Woman standing next to a 4,000 pound cake made to promote Freimans department store (MIKAN 3615467)

It’s been five years today since we published our first blog, “Published Histories: Discover what individuals or military units did during the war” and since then more than 650 posts have been published.

It is very easy to forget major milestones in a project and yet it is so important to look at the past to realize the progress we have made.

This is the perfect opportunity to thank everyone who made it possible to succeed. We can’t name all who contributed to the success of the blog, but we want to thank everyone who did.

How does an article get published?

Before a blog is posted, there is a lot of collaboration among the different teams throughout the organization. First, the blog has to be written by content experts working at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and they do it on a completely voluntary basis. Then there’s an initial review and formatting of the text before sending it off to Communications for editing and translation. Once we have final copies in both languages, they are uploaded to WordPress simultaneously.

Our blog highlights our collection and our services. We have a lot of awesome images and documents, but sometimes copyright stands in the way. And even though we double- and triple-check articles prior to publishing, sometimes a mistake gets through or a link is broken—so we appreciate it when our readers let us know.

A poster about Canada’s war effort and production sensitive campaign titled, “Collaboration: Merci Mon Vieux!” (MIKAN 2846765)

What we have written about

In five years, we have touched upon many subjects such as searching the collection, genealogy and family heritage, rare books, immigration, and military heritage. The most popular topics are military heritage for the English blogs, and genealogy for the French blogs. The most popular English blog is The 1940 National Registration File and the most popular French blog is Recherche d’actes de naissance, de mariage et de décès (English version). We will continue to make our collection known with some special projects scheduled for next year such as a series of blogs resulting from a partnership between LAC and The National Archives (UK), another series about Canada 150, and a lot more. Follow us so you won’t miss any of it!

Of course, the blog wouldn’t exist without you—so a big thank you to all our readers! We are happy to share our knowledge so you can learn and discover more about your Canadian heritage.

Now how about a slice of that cake?