By Joel Legassie

Genealogy can be a very rewarding hobby. It's hard to put into words the deep feeling of contentment that can be derived from developing a strong connection to your roots through painstaking research. Unfortunately, developing that connection often requires hours upon hours of scouring through scribbled, smudged and spotty documents, chasing down hopeless clues, and scrambling in vain for the next lead. For the beginning family historian, armed with little more than curiosity and time, it can seem to be a daunting, even impossible, task.

Luckily though, curiosity and time are the only things you really need. Everything else you can pick up along the way.

Your first step should be to sit down and draw yourself a little family tree. Fill in as much information as you can on your own, and then go talk to your family members. Take down as much information as possible, even if it seems far-fetched or impossible to prove. You never know which little tidbit is going to lead to your next major discovery. You may even find that one of your relatives is a closet genealogist and has already completed a whole pile of your work for you. You might be surprised how many family histories and genealogical tables are sitting in cold storage rooms just waiting for the right questions to bring them back to life. If there is one thing that all genealogists have in common it is their desire to talk about their work.

But, then, perhaps the one thing that all non-genealogists have in common is the speed at which they grow weary of hearing genealogists talk about their work. So, once you have fully annoyed and exhausted your living relatives it is time to visit those who have passed on... at the archives.

The sad truth about history is that most of what we know about the past comes to us through the paperwork created by faceless bureaucrats in the course of their day-to-day work. While there are a few rare, but spectacular exceptions, the only lasting mementos of the vast majority of our ancestors come from the few scattered encounters they had with government bean counters throughout their lives.

One of the tricks to uncovering your family history is trying to use the tidbits that you know to figure out which institutions your ancestors would have had contact with, then locating the papers those institutions have left behind and wading through them to find the small traces of your family members within them.

For example, in most countries some arm of government or the church has been recording births, deaths and marriages for several hundred years. If you know the jurisdiction, or the parish, where your ancestors lived you can pinpoint these key moments in their lives. From here you can branch out to look at other sources that can fill in many of the blanks in their personal histories. Each nugget of information you find can lead to a whole new field of inquiry, or to a disappointing dead end, but you'll never know until you get out there and track it down.

The British Columbia Archives, which is right here in James Bay, has records of all of the births, marriages, deaths that have happened in the province involving people that have been dead for roughly twenty years or more. This is a good starting place if your family has been in the province for a long time. You can search these records online, or you can visit the archives and look them up on microfilm.

For the rest of us, we can thank our lucky stars that we live in the internet age. A simple google search will put a nearly indigestible amount of advice, research tools and archival material for tracing your family history to almost any corner of the globe at your fingertips.

If you get stuck, there is a list of professionals on the BC Archives Website who will be more than happy to help you out for a fee. If you are looking for commiseration and support, then you should check out the Victoria Genealogical Society. Besides offering reasonably priced research services, they hold monthly meetings where you can learn tricks of the trade, swap archival war stories, and meet people who are actually interested in your story about your Great Great Grand Uncle Horace.