The passing of the years

 

                                     The house on Stiles Street in Winnipeg where my grandparents lived in 1926

As the years pass things change. I grow older too, a not so welcome result at my end of the age spectrum. That's the less welcome part of change. But there are compensations. Like advances in medicine so we have the chance to lead longer, healthier lives, advances in technology so the search for our ancestors becomes easier or, sometimes, more complex. There can be another added complication when storage devices change so that digital records, once safely copied, are no longer accessible. So, not all progress is helpful. 

The passing of the years brings something else - the release of new historical records which are now deemed old enough for the public to access. Those dates vary from country to country with the US being the most liberal, at least when it comes to the census. It must be nice to bring the family so far forward in time but, unfortunately, I don't know of any of my family living in the US in the 1950s, although they did drift in and out of that country at other times.

The new records that piqued my interest recently were the 1921 English census. It was wonderful to be able to see the groupings of my father's family, the people who were still living in the parental home/business, knowing that I could choose to look for his other siblings with their own families if I wanted to. Of course, the release of that census wasn't as thrilling as it would have been if the 1939 Register hadn't been released already.

The 1939 Register was a boon to researchers. This war related count of people made it easy to find relatives providing a hundred years had passed since their birth. Well, easy to find most of them but not my maternal grandmother yet. I was able to see my mother's entry on the register. It became available this year. There she was with her father but no mother, which doesn't seem right. My mother had moved to England with both of her parents in the 1930s.

It wasn't until a few days ago that I thought about the 1926 Canadian Census of the Prairie Provinces. Canada doesn't wait a full 100 years until the census records are released. I accessed the 1926 census through a link to FamilySearch which I found on the Library and Archives Canada site. The census showed the family, father, mother and child (my mum) in Winnipeg right where they should be. Interestingly, my grandfather's citizenship was listed as Canadian, the same as all the other members of his family. He was born in England. It also gave his year of immigration as 1911.

While doing a Google check to see how many years it takes before a Canadian census is released, I stumbled across the fact that it should be 92 years which means the 1931 Canadian Census is due to be released this year. Something else to look forward to with the passing of time.