Monday, March 16, 2009

Spring 2009

The Matrix continued to plug away at a number of updates to the unit history pages throughout 2008. The most significant advances were in the Matrix Utilities where the following have been added or significantly enhanced:


  • Larry Will has worked diligently to expand the the Cap Badge Collection, with some great new images in many of the unit categories. A number of members have joined this initiative and now are sending images to Larry to process for the Matrix Utility.
  • Thanks to our contributor from Belgium, we now have all of the text and audio for the Flanders Fields Collection from the 1960s. The text is on the Matrix but the audio portion was uploaded from Belgium to the MediaFire account. That may be the only place that a full set of the LPs is located.
  • The CEF Reserve Battalions had always been one of the great mysteries of the CEF. What units went where and where did those units end up in the war. The Reserve Battalion Utility now provides information for your first step in tracing these units. Thanks to Mark Hopkins for his effort to clear up this issue.
  • A great number of CEFSG members had CEF Service Records in their personal files. This year we have used a MediaFire account to assemble and publish many of these records. We look forward to other members submissions to enhance this collection. Are you ready to participate?
  • Al Craig has done a fantastic job expanding the Matrix Troopship Utility and adding many more units that are covered. All of the new information is updated almost monthly on the Matrix pages and the spreadsheets are loaded intact into the Matrix Spreadsheet Directory.
  • Michael Thierens has been coordinating the War Diary Utility for a number of years and so we are now seeing the fruit of his labours. After many months of transcription by a large number of members, the first of the war diaries are now on the Matrix.
  • The year of 2008 would not have been complete without the incredible input from Bob Richardson who contributed his complete collection to the Matrix Nominal Roll Utility in December. All of those were scanned and uploaded to the new Matrix Media Fire Account and the downloading of these has been daily and on a world wide basis. Thanks to Tighe McManus and Dion Loach for their significant input to check and correct all these entries.
  • The 2009 New Year brought the addition of the Chronology of the War which is a year-by-year listing of the major events of the Great War on the International and the Canadian scene. This utility is a compilation of the major texts and web sites on this topic. World wide members are encouraged to add their own information to this utility.

At the moment, there is nothing major on the agenda for 2009. There is still a lot of work to be completed to finish the unit pages in all of the CEF Divisions. Although that was the reason for the start of this project, it is the slowest component to reach completion. Any members that want to contribute to the advance of that task are asked to join the Matrix Team.

Without doubt, the 2009 year will result in some new projects that have not even been dreamed of to date. If you have ideas or suggestions, speak now and participate.

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