Canadian Passenger Lists: 1865-1935

Ancestry.ca has now launched online the indexed official collection of Canadian ship records - the Canadian Passenger Lists: 1865-1935. There is a launch event in Toronto on Tuesday Sept.16. It has been a long time coming. You will need to be careful with the lists. They were taken from microfilm that was done in the 1950’s. The lists can be difficult to read and there are a number of transcription errors caused probably because of the difficulty of making out some of the names. Nevertheless this is welcome news for genealogists and historians.

Hillmans of the World

While surfing the net I found Public Profiler/World Names. This web page claims to have 8 million unique surnames from 26 counties of the world in its data base. The names were taken from telephone directories and national electoral registers from 2000-2005. They are trying to map the modern distribution world-wide of common surnames.
I found playing with the search a lot of fun. The surname Hillman is described as European_Other Western. No surprise there. The most popular countries where the surname is found are United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Canada, and Sweden. Again no big surprise except perhaps for Sweden as I thought the surname was a common one in Germany. The most popular regions where the surname is found are Vermont , Idaho , Mississippi, Maine , and Alberta , Canada.
The most popular surnames they found were Herbert, Carl, Chris, Matthew, and Louise. Now there is good news, finally getting away from the Johns and Georges.
Public Profiler can be found at http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/Main.aspx