About 30 genealogy societies and archival centres will hold more than 85 events during Quebec’s National Genealogy Week — Semaine nationale de la généalogie — that runs from Saturday, November 19 to Saturday, November 26.
Organized by the Quebec Federation of Genealogy Societies (Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie), National Genealogy Week is an opportunity for organizations to promote what they do and offer, while the Federation handles promotion. Seventy genealogy societies are members of the Federation.
Ideas for societies outside Quebec
Even if your society is located outside the province, you can benefit by looking at the list of activities being offered and perhaps hold a similar event within your own community to generate interest in family history.
With the exception of the bilingual description of the Family History Center’s Open House in Montreal on Saturday, November 26, the calendar of activities is entirely in French. Too bad, for at least the third year in a row, not one English-speaking genealogy society will participate.
More than 85 events
To provide inspiration for ideas, here are some of the types of events that will be held. All are free, but some require registration.
Guided tours: All of the Quebec Archives centres will offer tours of their facilities.
Beginner workshops: Learn how to build a family tree for free — volunteers explain how to use FamilySearch and other free online databases. Registration usually required.
Workshops: Several topics, including how to search for ancestors; how to find land records; and how to use online databases.
School visits: Society members will visit elementary schools to encourage students to build a family tree. They will show documents and the tools required.
Museum visits: Elementary school students will visit a local museum where genealogy society members will talk about family history.
Open houses: Guided tours of the society’s library and online databases.
Book launch: One society will host an event to launch a new history book.
Coffee-chat: The history and genealogy society in Matane will hold a café-causerie on post-war aviation in eastern Quebec. A former pilot will deliver a presentation.
Public library: Help people research their ancestry at the local library.
Presentations: One of the presentations is about the Drouin Genealogical Institute’s Genealogy Quebec website.
The full calendar is available here.
Gail,
If you open the website you can translate all pages into English by right-clicking and selecting the instruction to do so. At least i could do so after opening the French website using Google Chrome.
That way, even someone like me who does not remembers everything I took in French class in high school can still find out what is on the various websites written in other languages.
I believe it will also work for other languages.
Great advice, Wayne. Thanks for explaining.
For those who do not use Google Chrome, take a look at my blog post, “How to easily translate a French website into English,” where I explain how to use Google Translate. http://genealogyalacarte.ca/?p=8193 Google The translation is not perfect, but it is often pretty darn close and it helps you understand more than the gist of the site.