Online databases make it easier than ever for Canadians to discover the stories of their family members who served in the First World War a century ago.
The place to begin your search is among the wealth of resources offered online for free by Library and Archives Canada. Their Soldiers of the First World War database has attestation papers of most of the 640,000 soldiers, chaplains and nursing sisters who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. By 2016, that database will be expanded to include the complete service files of each member which will be a boon to amateur genealogists tracing their family history.
Simply type a name into the search page and see what turns up. The more information you have about an individual you are researching, the better, because there can be a lot of people with similar names in the listings.
From these attestation papers and service records, you can determine which unit your relative served in, where they were stationed and the dates they were overseas. Armed with that information, you can browse the official war diaries of the appropriate unit for mentions of your relative, also available from the Library and Archives website. These war diaries are official records of a regiment’s daily activities in the field and contain information about casualties, patrols and other incidents deemed noteworthy at the time. The diaries are scans of individual pages from the diary so they are not easily searched, but you can flip through the pages fairly easily.
Colonel Charles Yardley Weaver’s attestation paper ie an example of what can be found in the Soldiers of the Great War database.
Handout photo, Colin Bennett
“There can be a lot of emotion involved,” said Claire Banton, Chief of the Orientation Services Section of Library and Archives Canada while discussing family research online. “People find information about their family and it really strikes a chord. For them, it is tangible, concrete evidence of what happened to their ancestor and they find that quite moving or it resolves a family mystery. For example, an individual was never heard from after the war and they don’t know if they passed away during the war or went somewhere else so the service record file can answer that kind of question.”
Banton leads a team of genealogy consultants who help people use the Archive’s resources. These consultant won’t do any of the searching for you, but they can offer assistance to help you better find what you are looking for. They handle about 700 requests a month and the number has been rising along with interest in the First World War centenary.
If your relative died overseas, Library and Archives Canada also has scans of the Circumstances of Death Registers, which give details about casualties and how they were killed. For information about where they are buried and the inscription on their headstone, you can also consult an online database operated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
One thing you’ll discover when looking over these documents is that people of the time had impeccable handwriting, but since these are military records, a stupendous number of official jargon, acronyms and abbreviations are used. The Library and Archives website has a page that helps you decode them.
If you can’t wait for a soldier’s full service record to be digitized, you can request a copy of the paper record, which can often run into dozens of pages in length, from Library and Archives for a fee.
“In a lot of cases, the individual did not speak in great detail about their service when they came back so (the service record) fills in gaps that the family didn’t get to hear from the individual themselves,” said Banton.
Another online option to consider is Ancestry.ca, a subscription website which ties together a lot of public databases and a few unique to them. The site makes it easy to search these databases simultaneously and collect the information you find in a family tree that you can add to as you find out more about your relatives’ history. They offer a two-week free trial if you want to see what they offer.
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The Great War Memory Project
Lesley Anderson, a Content Specialist and genealogist who has worked with Ancestry.ca for the past seven years is enthusiastic about the exercise of tracing someone’s military history.
“I know nothing about the war,” she said, “but by doing research, it really connects you to history, It really makes you want to know what your ancestor, or the person you are researching, was doing. What did they look like? What were they thinking? What were they eating?”
She has researched people beyond her family tree and found lots of interesting and heart-breaking stories.
“When you see these people through the documents and you get to know what they signed up for, where they were and then you go to the circumstances of casualty (records) or perhaps get a clue into the medals that they received, all of a sudden, they are people. We all know about the war, but all of a sudden they are like a part of your family and they were part of you and you think of their sacrifice in a different light.”
Online resources:
Soldiers of the First World War
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/canadian-expeditionary-force.aspx
Guide to Military Abbreviations
www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/Pages/military-abbreviations.aspx
How to read a service casualty form
www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/Pages/read-service-record-casualty-form.aspx
Official war diaries
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/archivianet/020152_e.html
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
http://www.cwgc.org
Ancestry.ca