Founded in 1971 the BCGS is British Columbia’s peak family history society. As in Australia there is a State/Provincial Office effectively acting as headquarters, and a network of smaller branches throughout the Province.
Fortunately the BCGS is conveniently located in Surrey, so I took the morning off for a guided tour of the facility. It made for an interesting comparison with the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) in Sydney, whose library I toured in late 1997.
As with SAG there’s a helpdesk, though here only 1 volunteer to assist with inquiries. The BCGS kindly arranged to have one of their specialists, Alice Marwood, show me through the library. Alice is the Secretary and a Professional Researcher, specialising in First Nations.
The Collection contains 13,000 volumes and follows the dewey classification. Whilst this differs from SAG which has developed it’s own classification scheme, the arrangement is similar with books shelved geographically. For SAG this ranges from A-Australia to T Canada & U-USA (with everything else in-between). The BCGS Collection begins with British Isles countries at 941-942, followed by Europe 943-968, Canada and Provinces, USA and Australia/NZ. The presence of Russian and Ukraine material was interesting given Canada’s geographic proximity to these countries.
Collection strengths between the two libraries are similar –UK sources especially England and counties; Local Histories for UK and Canada/BC; Cemetery records for Canada /BC. As in all genealogy libraries journal exchanges are popular, with these titles sitting at the end of the book sequence.
There were also differences. Unlike Australia, Census records are a key source providing similar details to our Electoral rolls (name, address and occupation). There are literally hundreds of indexes to censuses for both Canada/Provinces and the UK on the library shelves. A separate section is also set aside for “United Empire Loyalists” ie. American loyalists who resettled in British North America (what was to become Canada). There were plenty who swore allegiance to the King after the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War so many researchers have these connections.
census shelves
Loyalist Ancestry
The Other difference I found related to level of resourcing. SAG is very well resourced with a wide range of services and facilities available to members eg. PCs with CD-ROM and subscription database access, LDS microfilm ordering service, GRO certificate service, bookshop, seminars, field trips etc. This is to be expected in Australia’s most populous city (twice the size of Vancouver). The Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) serving Canada’s largest city, Toronto, would be an equivalent.
Nevertheless, BCGS like SAG provides the essentials: Quarterly Journals and Newsletters, Members Interests, Special Interest Groups, Research services etc. Members are also involved in special projects such as maintaining indexes and transcribing BC Cemeteries which form the bulk of the Society’s publications.
