Historical records of 600,000 Canadian WW1 heroes now online - Ancestry.ca

    600,000 records of our World War One heroes, including famous Canadians -
    John McCrae, Tommy Douglas and Frederick Banting

    TORONTO, Nov. 5 /CNW/ - Between 1914-1918, more than 600,000 Canadian
men, most untrained civilians, braved foreign soil to join the Allied Forces
in an effort to restore peace and freedom to the world, with more than 60,000
making the ultimate sacrifice.
    Ancestry.ca, Canada's leading online family history website, honours
those men with the Soldiers of the First World War, 1914 - 1918, which
contains the original records, fully searchable, of more than 598,000
Attestation Papers of enlisted soldiers.
    An Attestation Paper was the first document a soldier signed before
entering the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). In many cases, these may be
the only surviving record of the enlistment of many Canadian soldiers who
fought in World War One.
    Attestation Papers provide a range of details about the enlistee
including place of birth, age, physical description and next of kin. Some also
include valuable information about their lives before the war, such as their
occupation, marital status and residence.
    Karen Peterson, Marketing Director, Ancestry.ca, comments: "Military
records are invaluable to any family history enthusiast wishing to trace the
military career of their ancestors and what makes this collection particularly
significant is its sheer size, and also the rich personal details to be found
in individual records.
    "With Remembrance Day approaching, this collection reminds us of the
sacrifices and incredible hardships all Canadians endured during The Great
War."
    The struggle of World War One involved virtually the whole country and
made enormous demands on the Canadian people, whether they were involved in
the actual fighting or remained on the home front to work in industry or
farming to support the war effort.
    On the battlefield, Canada played an essential role to the success of the
Allied campaign, specifically through their legendary efforts on the Western
Front at famous battles like the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the Battle of
Passchendaele.
    While thousands of Canadians will be able to find records of ancestors in
this collection, the Soldiers of the First World War, 1914-1918 contain many
famous Canadian names, including:

    -   Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae - Poet, physician and author
        best known for his poem In Flanders Fields. He served as surgeon at
        Ypres during the war

    -   Alexis Helmer - an officer in the 2nd Battery, 1st Brigade Canadian
        Field Artillery had become good friends with John McCrae. It was
        Helmer's death that inspired McCrae's famous poem

    -   Tommy Douglas - "The Greatest Canadian" was born in Scotland but
        returned to fight in the war with the CEF

    -   Frederick Grant Banting - 1923 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology who
        discovered insulin along with Charles Best

    -   Grey Owl - An Englishman, posing as an 'Indian', he became one of the
        greatest early Canadian conservationists. He enlisted in the CEF
        under his real name, Archibald Belaney, although he gave false
        details about his place of birth

    -   Lieutenant Harry Colebourn - He was a Veterinary Officer with the
        34th Fort Garry Horse of Manitoba who, on his way to war, picked up a
        bear cub as a mascot. He left the bear cub to the London Zoo for
        safekeeping until after the war - that bear became the inspiration
        for the A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories.

    The collection also includes the Attestation Papers of the 23 Canadians
soldiers who volunteered to fight and were rewarded by being "Shot at Dawn",
executed by their own officers and men after being accused of "cowardice" or
"desertion". In 2001, the Government of Canada formally announced their regret
for this situation.
    The Soldiers of the First World War, 1914-1918 is available to Canada and
World Deluxe members on a free 14-day trial at www.ancestry.ca.

    ABOUT ANCESTRY.CA
    -----------------

    Ancestry.ca was launched in January 2006 and has 410 million Canadian
names in such collections as the 1851, 1891, 1901, 1906 and 1911 Censuses of
Canada, Ontario and British Columbia vital records from as early as 1813,
Quebec Vital Records (The Drouin Collection), 1621-1967, Canadian Passenger
Lists, 1865 to 1935, and U.S./Canada Border Crossings from 1895 to 1956.

    (*)Ancestry.ca is part of the global network of Ancestry websites
    (wholly owned by The Generations Network, Inc.), which contains seven
    billion names in 26,000 historical record collections. To date more than
    7.25 million family trees have been created and 700 million names and
    11.5 million photographs uploaded. 5.8 million unique visitors logged on
    to an Ancestry website in August 2008.(*)

    The Ancestry global network of family history websites - www.ancestry.ca
in Canada, www.ancestry.co.uk in the UK, www.ancestry.com.au in Australia,
www.ancestry.com in the US, www.ancestry.de in Germany, www.ancestry.it in
Italy, www.ancestry.fr in France, www.ancestry.se in Sweden and www.jiapu.cn
in China.

    (*) comScore, Unique Visitors, August 2008.

For further information: INTERVIEWS, IMAGES, CASE STUDIES: Media
Profile, Patrick Erlich, Erin O'Reilly, (416) 504-8464,
erlich@mediaprofile.com, erin@mediaprofile.com