All posts by Janice Hamilton

Janice Hamilton is a Montreal-based writer, genealogist and photographer.
Genealogy societies

QFHS invites members to submit recommendations on bylaw changes

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If you are a member of the Quebec Family History Society (QFHS), this important article is for you:

The QFHS will hold a special general meeting of its members on September 13, 2014 for approval to obtain a Certificate of Continuance, a document that grants the organization continuance as a federally incorporated not-for-profit society.

Also on the meeting agenda is a discussion of possible future changes to its constitution. Members have been invited to submit written recommendations for changes to the bylaws, which were written in 1992. The deadline for these submissions is August 13.

The meeting is open to all members in good standing. The official notice of the meeting was included in the Summer 2014 issue of Connections and can also be found on the society’s website, www.qfhs.ca. The society’s current bylaws can be found in the members-only section of the website.

The notice that appeared in Connections did not explain the need for this special meeting. The federal government has written a new law, called the NFP Act, governing federally-incorporated not-for-profit corporations such as ours. The society must revise its bylaws to obtain its Certificate of Continuance.

The deadline to obtain a Certificate of Continuance is Oct. 17, 2014. All corporations that don’t meet the deadline will be automatically dissolved.

With its wonderful library and charitable tax status, the QFHS is a valuable part of the English-language community in Quebec. Recently, it has also begun serving people with ancestors from France, northern Europe, Italy and other places. We need to ensure that the society not only survives, but continues to thrive.

Last winter, about a dozen concerned QFHS members, including myself, met monthly to discuss concerns about the society. In January, we sent a petition to the QFHS board, requesting a special general meeting of the membership to discuss changes to the bylaws. The meeting planned for September – almost nine months after the petition was sent — is a response to that request.

The members of our group love the society, but we are concerned about the lack of transparency and would like members to have more say about how the organization is run. This meeting call is a perfect example of our frustrations. Most members don’t know why it is being called or what steps the board has taken to meet the deadline to comply with Canada’s new NFP Act. Many organizations have already completed the transition process and, as far as we know, we have not even begun it.

We are also concerned that members won’t have much time for discussion during this meeting because a special guest speaker that we’d all like to hear will present at the same time.

We intend to prepare our own list of suggested bylaw changes. The QFHS bylaws are neither long nor complicated, and there are just a few key changes we would like to see, such as voting rights for members who do not live in the Montreal area, but who make up almost half the society’s membership. We would also like to see a limit on the number of times a director can be re-elected.

All members should take this opportunity to look at the bylaws in the members-only section of the website and send in their recommendations.

Also, more members should consider stepping up and running for election to the board of directors. For an organization like ours to thrive and improve the society for its members, there should be a rotation of new board members after each term. This rotation will bring in new expertise and ideas.

The special meeting will take place at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, September 13, Briarwood Presbyterian Church Hall, 70 Beaconsfield Blvd., Beaconsfield, QC. Please be there.

Written recommendations for changes to the bylaws should be mailed to: QFHS, P.O. Box 715, 15 Donegani Ave., Pointe Claire, QC, H9R 4S8. Attention: Robert Poole. The deadline is Aug. 13.

 

For more information:

The following link has a summary of the features of the new act and what societies need to do to meet its requirements. http://www.csae.com/Resources/ArticlesTools/View/ArticleId/1771/Navigating-Canada-s-Not-for-Profit-Corporations-Act.

For an introduction to the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (NFP Act) prepared by Industry Canada, see http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cd-dgc.nsf/eng/cs04958.html

This page explains, “The corporation must replace its letters patent, supplementary letters patent (if any) and by-laws with new charter documents. This means that you need to submit articles of continuance to obtain a Certificate of Continuance as well as create and file new by-laws. The articles and by-laws must comply with the NFP Act.”

It adds, “Corporations that do not make the transition by the deadline will be assumed to be inactive and will be dissolved. For registered charities, dissolution could lead to the revocation of their registration as a charity, which would result in the corporation having to pay revocation tax equal to 100% of the value of their remaining assets.”

Another page describes the transition process: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cd-dgc.nsf/eng/h_cs04954.html

And this page is helpful because it explains mandatory and default rules: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cd-dgc.nsf/eng/cs04967.html

Finally, the QFHS is not alone in having governance issues. Here is a link to a series of articles prepared by the Federation of Genealogical Societies in the U.S. to help organizations meet challenges such as developing marketing and communications strategies, managing volunteers, understanding parliamentary procedure and running elections: http://www.fgs.org/cpage.php?pt=55

France, Genealogy societies, Research tips

Learn How to Research French Archives

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One of the most experienced researchers in the Quebec Family History Society is also one of the group’s most generous members. Jacques Gagné, who has researched the records of the Protestant churches of Quebec, Scandinavian genealogy, the Huguenots, Loyalists, Acadians, Aboriginal families and other ancestral groups, has recently turned his attention to France. Now he is willing to train other members of the QFHS to research their ancestors in France. This is a unique opportunity, not only for anyone with French Canadian roots, but for those who want to expand their genealogical skills and to give back to the genealogical community.

Jacques has compiled links to the archives of 92 out of 95 departments of France into a single pdf document, which you can download from this link: Master copy 10 12 13 Les Archives départementales en France. Also included are maps so that you can figure out which modern department holds the historic records you need to find.

Updated dates: Jacques will be volunteering at the QFHS library on May 20 and May 23, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you are interested in researching your ancestors in France, come to the library on one of those days to learn how. Once you have experience in researching your own ancestors, Jacques hopes you will be willing to pass on that knowledge to others.

 

 

Quebec

Montreal’s Black Market Babies

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In the late 1940s and early 1950s, 1,000 babies were sold to adoptive parents through a black market baby ring that operated in Quebec. Most of the babies were born to unwed French Canadian mothers, most of the adoptive families were Jewish. Some of the children went to homes in Quebec and Ontario, and many grew up in the United States.

In 1984, my husband found out he had been adopted and that his parents had paid about $2,000 for him. About 15 years later, he found out about the black market baby ring that had arranged his adoption. Ever since then, he has been sharing his story with friends, with community groups and through the media. Several years ago, Global television told the story of Harold’s search for his birth mother on the program Past Lives.

This week, the Montreal CTV station aired a news feature about the black market baby ring. It puts Harold’s story in context, explaining how most of the mothers who gave birth out of wedlock had no choice but to give up their babies. Harold counts himself lucky that he ended up in a good home and not in an orphanage.

The ring was broken up 60 years ago this year. Some of the birth mothers have no doubt died, and many of their children are probably still trying to find them. The story is still fascinating.

Here is a link to that six-minute CTV feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNKTqkZmIGE

Karen Balcom of McMaster University has written a book that addresses this topic: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada, 1930-1972 Studies in Gender and History, University of Toronto Press, 2011.

You can learn more about Montreal’s black market baby ring on the Parent Finders Montreal website, http://www.pfmtl.org/BMB/index.html. At the bottom of the page, there is a list of dates, pages and titles of old newspaper articles about the case. Paste in the url for one of these stories from The Gazette, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=Fr8DH2VBP9sC&dat=19540215&printsec=frontpage&hl=en, and from there you can easily browse the newspaper to find the other articles.

There is a Montreal Black Market Baby Facebook page.

Feb. 23 2016, this post has been updated. The link to the CTV feature now works.

genealogy

Remembering the 9.5 Million Dead of World War I

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Canadian actor and playwright R. H. Thomson has undertaken a remarkable project to commemorate the names of the more than nine million people who died in World War I, individually, and at the exact time of each person’s death, no matter what the person’s nationality or military rank.

Over the next four years, those names will appear in various ways. They will be streamed to computers, tablets and cell phones. They will be displayed on the walls of buildings or in public spaces. And they will be distributed in an app to museums, schools and universities.

Among the many nations participating are Canada, the U.K., Germany and France. Russia, where more people died than anywhere else, is considering its participation, but may have difficulty because some of the archives were destroyed. Some countries have declined to take part.

To learn more, go to http://theworldremembers.ca. You can listen to Michael Enright’s Feb. 23, 2014 interview with R. H. Thomson at www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/.

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Old Weaving Loom In Use

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weaving loomI took this photo of a weaving loom at the National Museum of Scotland (www.nms.ac.uk)  in Edinburgh two years ago. My interest stems from the fact that my great-great grandfather was a weaver in Lesmahagow, near Glasgow, before he came to Canada. Even though I have seen quite a few old looms, I wasn’t sure how they operate.

Today I found a short video on the BBC News website that shows a loom in operation. This loom, rescued from an old barn in Wales, is powered by the weaver’s feet to make cloth for fashion designers. The video can be seen at www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26179200.

To read my article about Robert Hamilton, a Lesmahagow weaver who emigrated to Scarborough, Upper Canada, in 1829, see http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2013/12/from-lesmahagow-to-scarborough.html