It's become a needed ritual. During the long, dark nights that are December in the Paris of the Prairies, I take time to reflect. I look at my blogs, the events from my calendar, the photos on my phone, and the stats on my site. I review the work I've done, and wonder how I can do better.
Me and ChatGPT, a story
I'm building a custom analytical framework in ChatGPT Plus (paid version, 5.2 as of December 2025) to help me understand Chinese Canadian records. Along the way, I've been blasted with one revelation after another. ChatGPT isn't like google. ChatGPT and other large language models are the T-Rex dinosaurs of computing: massively powerful but also with scary downsides. I want to use the big, powerful beast and I don't want to get eaten, and I think the slower we are to get on board, the harder it will be. I've learned in a short time how to set it up, what it does with private data, what keywords are important, how to create my first ChatGPT-generated prompts, and a few limits of the model. In the meantime, I am agog at what I've got so far, and this is only the beginning.
Held on the west coast: the history of Albert Head and William Head Quarantine Stations (1884-1958)
In this post, I looked at the iterations of Canada's western quarantine stations, where medical inspectors inspected incoming immigrants to Canada for disease. As a genealogist, I want to fill in the bare bones of facts with ideas about what life was like, and this post was by turns enlightening and horrifying.
How to decipher the secret codes to quickly find microfilmed vital records for B.C.
Despite pulling birth, marriage, and death records (BMDs) back in 2018, I'd forgotten this trick for reading registration codes.
Key Takeaways from the 2025 East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference
Every conference and institute I attend is memorable for different reasons. With the in person events, it's about the networks, people, and travel. And now with the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference, where I'll be madly applying new techniques and taking notes until they close the site and lock me out.
How to Access Chinese Case Files at LAC (2025)
The process for finding Chinese Case Files at Library and Archives Canada has changed considerably since I first wrote about the finding aids in 2020. Some individual Chinese Case file information is now findable through Collection Search. Use Advanced Search for searching by numbers.
Researching Supreme Court records at the BC Archives
Genealogists are interested in a wide variety of court records from adoption to wills. I don't know about you, but I learn best by doing. In this series, I'll share what I learned about researching Supreme Court records at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives, Victoria, in April, 2025. For the record - haha… Continue reading Researching Supreme Court records at the BC Archives
Asian History Month – The Riveter by Jack Wang
I enjoyed The Riveter. It's rare to read fiction about the Second World War which centres an Asian Canadian perspective. A writer tackling that subject cannot avoid discussing heavy issues such as exclusion, history, and racism. These themes are the background noise to my work, and I appreciate every writer who tackles them in a story with universal themes of identity, love, and struggle.
Exclusion: Beyond the Silence – a chat with Keira Loughran and Helen Lee
Each May in Canada and the U.S., it's Asian Heritage Month. I spent the first part of the month in Vancouver, where I had the distinct pleasure of seeing "Exclusion: Beyond the Silence," at the Cineplex Odeon Theatre, International Village, Vancouver. On 14 May 2025, I had a chat with writer and director Keira Loughran,… Continue reading Exclusion: Beyond the Silence – a chat with Keira Loughran and Helen Lee
WWII: what is a genealogy pack?
In Canada, most Second World War military files are only available on request. In this blog, I'll explore the difference between ordering a complete file and a genealogy pack by looking at two requests for the same records for the same person. If you're new to Canadian military files, see my posts Exploring First World… Continue reading WWII: what is a genealogy pack?