Redwood Retro

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Another day, another squall warning. Our city has been hit with so much snow and bad weather this season...but hey! Its winter...and we are in CANADA.what do you expect?  I do have a confession to make..I actually am loving this weather. I love storms of all kinds and so I say bring it on. (No hate mail please) This week in the newsroom a few of us went down to Prince Edward County to cover a barn fire. It was a an old barn that housed mostly pregnant sheep and nursing lambs. Close to 250 sheep were killed as a result of the fire. We spent most of the day on scene with the farmer and his family and this is an experience that will stay with me for a while. The sounds, smells and visuals are hard to get off my mind. Photojournalist Justin Greaves was on scene with us. Here is the link to his story on the fire  that appeared in the Pioneer. I wrote a shorter version for QNet News that you can view here with video by reporter Alisa Howlett. There was one little incident ...

The Mount Albert fire station on Princess street is currently on fire. I lived close to this station not long ago. It is a volunteer run station and from the amount of sirens I heard on a daily basis living there, a busy one. Pretty scary when a fire station catches fire. Mount Albert is a wonderful community and this will be a big loss to them. Another view of people running to the blaze at the Mount Albert fire hall thanks to Derek Swain! pic.twitter.com/w1kXeINoDo — Lyndsey Vanstone (@VanstoneL) February 2, 2014 The Mount Albert Fire Hall is going up in flames. @CP24 @YRP #fire #notgood pic.twitter.com/Q8XD5XjUY2 — Jessica (@beatty304) February 2, 2014 BREAKING: Mount Albert fire hall is fully ablaze. Crews working to extinguish the fire. Photo by @thekettfamily pic.twitter.com/QN2iealLrf — Josh Casey (@JoshXFMNews) February 2, 2014 The Mount Albert fire dept is, erm, on fire. That's distressing. http://t.co/DnumBnlhRq — Greg M (@DrTed77) February...

I have been having so much fun turning all my family history into a series of blogs. I find it a much easier and more interactive way to share my research. I love that I can add a post and share something exciting that I have found much faster than editing a website. I can post a photo in real time from an old cemetery and get reaction or questions about the post right away, something I couldn't do with a traditional website. I do plan to add a little more creativity to my blogs. I think I play more with the layout and features than I actually post at the moment. The amount of photos and records I have to scan are unreal and I want to make sure the layout is easy to navigate to find everything. Google Patents I have added a post on my Blakely blog about my great grandfathers inventions . I knew about the inventions from a newspaper story but I didn't know that my grandfathers drawings and patents existed on Google Patents. I found the link during a random name search...

After more than 20 years of researching my family tree and procrastinating about publishing it, I have finally decided to turn my research into a series of blogs. I have far too much information to cram into a book and seeing that most of my family is online and on social media, doing it via blogs seemed to be the most logical way to go. I am going to do a blog for each main branch of my tree starting and I am starting with my maternal grandmothers side.  I have just started putting the first one together so check it out and let me know what you think.  http://bainthorntongenealogy.blogspot.ca/

I am in the process of scanning and retouching all of my war photos and keepsakes to make into a slideshow for various family members. So many family members served and my goal to to tell the story of every one of them. The person I am drawn to the most is a relative named Bill Blakely. His mom (my gr aunt) was a single mother during WWII and it was just the two of them. He was killed in Germany in 1941. I have a ton of his pictures and clippings about him but have no one to pass them on to. He had no children or siblings and anyone who knew him personally is long gone. Each remembrance day it is Bill that I honor and pay tribute to, just to keep his memory alive. I am trying to learn more about who he was as a person but I do not have much to go on other than a box of photos.

Added a new page this week of wartime advertisements from Canada . The ones I have added so far are all WWII and are from Canadian newspapers. I have also started scanning election and political ads and hope to have a page up soon.