This took a long time, and I still have more to do.

Yesterday I did secondary source research and write-up work.

This morning I did the same, but also went back to Victoria Police Museum and Archives for a meeting with the Volunteer Coordinator and the President of the Victoria Police Historical Society.

The minutes are for Monday the 24 to July the 3.

Hi y'all (see I'm gearing up for the American Canada Day) hope you had a good long weekend.

My week last week was mainly wrapping up the archives visits. Monday was the meeting and some secondary source research, and then Tuesday I worked from home as I was sick so mainly did research for my write-ups, Wednesday was the Esquimalt Archives with Ashley which turned out some really interesting and amazing areas of future research, and then Wednesday afternoon-Friday was at the BC Archives looking at the BC Electric Railroad Company files which I think are far more interesting and relevant to Victoria than the coal industry (which was mainly Nanaimo). I also looked up the Jordan River Power Plant files and found some great photos from one of the largest building projects of the decade. There is also great tie in with social organizations and sporting life in that area. This week's plan is a final day or two at the BC Archives to re-photograph some of the Crease files and to finish up the last of the fonds I have time to look at, and then Friday I will be in HCMC working on Archive uploads and transcriptions/write-ups.

Ashley/Jim: An idea I've had for the letters/other transcribed items is to put them in individual folders in the archive with each image having the same file name (with "a" and "b" following to distinguish order). I think this is best to keep them in some semblance of organization instead of using PDF and to ensure images stay with texts when being uploaded, and it helps having them in one place when being uploaded. Thoughts?

Ashley: I will check those church life photos later and will get back to you. I'll also look for the Anglican Gazette piece you wanted. Have you sorted the Oak Bay Dropbox issue, because I've never emailed her back...

Minutes for entire last week

I’ve also uploaded the photos I’ve taken at archives. Saanich, Oak Bay, and Esquimalt will all be making me digital copies so these are more for my reference. I took a few photos of things that might be of interest to others.

Saanich: A great propaganda poster; Hannah – letters about returning soldiers who were fighting the sale of their houses to pay for missed taxes; Kirsten: building a rifle range in Saanich.

Oak Bay: Kirsten – remembrance of Willows fairground from an oral history, image 021, 006; Ben – church life, image 003. Let me know if you want to use any of it and can’t figure out which interview it’s from. My pictures were in a bit of a strange order.

*These will be my hours for the rest of the week as well.
Monday: Meeting, met Jean from Oak Bay to help with Dropbox, themes
Tuesday: Jubilee Archives
Wednesday: Esquimalt archives, uplaoding photos, themes
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Themes

- optimized and uploaded images from the 5th (BC) Regiment Museum and UVic Special Collections

- began uploading images from Canadian War Museum (more to come - they have very open rights on digitized material!)

- collected secondary sources

- researched themes

- produced draft of "A Navy of Her Own": The Naval Service of Canada

- tested draft on Wordpress, with images: http://hcmc.uvic.ca/cgtw/theme-4/a-navy-of-her-own-the-naval-service-of-canada/

- went back to BCAM to photograph V.R. Pauline's artifacts. Turns out he was at the Red Baron's funeral! Small world...

I'm going to head back to the 5th (BC) Regiment Museum and the Ashton Armoury soon to get ahold of some of their trench maps, which the library can digitize. Mr. Doug Rollins, the librarian at BCAM, is going to add some research materials and photographs to a folder I've created for him in Dropbox. My themes might end up getting a few more categories as I do the write-ups, so I'll update my theme map as I go. See you all tomorrow!

Wednesday: Theme research and writing. Met Hannah to discuss BC Archives research agreement.

Thursday: Theme research and writing.

Friday:Theme research and writing in the morning. Saanich Archives in the afternoon.

This week's hours and activities:

Monday: meeting and theme research
Tuesday: BC Archives research on social clubs (most held off location, so did a lot of orders and went through minutes of the YW-YMCA and other smaller resources)
Wednesday: was not feeling well so worked at home on theme research and caught up on emails and transcriptions
Thursday: BC Archives for Victoria Golf Club records and some economic research
Friday: Worked in the HCMC lab on transcription of Crease Letters

This works up to 33 hours, so I'll do some work on the weekend relating to the paragraph for the letters and emailing some of the social clubs for permission to publish their records, and I'll also keep reading for secondary sources. See you at the meeting!

(Also, talking with Greg today brought up some issues with how to best put up things like transcriptions. I will bring these up in our meeting and do my best to explain it as he did.)

This week's hours and activities:

Monday: meeting and theme research
Tuesday: BC Archives research on social clubs (most held off location, so did a lot of orders and went through minutes of the YW-YMCA and other smaller resources)
Wednesday: was not feeling well so worked at home on theme research and caught up on emails and transcriptions
Thursday: BC Archives for Victoria Golf Club records and some economic research
Friday: Worked in the HCMC lab on transcription of Crease Letters

This works up to 33 hours, so I'll do some work on the weekend relating to the paragraph for the letters and emailing some of the social clubs for permission to publish their records, and I'll also keep reading for secondary sources. See you at the meeting!

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't blogged for the past two weeks. I have had some very busy times with my other jobs and also some unforeseen family events and dentist appointments so these hours are a bit lower than normal. Here are my hours and events from last week (June 10-14):

Monday: meeting and theme research.
Tuesday: last trip to Anglican archives in the morning, BC archives in the afternoon (Crease Family Collection).
Wednesday: Archive meeting in the morning, theme research in the afternoon
Thursday and Friday: BC Archives for Crease Collection. Friday morning: municipal archive spreadsheet creation with Ashley.
Sunday: to make up for the lower hours I did two hours of theme reading on the weekend.

Jim, I've transcribed some of the letters from the Crease collection to show what is in them. Most of the ones I've done have been from various officers with the 29th Battalion (Vancouver) but who were from Victoria and writing to people from Victoria. Just random selections (I'll admit, the easier ones to read) have come up with descriptions of trench mouth, night-time attacks, and visits to Windsor Castle. Pretty cool! I've still got some to go through which were actually written by Arthur Crease himself, but will have a paragraph for you on Monday.

Hi all,

Monday: Meeting in the morning. Worked on themes in the afternoon.

Tuesday: Oak Bay Archives in the morning. Saanich Archives in the afternoon. Both went very well. Developed task list for remained of summer. If you want to have a look at it it is in the "Project Planning" folder on Dropbox. Feedback is welcome. I will likely amend as I think it further this week and we can discuss it at the meeting next Monday.

Thanks for letting me know about the tags, Ashley! I've changed my Archive appropriately.

This week was a nice mix of archive-diving and researching. I spent two days at the 5th Regiment Museum, and one afternoon making contact with the head of the library at the British Columbia Aviation Museum. The bulk of their WWI collection belonged to a local boy, V.R. Pauline, who died in action - they even have his flight cap and goggles, not to mention his diary! Mr. Rollins is going to arrange for me to photograph it all later this week, when the museum caretakers are in. Can't wait!

I've started going through my secondary sources, and I've had to add some new subthemes to reflect the fact that it's just not possible to say everything that needs to be said in 500 words! Is that a hard limit, out of curiosity? I'd hate to have to reduce interesting subjects just to make word count!

This week, I'll be heading to the Ashton Armoury and continuing to work on write-ups. Still waiting to hear back from the Maritime Museum and Fort Rodd Hill. The archivist at Royal Roads should be back in town tomorrow, too, so I'll try to get in touch. When Mr. Rollins gets back to me with a date for photographing that pilot's artifacts, I'll head back to Sidney. Other than that, Mr. Cotter of the 5th Regiment Museum gave me a heap of digitized photographs (including a bunch from the museum's display on Arthur Currie) that I'll add to the archive, and I still have pictures from Special Collections and the museum. They'll all find their way into the archive eventually... sorry for the slowness!! They'll get there, I promise!

See you all tomorrow!

**Kirsten: I've added "5th (BC) Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery" and "Civilian Life" as a tag so I will leave you to add those to your sheet.

Thursday and Friday: Spent the morning researching my themes and answering emails and the afternoon in the Sidney Archives. Brad gave me digital copies of all of their WWI material and I've spent some time today picking the best and uploading them to dropbox. This morning Ben and I worked on an excel spreadsheet for the archives to use. I have finalized this with Caroline (Saanich) this afternoon and will send a followup email to all of the archives on Monday.

Have a good weekend!

Sorry for my lack of blogging! Here are the hours for the week so far.

Monday: Meeting in the morning. Researched for themes in the afternoon.

Tuesday: Research for themes. Followed a lead on a possible aboriginal soldier who turned out to be identified as English in the census. Prepared for Wednesday meeting.

Wednesday: Meeting with the archivists in the morning. Thanks to Ben for taking minutes (which are in dropbox if you would like to have a look). Most weeks I will be working for the RBCM on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, so I only worked in the morning on Wednesday.

I spent the week working my way through the military fonds in UVic's Special Collections and finding books and articles to research my themes. Also made contact with the 5th Regiment Museum - heading back there tomorrow to dig into the archives, can't wait! I'm sorry to be inconvenient, but would it be reasonable for us to add a tag for the 5th (BC) Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery? Besides being a large and prominent unit in the city, the 5th manned many of the batteries around Victoria during the war, and was the first militia unit Arthur Currie joined (before he helped found the Gordon Highlanders).

Still waiting to hear back from BCAM, the Maritime Museum, UBC's Historical Newspaper Collection, Library and Archives Canada, and Vancouver City Archives (which has a few digitized photographs that were taken in Victoria during the war). The Royal Roads archivist should be back in town on the 17th. I'm also going to try to make contact with the Ashton Armoury, and am waiting to hear from Parks Canada about some photos they took of WWI-era battery sites that are not open to the public.

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to the 5th Regiment's museum to see Mr. Craig Cotter and his wonderful archive, then back to UVic to check out the last couple of fonds left there. Unless I get in touch with one of those contacts, the rest of my week will probably be spent digitizing what I find in Special Collections and researching theme write-ups.

Hope everyone has a great week!

So I have made my theme outlines, just some basic stuff to explain how I want to approach it and how I think I'll do my write up once my research is complete. I've been feeling a bit unsure/unclear and lost about archives and what I'm supposed to be looking for, so I hope it's what is needed, but I'm open to suggestions/recommendations/corrections tomorrow after I present what I think was wanted in terms of outline. I've done some work this weekend, so minutes are for that.

Hi, short day for Friday for me because of my other job and a doctor's appointment, but I kept on compiling lists of Fonds available for both the church and economy in Victoria. Should have a full and exciting week ahead!

Yesterday I went to the BC Archives and read up on some economic things (The Royal Commission on the state of coal in BC was interesting) as preparation for my economy/industry section. I also photographed some memorials at Christ Church and met with some UVic professors who provided some handy tips on where/how to look for information. Today I transcribed the 233 names from the Christ Church Honour roll and spent some time cross referencing with my other lists as I'm beginning to find duplicates. I did some preliminary background research on a few of them, just to confirm entries and see what was available in preparation for the soldier database. I have continued compiling my list of call numbers for the archives for when I return next week. Tomorrow is a short day for me as I have to work for my other job, but I will be making my Monday report for John and continuing to plan archives trips and figuring out how to search for things.

Ashley, I know you've been busy this week, but is the archives meeting still on for next week? Great work for Congress by the way!

Minutes are for Wednesday and Thursday.

Hi all, happy Tuesday,

Progress report: spent the morning in the Anglican Diocesan archives and had some good finds. The archivist let me use my camera as well and explained some of the ways students can use the archives in the future (like specifically tracking people, their archive is known for genealogy). I spent my afternoon getting registered at the BC Archives and already getting in trouble (I talked with the security guard for five minutes and he, nor anybody else, told me no bags allowed in the archives, and only once I was all the way in and talking with the information lady did she notice and tell me she was shocked that I had a bag!). Looks like there is quite a bit of info about stores and businesses, but it's difficult to track down. I will be spending my afternoons there for the rest of the week (and my mornings looking through their online collection).

I saw that a pamphlet was uploaded today, is that something I can send out to churches now?

The minutes are for yesterday and today.

I have checked my hours on here against my time sheets and this should be correct. I missed a day on our first week so the hours on this post are today and Friday, May 24.

...units of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) that were mobilized in Victoria... No. 16 Canadian Field Ambulance, Siberia 259th Battalion 260th Battalion 20th Machine Gun Company (So far I haven't been able to find sources telling me the mobilization point of all of the units of the CEFS; I'll keep digging, there may be more that assembled at Willows Camp)

... militia units active in Victoria during and just before the war... 88th Regiment Victoria Fusiliers The 50th Regiment of Foot/Gordon Highlanders of Canada 5th (British Columbia) Regiment, Canadian Garrison Artillery

...and CEF units that recruited at least some of their members from Victoria, but were mobilized elsewhere (I'm going to prioritize finding stuff on the units listed above, not quite sure where/if we'll fit these in)... 1st Battery, Canadian Field Artillery 1st Canadian Pioneer Battalion 2nd Depot Battalion, BC Regiment 7th Battalion No. 8 Overseas Battery, Canadian Siege Artillery 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish) 47th Battalion 58th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery 62nd Battalion 80th Division Pioneer Battalion

We can always shorten these names if that's more efficient, there's a manual to Great War era military abbreviations somewhere in my bookmarks... but a couple of questions: Are we creating a "Militia" tag and a "Cadets" tag? There's plenty of material on the militia, and a pretty fair amount on cadet corps... Or are we tagging them under "Service Organizations" and "Social Clubs" and leaving it at that?

Early Canadiana Online, Library and Archives Canada http://eco.canadiana.ca.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/

A page full of handy links, including lists of abbreviations used in military service files and personnel records, guides to reading medal cards, memorial cross cards, casualty forms, and records of service, and a database that contains references to First Nations soldiers. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy/022-909.006-e.html

Search Courts Martial Records from the Great War, Library and Archives Canada http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/courts-martial/001006-100.01-e.php

A List of Offences and Codes from the British Army Act, The Western Front Association http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-people/49-military-justice/161-court-martial.html

The minutes noted above are for today and the past two days. I spent 'em going through the Quarterly Militia List for March 31, 1914, and UBC's Record of Service 1914-1918, finding all the attestation papers I could from those sources, and trying to contact the City of Vancouver Archives, Royal Roads University Archives, the UBC Library, and the City of Esquimalt Municipal Archives... so far, no luck! I'll keep calling, and see what their policies are...

Recent favorite finds have been a new collection at BC Archives of photos of the 5th Regiment at Extension during the 1913 coal miner's strike, and some shots of the 48th Battalion - marching off to war, then as veterans sitting on the steps of the Legislature. I've rearranged my stuff in the Archives folder and started collecting material on Victoria's cadet corps. It turns out that Reverend G.H. Andrew was chaplain for Central School's cadets! The relevant page of the Quarterly Militia List is in your folder, Ben - I thought you might want it, if you're building a file on the good reverend! My contact at BCAM is supposed to be back in town this Tuesday, and I'm meeting with Mr. Craig Cotter of the 5th (BC) Regiment Garrison Artillery Museum this Thursday. Before I see Mr. Cotter, I'm planning to head into Special Collections, upload the relevant pages of UBC's Record of Service (so many!!), and reorganize the attestation papers.

See you all tomorrow! :D

Hello everyone,

I had a good day in UVic Special Collections, working on a list of deserters for the justice theme. When I get this in order, I will go back to Victoria City Archives, and look through their police documents for these names. Before and after special collections closed, I was working on going through the early magazines of University School. After I finish writing all the captions (pointing people to noteworthy pages in each one, since each magazine is 32 pages), I'll upload those all at once. The reason I haven't uploaded anything yet is because I'm waiting for legal clearance to do so. I am also finalizing the list of education-related documents we want from Victoria City Archives, and I will upload that when it is done. I'm still waiting to hear back from the photographer about the pictures of Vic High memorials, but hopefully, that he will respond soon.

Monday morning, I have an appointment with the archivist from Glenlyon Norfolk about the records for Norfolk House School. Much of next week I will spend with the St. Michaels archivist, getting documents from them.

See you on Monday!

Hi,

I've spent the day continuing to build my church database and contact them all (or discern which ones should be contacted). I'm now up to 100 contacts for churches and individuals! I'll be continuing to arrange meetings with them and find relevant information through the coming weeks. I've worked most of today at the HCMC and talked to Greg about our dropbox issues. He says he may look into downloading the dropbox app for these computers here so we can use them the same way as our home computer (see below if you missed that). If he does, it will make our work in the lab a bit easier and less likely to mess up our programs. Now if only he could do something about these darn ergonomic keyboards...!

Kirsten and Ashley, in case you for some reason need to cross reference soldiers with church members, I've started a second page in my archive file for honour rolls. As I find more, I will continue to update it with names by church, and include indication of death if it is shown on the original roll. When I meet with the larger archives next week and the week after, I'll look for membership registers that can also be used for cross referencing.

I am cutting out early today, I just found out my house is being sold and we are having an appraiser in on Monday morning, so I've got to (literally) clean house and get everything in order before then. I'll make up the hours in the coming weeks.

So I've put a pdf into my Archives folder called Unit List and CEF Guide. The CEF Guide is just a visual I cobbled together from a couple of books and sites, a diagram of how the Canadian Expeditionary Force was organized (ie, what's bigger, a battalion or a brigade? What Division was the 62nd Battery part of?) and lists of all the units active overseas as of November, 1918. This is mostly for my own reference, but I thought I'd share it in case anybody else was interested! The Unit List names and records the activities of militia and CEF units that were mobilized in Victoria, or drew recruits from Victoria, or both, according to Library and Archives Canada. Unfortunately, their records are missing a few details - they do not have places of mobilization or places of recruitment for every unit they describe. The CEF units listed are just those that are recorded in their CEF unit guides as having been mobilized in Victoria and/or formed, at least in part, of Victorian recruits. It goes without saying that not all of the men who joined these units were from Victoria, but there's also a good chance that there were Victorians who signed up with units not listed here. There's got to be a way to find them too, though...

I have to apologize for the sparseness of the information related to the militia units I list - I am honestly not sure how many militia units were in the city during the war years. I couldn't find any lists of wartime militia units from reputable sources, nevermind a list that determined each unit's city of origin. I'm really sorry about this, but I will try to find out more about Victoria's militia once I get back to Victoria and into the collections of the Princess Mary's and the 5th Regiment.

When it comes to tagging, at this stage we could enter every unit as a tag and see how much we find - as I said, some of these units recruited in Victoria but mobilized elsewhere, so it's quite possible that the soldiers left nothing behind but an attestation paper or two before they shipped out. From what I've seen so far, there's a fair bit to be found on the 88th Regiment Victoria Fusiliers, the 30th Battalion, the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles Regiment, the Gordon Highlanders/50th Regiment of Foot, and the 5th BC Regiment Canadian Artillery. Tags will have to take into account the fact that some units changed names and designations during the war; we could use slashed tags to indicate this (as in, 48th Battalion/3rd Pioneer Battalion) or just make two separate tags and apply them to every item we have pertaining to both the original unit and the renamed unit. I'll leave the decision up to Ashley and Jim!

If anybody finds any problems in the unit list or CEF guide, please tell me! I'll be tweaking them as I learn more, and would be grateful to know of any mistakes I've made!

I had a great day! The Victoria City Archives doesn't have detailed finding aids, so you have to ask the archivists to retrieve a lot of the collections, and go through them yourself to figure out what is in there, which is extremely enjoyable. I was there today going through personal records which contained photos of schoolchildren, and I finished off searching their city records relating to education on the online catalogue after they closed. I believe I have a complete list of education documents/photos from the city archives, so I will upload that list to dropbox tomorrow. First, though, I am going to UVic special collections to get a list of deserters from the 88th, so I can look them up in the police records for the 'justice' theme. I have also been going through the early yearbooks for University school, and writing captions to point future archive visitors to the most interesting parts. I will try and finish those tomorrow and put them on dropbox as well. I also contacted the photographer who took the really outstanding shots of the war memorials at Vic high and put them on flickr to ask for his permission to put them on the archive, so hopefully he gets back to me soon. Ben, I will email you his contact info.

Is anyone interested in following up with the President-Elect of Rotary? This doesn't fall under my two themes, but I will if Ben and Ashley are too busy.

Hannah: I'll do Rotary, but probably after I finish with the churches. The contact info would be greatly appreciated! -Ben

Hi, I'm adding photos to my archive folder from the Saanich Archives online site. Do we have permission to use them yet?

Ashley and I met yesterday to figure out the proper workings of the Dropbox and Excel spreadsheets and as she mentioned it looks like it is working well now. I did some final troubleshooting, reading and experiments with it today and came up with this suggestion in case people haven't done so yet:

Go to the Dropbox website and find the download button in the top right. If you download a dropbox folder, you have access to all your files right on your computer. This is handy not only for easier navigation, but it also works for saving items as if they were on your own hard drive (open a file from the dropbox folder on your computer, simply click save when you're finished, and it returns automatically to the dropbox folder). This is also handy for updating files that only you are working on because (contrary to what I thought yesterday Ashley) it works even when not connected to the internet. How? Well it saves the files on your computer and then automatically updates when next connected. This saves a lot of the issues we were having with multiple copies of one document or having things both on computers and online. Hope this makes sense!

As for me, I was with Hannah at St. Ann's in the morning, met with Ashley about the Excel sheet and to discuss archive requirements in the afternoon, and dropped by the Anglican Diocese archives in preparation for my visit on Monday. I was surprised to find out the Christ Church Cathedral is actually a newer building (1929) and that most of their artifacts are from the Second World War. So the archives will be my primary source for that congregation and the others from the 1913-1919 period. When I was there I ran into a city counsellor who was very interested in our project and wants to be kept up to date. Networking! Today as I wait to hear back from churches again, I'm updating my archive folder and continuing background research on the churches so I have a better picture of what to look for in the archives and what Victoria's faith community looked like in 1913. My minutes are for both days because I have to run to my other job right at five today.

Ashley: Was the person you networked with Julie Cormier? I don't know if you were there early enough to meet her. I met with her in the morning and she is very interested in sharing some of her information (her society is in the midst of creating an early-Victoria church walking tour and we will be meeting in a few weeks once that has calmed down for her).

Kirsten: Your Excel sheet is going to be a bit different from everyone else's because you are using a Mac. Let me know if you're having any problems with it, I've left it as is and will take a look at it on your computer. The best thing for us would be either getting Excel for Mac or a program that can save files in Excel for PC format or Ashley may have problems keeping yours up to date/transferring information.

I've made us each a separate spreadsheet in the dropbox folders for each of us. We had multiple versions of the combined spreadsheet in dropbox yesterday and I was worried about loosing data becasue more than one of us is making changes at the same time.

I've also updated the tags in each spreadsheet. I think that the tags should be thematic rather than descriptive of the document. For example, I've removed photograph and document. That information should be in the description section. I'm envisioning that the tags will be used to organize the archive. So students will follow from one document to the next via a tag. A student may want to follow the Oak Bay connection from one photo to the next but isn't likely to follow a connection between two photos because they are both photos.

If you are adding new tags to your sheet, think about the scope. For example, I've used religion rather than church to keep the number of tags to a manageable size. I will give everyone time to visit a few archives and add some documents, so that we can see if we need to add more tags, and in a week or two we can finalize the list.

In the meantime, if you add new tags to your sheet, please tell us in your blog post so that we can add it to our own sheets. I want to avoid losing data becasue there are multiple people working on the same sheet. Kirsten and I have been discussing more descriptive military tags and she will have those for us soon.

Don't feel like you have to fill in all 4 tags. The spaces are there in case you need them, but aren't all necessary.

I've also been talking with Special Collections and library administration about the possibility of using their equipment to digitize documents that some of the municipal archives are unable to digitize. I would like to hear back about this before the meeting I am planning with the archivists from the municipal archives in two weeks.

We've set a tentative date and time to meet with the archives as June 12 at 10am. I'll be calling the archives tomorrow to invite them and arranging for the room.

I joined Ben and Hannah at the Catholic Legacies conference in the afternoon for a tour of the St. Ann's Archives. It was great to meet their archivist Carey and I also spoke with the chair of the Friends of the Sisters of St. Ann's Academy, who said that she would be happy to help us in anyway she can. I will send her an email tomorrow morning explaining a bit more about the project.

This evening and tomorrow morning I will be working on defining my 2 themes for the website so that I will have them to discuss at the meeting on Monday.

*The hours are for today and for the few hours I will work tomorrow morning. I am working for the Congress for the next week so I won't be working on the project much. I will keep up with reading the blog and feel free to contact me with an questions or concerns you have.

I will update the write-up I am keeping for myself about what I am doing in dropbox, but here are the highlights for the past two days:

I visited Victoria High, where, as I believe someone mentioned in our meeting, they are doing a website about the school during WWI. They seemed worried that we would steal their thunder if we used some of their archival material, but I told them that this was the last thing we wanted to do. I said that if Jim permitted it, we would put some of the most interesting stuff they have on our archive, credit them as a source, and instead of a 481 student doing a microhistory on Vic High, link to their website. I was given a tour of their archive. It contains, first, detailed information on Vic High alumni who served in WWI, most of it borrowed from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, but supplemented with their own research. They have one soldiers’ personal photo albums, and records pertaining to alumni Bobby Powell, who was a Canadian tennis star, and who might make an interesting feature on our website. They have class registers, provincial exam results, registration cards from 1916, and The Camosun, the school paper from the war years. They also have some of the principal’s correspondence. They do want to work with us though, and will apply for formal permission from the alumni association, who owns the archival material. In addition, they are extremely enthusiastic about being a pilot school for the educational package, and I promised to put them in touch with Jeremy as soon as he gets here. I also took photos of their war memorials, which I will put on the spreadsheet as soon as Ben and Ashley create the drop-down menu. A few years ago, the archivist had a professional photographer photograph all their memorials. She gave me some information on him, and I am going to try and track him down to give us permission to use the images.

I met with the archivist from St. Michael’s University School, and she has arranged for me to come back next week. She will share with me photos she has done of their school trophies from that time period, and the list of names she has of people who left St. Michaels and served in the war. She has also given me permission to borrow digital copies of the School’s yearbook “the Black and Red,” which is on their website, and put it on our archive. The Old Boys’ column in “Black and Red,” tracks the alumni serving, and she has it from the WWI years. She has also agreed to let me photograph school clothing from that era, and to let me scan the principal’s diary from the time period.

Since our meeting, I have been going through Victoria City Archives, and looking at detailed finding aids, collections, and what not, figuring out exactly what we will want to put on the archive, and then I will give the list to Jim.

I attended the UVic Catholic Legacy in Victoria Symposium, and got some background information about the Sisters of St. Ann, which will be helpful in the education/medical section. Ashley and I have agreed that when I am visiting the Sisters' archives, I will get the information for her about the medical side of things, because she is supervising, and this will save her some time.

I have been in contact with the School District archivist, and also the Old Cemeteries Society. I spoke to them about sharing what information they have on soldiers buried in Ross Bay for our soldiers database, and they are going to talk to their research committee, and call me back.

The minutes are for yesterday and today.

Hello all,

This morning I met with the volunteer from Oak Bay archives that is compiling a list of WWI veterans. He is interested in working together to compile the list so that we can share the information. Caroline Duncan from Saanich Archives was at Oak Bay today and we tentatively planned a meeting with the archivists and main volunteers from the municipal archives in Greater Victoria for June 12. I'm working on making contacts at the UVic library so that we can offer to digitize some materials for Saanich (and possibly other archives who don't have the resources to digitize larger items). I'll keep you up to date on that planning.

In the afternoon I met with a contact from the View Royal Archives who provided me with photos of her father, who was a POW held in Germany for 3 years. She also has an oral history that I now have the transcript for. The audio file is held in the Canadian War Museum so I am going to be in contact with them to see if they have digitized the file from the cassette form. If not, we can include the transcript or see if we are able to digitize it in the library. I'll upload those to dropbox tomorrow.

I've also been contacting band offices today. I haven't had much luck yet but I'm waiting to hear back from some offices.

I uploaded my contact list into my folder on dropbox. Feel free to use any of the contacts if you need them.

Today was fun, went out again to see some churches "in the field." First I visited St. Stephen's out in Saanichton (a beautiful church if anyone wants a photographing spot) and the rector gave me a free copy of their church history book. Their cemetery had some good grave stones and they had a rather large and detailed honour roll which will be very handy for cross-referencing. Then I stopped in for a visit with the rector of St. Mary's who had some amazing things to show me. There are plenty of monuments to look at and the colours of the 88th regiment which are almost falling apart. She had photocopies of church histories and the personal story of the Rev. Andrews who served overseas. She also has some info on a woman's wood carving guild which she said was very special in the community back then.

Spent the afternoon building up some photos in the archive, hope they work! Hannah, I'll be joining you tomorrow, hopefully they got my registration email! HCMC is kicking me out now, see some of you tomorrow.

Ben

Hi everyone,

I found a place on campus to borrow a digital camera yesterday, so I could get started. I then headed down to Victoria City Archives. I had a different archivist than before, and they told me that I should not take photos of anything until they have worked out a licensing agreement with Jim. Instead, I was instructed to go through absolutely everything, make a complete list of everything I would want to scan or photograph, and then submit it to Jim with the paperwork so he could arrange for the payment of fees and what not. So, I am just going through finding aids and inventories, looking at artifacts, and deciding everything that I will photograph right now. I may put this on hold for today though, if I can get a hold of the archivist at Victoria High. They only come in on Tuesday, so I might go down there and check their collection out. At 4 pm, I have an appointment at St. Michael's.

The minutes are from Friday and yesterday.

Hi everyone,

I found a place on campus to borrow a digital camera yesterday, so I could get started. I then headed down to Victoria City Archives. I had a different archivist than before, and they told me that I should not take photos of anything until they have worked out a licensing agreement with Jim. Instead, I was instructed to go through absolutely everything, make a complete list of everything I would want to scan or photograph, and then submit it to Jim with the paperwork so he could arrange for the payment of fees and what not. So, I am just going through finding aids and inventories, looking at artifacts, and deciding everything that I will photograph right now. I may put this on hold for today though, if I can get a hold of the archivist at Victoria High. They only come in on Tuesday, so I might go down there and check their collection out. At 4 pm, I have an appointment at St. Michael's.

Hello all,

I've updated the spreadsheet for the documents we're collecting and saved it in the "Archive" folder on Dropbox. I've also made us each a folder there to upload documents. Make sure that all documents uploaded to your folder are entered into the spreadsheet and labeled with the reference number you've assigned it. This could become a mess if we don't keep things organized from the beginning. If you want to add a new tag, or change an existing one, make sure that you add it in all the sheets so that the tags are consistent. It will probably be easier for me to make the tags more board in the future, so if you're not sure about a tag, it is better if it's more specific.

I also went to the View Royal Archives today. One volunteer has compiled a book about her father who was held in Germany as a POW for 3 years. I'm in contact with her sister to get digital copies of the oral histories, letters, and photographs she used.

I've also been in contact with the Central Saanich Archives and they are keen to be involved.

In the afternoon, I started to call the local band offices. I have a few good leads and I will follow them tomorrow!

Ashley

Hi,

I had a field trip day today, going out to Sooke and Colwood which garnered all the names of Soldiers from Jordan River to 17 Mile House (98 soldiers) including which ones died, as well as checking out some grave sites and getting contact info for historians at the Sooke Museum and Colwood Historical Commission who have each written books about the area during our time period. In Colwood I met with Dick Emory whose father served as a signalman in France with the 88th and was wounded there. He had some great artifacts including the original discharge papers, his father's pay book, and the telegrams sent to his family when he was injured. He also had some good photographs. He'll keep me informed of further finds and any developments from the Historical Commission. My plans for the rest of the week include a date with some regimental colours, checking out some local church honour rolls, and possibly visiting Pearkes' grave. I've been in contact with all the Anglican churches now, so I'll start moving into the other smaller-number denominations this week too.

(I was going to post a photo of what I found today, but my computer won't read my camera card at the moment, so I'll get back to you on that one...)

The minutes noted below are from Friday, this weekend, and today. I'm still working on a list and lineages of units that were active in Victoria during the war. I was just going to use it for my own reference, but would something like that be of interest to anybody else? I can stick it in the Dropbox if so!

My Dropbox folder has some of the attestation papers and photographs I've found so far - personal favorites include the 30th Battalion parading past the Legislature and swarming over the SS Mary's rigging. Research plans for the week include a visit to the Bay Street Armory, 13 oral histories available online through UVic's special collections, and finishing off a list of items I'll hunt for at the BC Archives.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to get to the Maritime Museum or into the hard-copy Special Collections until the end of the week. My grandfather had a heart attack on Friday, and they moved him down here from Nanaimo yesterday. He's heading into open heart surgery tomorrow morning. It won't be his first, and he had surgery for circulation problems in his lower intestine barely a month ago. My dad and aunt are coming down this afternoon, and staying with me tonight. I will try to get some work done here and there... but I'll be spending as much time as I can with my family.

Hiya, I spent most of my day on the phone, slowly going through my list. It seems most of the Anglican churches have office hours early in the weeks, so I didn't get a hold of too many, but I have been invited to the Colwood Historical Association meeting on Monday as well as to Dick Emory's house to see his private collection of artifacts and newspaper clippings from when his father served and was wounded in France! That is probably the most exciting, although I located many churches from the 1910's and learned a bit about the Anglican mission in the 1870s from a very chatty Rector's Assistant. I also located the church where Pearkes is burried and another whose reverend served with the 88th Regiment, Victoria Fusiliers. All churches seemed interested in circulating a poster in the coming weeks.

Another vital piece of information is that the Anglican archives close for July and August, so I'm hoping to arrange multiple visits but may want someone to join me for some of them as those archives hold a lot of info and are only open two half-days a week. I will keep you posted. I guess that takes away all my show and tell for tomorrow, but I'll see you all then!

Ben

PS: because I'm contacting so many groups, I've made a new email for myself just for CGTW. If you want to make this your primary contact info for me it will help me keep things all in one place. It is ben.cgtw@gmail.com

You may notice that when you add images to a blog post it tries to display them at full size, sometimes cropping an edge. To make them easier to view, here's a trick.
After adding the image to a post, look at what the blog engine dropped in to your post editor. It looks like this:

<div class="image_block"><img src="http://hcmc.uvic.ca/blogs/media/blogs/cgtw/poster4.jpg" alt="" title="" width="987" height="1281" /></div>

The width and height attributes are representative of the pixel size of the image. We can adjust them to make it fit a little better by fiddling the numbers. If we reduce each number by, say, 50% we end up with this:

<div class="image_block"><img src="http://hcmc.uvic.ca/blogs/media/blogs/cgtw/poster4.jpg" alt="" title="" width="494" height="640" /></div>

Notice that these are rounded to the nearest whole number. If you try to keep image no wider than about 400 or 500 pixels they'll look better in the blog. Also, please note that this does NOT change the size of the original image. It ONLY changes the display size in the blog. Right-clicking and saving will store a full-size version.

Hi everyone!

Sorry I did not blog at the end of the day. I started off searching BC Archives' collections for material on police/court activity and war resistors, and then I went down there to talk to the archivist in person. Unfortunately, they told me there would be numerous legal challenges involved in accessing some of the material. I will report what they said in more detail on Friday, but for now I have a basic list of what is open to us. I then looked at what BC Archives has for education, and found some useful school records, some oral histories with Victoria high alumni, and other material. While I was there, I also looked at the music scene in Victoria during our time period so that we might have some audio clips for the website. BC Archives has concert programs from various musical societies, and piano sheet music about Victoria, by Victoria composers and published in Victoria. If we can't find any recordings, I could always record myself playing it and put the clip on the website.

Then I checked out the legislative library, and talked to the lovely reference librarian about what records pertaining to education and the provincial government are there. I think I have an almost complete list of what public schools were in operation during the time period, based on a masters thesis on microfilm she showed me. Today, I am going to Victoria City Archives first. I was hoping to find school board minutes yesterday, although these may not give us the interesting stories we are hoping to feature, so I will keep looking for other material. I have an appointment with the archivist at St. Michael's. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, and it sounds like they have great records on the school's veterans. I am going to call all the old private schools, and Victoria High, and talk to them about records.

I've spent the day looking for municipal and community archives. So far my list is:

Sooke Region Musuem
Metchosin Museum Society
Esquimalt Municipal Archives
View Royal Community Archives
Oak Bay Archives
Saanich Archives
Goldstream Archives
Sidney Museum and Archives

It seems that Langford does not have an archive, as much as I've looked for it. Let me know if there are any I've neglected! I have finding aids for some of these and the rest I'll be calling tomorrow. I've also found some useful material in the BC Archives for medical history. Tomorrow I'll be following up with the the Chinese Presbyterian Church and calling local First Nations bands to see if they would be interested in advertising in their newsletter or mailing list.

Wow, things are really kicking off! Love the posters and excited to hear what everyone else found.

As for me, I've started my contact list of churches and social organizations (did you know there are 162 places of worship in this town?) and will be cold-calling them tomorrow. I will be starting with the organizations I know existed 100 years ago, and then as the project moves forward I will start reaching out to newer groups to see if their members have other information - which will be greatly aided by those posters. The things I will look for first are if the groups have lists of members who served, members from the time, any archival materials, and monuments, and from there I will build a list of places worth visiting.

Wish I could join you at the air museum, have a great time. I'm signing off early today to enjoy a birthday dinner, see you all Friday!

Ben

It was great meeting you all today and I'm looking forward to working with you all through the summer! I thought I would post one of my favorite newspaper articles from the project I mentioned today. Blayney was the oldest of the Scott brothers and the event that earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross is outlined in the article on the left. It's a pretty unbelievable story!

Happy hunting tomorrow.