Our Ontario (Ourontario.ca) – Digital Repository Useful for Research

A tip of the SLAW hat to Richard (Rick) Sage (of the Ontario Legislative Library) who made me aware today of “Our Ontario” (http://www.ourontario.ca) (SLAW’s Neil Campbell mentioned a related initiative relating to Alouette Canada in his 17 April 2007 post here).

The Government Documents collection on the “Our Ontario” site at http://govdocs.ourontario.ca can be used to find old Ontario Legislative Assembly Journals (turn-of-the-century old, e.g., from 1867).

If you type in the following terms – ontario legislative assembly journals – using the “AND” connector radio button, the first link is to the “repository directory” being http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/ser/23347/, which provides a list of links to the (relatively) large PDF files, by year.

Rick also pointed out that the Journals are at the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/details/toronto using the same search terms. At this site, the materials are available in a variety of formats.

I of course immediately searched “Our Ontario” on the term “ragtime” (see my site Classic Ragtime Piano, if interested, to understand my interest). There was a match to a 20 February 1924 address to the Empire Club of Canada by Canadian ragtime / jazz composer Geoffrey O’Hara under the title “Jazz – Whence? Why? Whither?”

Why do I mention this?

Because I have always thought Geoffrey O’Hara and SLAW’s Simon C. to be long lost cousins:

Geoffrey O’Hara

Simon C.

You be the judge!