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Mertie Beatty lives in Calgary and is a member of AFHS. Her grandfather, Wasyl Werenka, came to Canada from Bukovenia in 1903. He returned to Europe and then came back to Alberta, settling in Edmonton with his family. One of his daughters was born in Europe in 1906. Mertie does not know whether or not he was in Canada at the time of the 1906 census.

Muriel Davidson is a genealogist living in Brampton, Ontario and is the backbone of the Census Campaign mailing list. She is working closely with Senator Lorna Milne to collect signatures for the Petition supporting Senator Milne's Private Members Bill to make legislative amendments ensuring the release of census returns after 92 years. Her submission to the Expert Panel was entitled "Genetically Inherited Diseases". Muriel did not have family living on the prairies in 1906. Muriel wants to set a precedent for the release of the 1911 census to the National Archives in 2003. She also sympathizes with her fellow family historians who need to see the nominal returns of the 1906 census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in order to make progress in their research.

Dave Obee of Victoria, B.C. is a professional genealogist, editor, author and the owner of Interlink Bookshop. He uses the available census material for the Prairies intensely. He has indexed parts of them and has compiled a finding aid for the 1901 census. Dave's own ancestors were in southern Manitoba and his wife's ancestors were in southern Alberta in 1906. His wife's paternal grandfather arrived in Macleod from Ireland in 1903. The 1906 census would be the first to record him in Canada.

Beverley Rees is another member of the AFHS here in Calgary and a professional genealogist. Her great grandparents, Thomas Palecek and Maria Levorova, and her grandmother, Anna Palecekova, moved from Czechoslovakia to Coleman, Alberta in 1905 in search of a better life. They joined relatives who had immigrated earlier. The men worked in the coal mines in the area to support their families while the women stayed home to raise the children.

Louise Sauve of Calgary has served on the Board of the AFHS. She has ancestors (Schum, Mohr and perhaps Massier) who immigrated to Regina from Bukovenia in approximately 1903. Bukovenia is in Romania.

Jean Stanley lives northeast of Bancroft, Ontario at Combermere. That's near Algonquin Provincial Park (look straight north from Belleville or straight west from Ottawa on your map). Her husband's family went to Alberta in 1906 and returned to Ontario in 1915.

Marilyn Taylor is a member of AFHS. Her grandfather, Juozas Marcinkevicius, was born in Neimistius, Lithuania. He was brought to Canada by the CPR in 1904 to work on the railroad at Carlstadt, Alberta. Carlstadt was renamed Alderson and is now a ghost town. Her grandfather changed is name to Joseph Frank Moka at some point.

Bill Waiser is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. He is being funded by the Saskatchewan government to write a book on the history of Saskatchewan for that province's centennial in 2005. Access to the nominal returns of the 1906 census of Saskatchewan is critical to his research. Those are the best if not only records of the families pouring into the province at that time; an irreplaceable "snapshot" of the people.

Sheila Ward lives in Toronto and is a member of the Ontario Genealogical Society, the Saskatchewan Genealogy Society and the Society of Genealogists. She is researching her family roots in Saskatchewan and the U.K. Her paternal grandfather was a Barr Colonist who settled near North Battleford in 1903, and then later helped settle the Christopher Lake area north of Prince Albert. Her maternal grandparents settled in Avonlea, Saskatchewan. She is researching McClelland, Ward and Davy in Saskatchewan.

Gordon A. Watts lives in Port Coquitlam, B.C. Gordon wrote an excellent submission (The Myths of Census) to the Expert Panel on the release of the historic census and has been a major force in organizing the Canadian family history community for this campaign. His maternal grandparents, James Daniel and Elizabeth Belle (Cameron) Perrin, were Canadians who met in the U.S. Their respective brother and sister also married each other. These two couples homesteaded side by side near Fairmount, Saskatchewan, about 12 miles southwest of Kindersley. Gordon would like to see the 1906 census in hopes of clarifying when they came to Saskatchewan and the place and date of birth of one of his aunts.

Tom Worman has also served on the AFHS Board. His maternal great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Feradi, emigrated from Pomerania to the United States. In 1904, they moved with their family to Alberta.