By Scott Roblin

Curious locals gain valuable tools for looking into family histories

Oct 14, 2018 | 9:18 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – A weekend months in the making went smoothly for locals wanting to take a deeper dive into their roots.

Three days of connection and research was held at Medalta over the weekend, as locals and visitors celebrated 40 years of the Medicine Hat and District Genealogical Society.

Around 150 people from across western Canada met for the ‘40 Years of Genealogy Research’ conference, which featured a pair of American speakers in Gena Philibert-Ortega and Diahan Southard.

Conference goers were treated to three days of tips on everything from DNA testing to finding family history through online resources with the hopes of discovering roots dating back hundreds of years.

Local society member Lloyd Robinson said the tips the speakers gave were invaluable, as now they have the tools to better look into their own family trees.

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“There is a lot of information out there,” said Robinson. “Right now, you can sit down and open up your computer and a lot of it is there. But, there’s a lot of different ways of searching for that information, that you’ll only find by coming to a session like this.”

This weekend’s conference was one of the biggest endeavours the local society had ever put on, taking 10 months of planning.

Conference Chair Deb Wickham said it was vital to make the weekend accessible to not just Medicine Hat residents, but for curious researchers wanting to make the drive down.

“We wanted to bring a really good conference to southern Alberta that would attract many people to come,” said Wickham. “It did all over Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan.”

Along with the weekend conference, the Medicine Hat and District Genealogical Society is digitizing a century’s worth of Alberta telephone books and are in the process of digitizing decades of obituaries.

Robinson said not everyone shares their passion, but added it’s a life-long pursuit for those wanting to get a better picture of their family history.

“It’s not just to pass on names, dates and that, but you try to develop a story line to a lot of your ancestors,” he said. “And by doing so, you can actually bring them to life.”

Local society members are in the process of planning for a major trip to Salt Lake City next spring with plans to visit the largest genealogical library in the world.