Dave Obee is one very busy man. He is both a journalist and a genealogical researcher with a dozen books and almost 600 presentations at conferences and seminars in Canada and the United States to his credit. He travels the world both researching his family and helping others with their family research.
Dave is Editor-in-Chief of the Times Colonist in Victoria, British Columbia. He has worked as a journalist since 1972 in both British Columbia and Alberta. Dave is passionate about school libraries and other literacy projects and was one of the founders of the annual Times Colonist book drive. This book drive has raised more than $1.5 million since 1998.
If you read either Internet Genealogy or Your Genealogy Today magazines (formerly Family Chronicle), Dave’s name is probably familiar to you. He writes the back page column in every issue of both of these magazines. In addition, Dave is the man behind a couple of other Internet sites: CanGenealogy and Volhynia.
Canadian icon, Shirley Douglas, OC, actress, daughter of Tommy Douglas (the father of Canada’s Medicare) and mother of Kiefer Sutherland (star of the hit show, 24), is presented with her family tree in Toronto, Thursday, May 25, 2006, by Dave Obee, genealogist and member of the Ancestry.ca Canadian Advisory Board. (PR DIRECT PHOTO/Ancestry.ca)
Dave has had many honors over the years. In May 2006, Dave had the opportunity to present Shirley Douglas (Canadian film and stage actress and activist) with a published copy of her family history at the official launch of Ancestry.ca.
In 2012, the University of Victoria awarded Dave an honorary doctorate of laws for his tireless work as a historian, genealogist, and journalist.
In 2014, Dave was presented with the Governor General’s Caring Canadian award for his work as a community volunteer. As you can see, Dave is no slouch!
On a personal note, Dave has visited 17 countries in Europe, doing genealogical research in most of them. He has a great interest in the world war battle areas in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Dave was born in British Columbia, and his roots there are traced to his great-great-grandfather who arrived from Manitoba in 1890. Dave had paternal ancestors arrive in North America two centuries ago, settling in New York State and Ontario. Dave’s mother was born in the Soviet Union, now Ukraine. Her ancestors were from Germany, now part of Poland. This explains Dave’s interest in Volhynia.
Dave served as the president of the Federation of East European Family History Societies (now Foundation for Eastern European Family History Studies) from 2004-2007. For more information about Dave Obee, go to daveobee.com.
We invite you to Dave Obee’s presentations this year at the FEEFHS Conference. After all, Where is Volhynia?
No comments:
Post a Comment