A Chance to Win at Ancestry.ca
February 16, 2009 by Amy Jeanroy
Filed under Parenting
My mom has a treasured family tree, tucked neatly in her dresser. Dad’s sister worked on it for years, and had poster sized copies made. Our family has a colorful past, from the French countryside, and the historical West-cattle country.
The combination has created a rich history that my children ask about time and time again. We talk about how amazing their great, great paternal grandmother’s cooking was and how grandma didn’t have shoes until she went to school! Very interesting to a group of hooligans, err, I mean boys.
We have done some online research to list what family history that the kids and I could trace back. I like to use sites devoted to family history, since they cut out a lot of the useless searching that can often happen when you simply search for someone’s name. I recently found out that Ancestry.ca is having a contest that I wanted to share with you. In case you haven’t stumbled on them, Ancestry.ca, is a part of a global network of history websites, that includes the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden and China. It includes 400 million searchable names and specifically of Canadian interest:
“Key Canadian collections include the first and only fully indexed Censuses of Canada for 1851, 1891, 1901, 1906 and 1911, The Drouin Collection – the complete set of French-Canadian vital records from 1621 to 1947, Ontario and British Columbia vital records from as early as 1813 and U.S. / Canada Border Crossings from 1895 to 1956″
They are running a Wordstump Contest right now that is for anyone who is:
- A Canadian resident
- At least 13 years of age
- Registered Ancestry.ca user
The contest runs from February 16 – April 10th, 2009 and has some very nice prizes. You could win
The grand prize:A$1500 WestJet gift certificate (non-refundable and cannot be redeemed for cash value)
Other prizes: One of 8 weekly prizes of a $100 Chapters gift card
I don’t know about you, but I would love to win a trip OR get free books. I have been known to peruse the bookstores, just to daydream about shopping without a calculator. $100 would go a long ways towards filling my book bag.
What caught my eye about this contest, is that you have a lot of chances to win! Every day you can get another prize draw entry by playing the game, AND up to 100 extra by referring your friends. Not bad for something that is fun to do anyways.
To play, you log in and play the completely addictive, fun word game, called WordStump. I started playing it to check it out, and before I knew it, an hour had flown by. Remember how I mentioned that brain games are great ways to break out of brain fog? Well, Ancestry.ca has invented a fun way to play with letters, that you will love!
Check it out for the fun of it and who knows? You may end up with some great travel time or book money.
Amy,
thanks for responding to my comment earlier; was going to “talk back atcha” but decided (because of you) that I’d just post about it and try to do more with my blog but then they blocked it (wanted to talk to you more about it)
(maybe we could pm some) but re this – would it be possible to post a copy of the poster (at least pm) I seem to have inherited my family’s history job and am trying to compile the 20 yrs. worth of research into something usable. Thanks – that sounds so cool!
Donna-
Thanks for your comments. I asked mom tonight, if she would mind and she said that she would try to find it. I know right where it is, she told me when she moved in, that it was in the dresser in the storage bay. May be that is her way of taking time to mull it over? Dunno.
I do know that when it was done, there was no such thing as an online database of family histories so it probably was unbeliveably slow going.
I have heard of people who actually travel around and look through archives by HAND. I can not imagine!
Feel free to email me anytime at amy.jeanroy at b5media dot com, if you would like.
Warmly,
Amy