Thank you Moshe Steinberg for identifying the Ourroots.ca website. As he
described, it is a fully searchable collection
of local history publications (usually produced within Can. universities)
which have been scanned page by page. It
seems to have a lot of content about Western Canada.

I cannot tell the breadth of the database, but I am commenting on
its use to JewishGen after having spent about one hour at the site.

I searched this site using some fairly standard words (Jewish, Yiddish,
Israel, etc.) Very few of the documents
include these words either in the title fields, or even in the full text
search fields.

However. However there are some gems for us. I mention two and focus on the
second.

"Aaron Hart 1724-1800" - in French - is a study about one of the first Jews
to live in Canada, in Quebec. But like many records, it is in French, as
are its searchable words. I found it by searching the subject headings which
are generously done in English and French.

Now the gem.

Written in 1985 for an Albertan Ukrainian pioneer village, "Galicia and
Bukovina: a research handbook about Western
Ukraine, late 19th and 20th century" published in 1990, is fully
searchable and printable!

A 200+ page scholarly work about Galicia and its gubernias is referred to a
number of times online. Particular maps
drawn for the handbook showing Galician administrative changes have been
online for quite awhile.
http://www.halgal.com/maps_halgal.html

The author is John-Paul Himka, a professor of History (or as he himself
says "anti-history") at the University of
Alberta. He has co-authored a short pamphlet on Ukrainian genealogy as well
as numerous articles for encyclopaedia about
Ukrainian matters.

Amazon indicated this book and others by him:
"Socialism in Galicia: Emergence of Polish Social Democracy and Ukrainian
Radicalism (1860-1890)"

He wrote this handbook as a contract labour of love in 1985. The Alberta
government published it in 1990 as an Occasional Paper in a history series about
Alberta. I have not yet ascertained if it is still in print. I doubt it,
knowing the history of Alberta politics.

This link is to the table of contents:
http://www.ourroots.ca/e/toc.asp?key=jewish&ID=1563

The handbook has more than 600 bibliographic references to the social
literature and history of the Ukraine as it came
to exist out of its Ruthenian and Galician past. While having little
content directly related to Galician Jews, it is
rich in material about Galicia. The references cited appear to be mostly in
Ukrainian, and will be useful to speakers of that language.

I consider very important Himka's overviews of collections of actual
Ukrainian-Galician materials such as newspapers in
various libraries such as University of Toronto and Harvard.

I was very taken by his modest but obviously well-informed style. After
only two hours browsing ,I am excited by
discovering this handbook to be online. As I have learnt at JewishGen,
understanding the social and historical context
of my ancestors is important to understanding them and their emigration.

When I determine its print availability (>from Prof. Himka) I'll inform the
list.

Barry Spinner
Canada