This is a hybrid meeting:
- Join us in person at Knox Presbyterian Church (Lisgar & Elgin) in Geneva Hall. Please use the Garden Entrance on Elgin Street. Limited free street parking is available on Saturdays, and the City Hall Parking Garage is available for $2.00.
- Join online by registering here. The registration covers both events.
(From the Vaults) Copyright for the Family Historian / 9 a.m. EDT
Presenter: Marnie McCall
Marnie will reprise the talk she gave in December 2016. It will cover the basics of copyright, the meaning of public domain, copyright in your own work, using copyright material of others in your research or presentations, and copyright in family photos and letters.
Marnie McCall joined BIFHSGO at the 2005 Conference when the theme was Scotland. Before going to the Rededication of the Vimy Memorial in 2007, she wanted to find out where her paternal grandfather, John McCall, had served in World War I. She served on the Board of BIFHSGO for several years as Treasurer, is currently filling an unexpired term on the Board, and also is an ACR proofreader. She became interested in copyright issues in 1972 and has followed the subject closely for many years.
Rebuilding the Body After the First World War / 10 a.m. EDT
Presenter: Kristen den Hertog
At the end of the First World War, wounded soldiers were returning to Canada in huge numbers, and the country was scrambling for space to treat them all. By 1919, near the corner of Christie and Dupont streets in Toronto’s west end, a military hospital opened in a renovated cash register factory. It was meant to be a temporary space, but in fact was still there when the next war began, and another generation of soldiers crowded into its wards.
In this presentation, author Kristen den Hartog will give us a glimpse of the fascinating work that went on at the Christie Street Hospital, and some of the people who were its patients and staff: a Liverpudlian home child who likely enlisted with the hopes of seeing his family again; a Scottish tuberculosis patient who married his nurse; a sculptor from Nottingham who became known as a "facial architect," making masks for men with facial wounds. Many of these people were new Canadians when war broke out, and they suddenly found themselves crossing the ocean again. With the help of old letters, diaries, newspapers, and military service records, Kristen will explore the aftermath of war for some of Christie Street's men and women, and how they dealt with the ways war changed them.
Kristen den Hartog's highly acclaimed new book The Roosting Box: Rebuilding the Body After the First World War was shortlisted for 2024 Toronto Book Awards. She is also the co-author of two family memoirs, The Occupied Garden and The Cowkeeper’s Wish, praised by Canada’s History for its “meticulous research on a stupendous scale.” Work on these intimate histories of ordinary families sparked the writing of The Roosting Box and Kristen’s ongoing interest in how war changes people’s lives so dramatically. Originally from Deep River in the Ottawa Valley, she lives in Lyndhurst, Ontario, and in Toronto, not far from the site of the former Christie Street Hospital.
