2025 Speakers
PEGGY CHAPMAN
Peggy Chapman is a professional genealogist, researcher, author and lecturer. She holds a bachelor degree in Education and a degree in Master of Library & Information Science (M.L.I.S.). Peggy is also the author of the 2018 book "Finding Your Ancestors in Nova Scotia”. She has obtained the Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies (PLCGS) from the former National Institute of Genealogical Studies (now the International Institute of Genealogical Studies) where she is also a lecturer providing courses on Nova Scotia genealogy. Peggy is a member of numerous genealogical societies and has been a frequent volunteer for the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia.
NATHANIEL SMITH
C.G. (C)
Nathaniel Smith, C.G. (C) has been researching his family history for over 20 years. He obtained the designation of Certified Genealogist (Canada) from the Genealogical Institute of the Maritimes in 2014 and is currently the organization's Registrar. Nathaniel has written and presented numerous genealogical and historical articles over the years, he's most well known in Nova Scotia for his award-winning one-place study The Prospect Genealogical Website which showcases the history, genealogy and stories of the people who lived in and around Prospect, Halifax County, Nova Scotia. Nathaniel is about to publish his first comprehensive genealogy with his study of the Coolen Family of Nova Scotia.
GINNY CLARK
C.G. (C)
Ginny Clark is a Certified Genealogist (Canada). She obtained her designation from the Genealogical Institute of the Maritimes in 1994. She has worked as an archival assistant with the Nova Scotia Archives for over thirty years.
​
Ginny has participated as a primary researcher at the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia's Brick Wall Busters lecture in past years and will be providing her vast knowledge of the archival holdings of the Nova Scotia Archives to assist researchers with their tough, Brick Wall ancestors.
JEFFREY WARD
Jeff is an amateur historian and retired professional planner. Since 2015 he has focused his research on identifying and documenting the photographers who were active in the four Atlantic Provinces in the first 100 years of photography - 1839 to 1939 - in an adventure he calls The Early Light Project. He has been sharing the fruits of his research through The Early Light Project's Facebook page, with weekly postings on the history of photography, with each posting discussing another year in sequence. He has published two books based on his research, Striking Poses and Striking Poses: The Fashion Edition. He also publishes regularly in Photographic Canadiana, the journal of the Photographic Historical Society of Canada. Born in New Brunswick, and widely travelled throughout the Atlantic region, he has made Halifax his home for more than 40 years.
DR. LUCILLE CAMPEY
Ottawa-born Lucille Campey began her career in Canada as a scientist, obtaining an honours degree in chemistry from Ottawa University. Following her marriage, she moved to England. She later acquired a Masters degree from Leeds University on a medieval history topic and a doctorate from Aberdeen University on Scottish immigration to Canada. She went on to write 14 books relating to early immigration from the British Isles to Canada and, more recently, one book on Canada’s French pioneers.
DR. HARVEY AMANI WHITFIELD
Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield is the Centennial Carnegie Chair in the History of Slavery in Canada at University of King's College and Professor of History at Dalhousie University. He also taught for 17 years at the University of Vermont and four years at the University of Calgary. He grew up in Maryland and attended Colorado State University earning Magna Cum Laude and membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta. His MA at Dalhousie focused on West African history. Dr. Whitfield’s doctoral work highlighted the experience of the War of 1812 Black Refugees under the direction of Judith Fingard and David Sutherland.
His area of research interest is Black migration, coerced and free, to the Maritimes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Whitfield is the author of several books including Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860; North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes; Biographical Dictionary of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes; Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents; and The Problem of Slavery in Early Vermont, 1777-1810.
Dr. Whitfield enjoys living in rural Nova Scotia, cats, and spending time with his young daughter.
BILL LAWSON
BEM
Bill Lawson was born in Stirling and grew up in Ayrshire. Bill studied Law at Glasgow University and trained as a Chartered Surveyor. He taught Law in Paisley for eighteen years. All those years his holidays were spent in Harris, and it was then that his interest in the genealogies of the Western Isles started.
Aware that the older people, the bearers of the genealogies, were getting fewer and fewer, he began to compile family histories from their knowledge, and also from the records at Register House in Edinburgh. His work expanded to the emigration areas of North America and Australia. Bill learned Gaelic, which was essential for his work in gathering the genealogies.
In 1981 he became the Project Leader of the Integrated Development Programme, a European-funded programme for the Western Isles. This gave him the chance to move to the Western Isles, and when the programme finished he settled in the village of Northton in Harris, where he took over and renovated the village school and schoolhouse.
From the Old School House, Bill started his company, ‘Cò Leis Thu?’ (meaning ‘Who you belong to?’) and for twelve years he and his late wife, Chris, operated a family history tracing service. During this time, Bill also spent a number of years on the Crofters’ Commission.
The ‘Cò Leis Thu?’ genealogy research service has now been passed on to Northton Heritage Trust which is based at Hebrides People Visitor Centre in Northton, Harris. As Bill is a consultant to the Trust, this arrangement allows him to continue with new research into the emigration areas in Canada and Australia, and also allows him to write and publish from his base in Harris.
Bill has written and published over 100 books about the history and family history of the islands. Bill's achievements and service were marked in December 2024 when he was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to the community in the Western Isles.
MARK THOMPSON
Mark Thompson is a professional genealogist and public speaker specializing in the application of artificial intelligence to genealogy. As co-host of the Family History AI Show podcast alongside Steve Little, Mark helps genealogists bridge the gap between high technology and their family history research.
With a background in executive IT leadership, Mark brings a unique perspective to the rapidly evolving field of AI-assisted genealogy. He currently serves as President of the Victoria Genealogical Society and chairs their DNA Special Interest Group.
A member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, Mark is a frequent presenter on technology-centric genealogy topics including AI, Genetic Genealogy, and Family Archiving.
When not exploring family histories, he enjoys photographing nature in his home province of British Columbia.
PAUL MAXNER
Paul Maxner is an archivist dedicated to preserving and sharing Nova Scotia’s rich history. Since joining the Nova Scotia Archives in 1997, he has played an important role in digitizing and making historical records accessible online. As Senior Archivist Online Resources, Paul oversees the archives' main website as well as the Nova Scotia Genealogy site, collectively making available over a million of digitized records. Over his 28-year tenure, he has guided the creation of more than 100 virtual exhibits, searchable databases, and resource guides, along with the annual update to the Nova Scotian historical vital statistics online. His contributions have earned him the Premier’s Award of Excellence. With a Master of Archival Studies from the University of British Columbia and degrees from Acadia and Atlantic Baptist University (now Crandall University), Paul remains a key figure in Nova Scotia’s archival community.
STEPHEN MACKINNON
Stephen is the Business Manager of Hebrides People Visitor Centre. He runs the Visitor Centre day to day, as well as dealing with the future planned expansion in terms of funding applications and meeting with a variety of stakeholders. He works closely with Bill Lawson on his new Croft Histories and genealogy.
JANICE FRALIC-BROWN
GANS PRESIDENT
Jan was born in Sydney, Cape Breton, but has lived most of her life in Halifax. She is married and has two adult sons. She is still waiting for one of them to catch the genealogy bug.
Jan retired from the NSCAD University library in 2022, where she worked for 31 years, first in Interlibrary Loans and Serials, and then as the Circulation Supervisor. In the early nineties, fresh out of the Library Technician program, she was a part-time library desk retrieval clerk at what was then Public Archives of Nova Scotia, assisting patrons, cataloguing their holdings, and kindling her interest in genealogy.
For many years she worked on her own and her husband’s genealogies but the personal research slowed down as she became more involved with GANS in the mid 2000s.
She’s been on the executive of GANS for many years, serving various terms as a director, recording secretary, editor of the Nova Scotia Genealogist, and President.
Her other hobbies include walking and hiking, strength training, reading, and dancing. It’s a toss-up as to her favourite places – archives, gym, or outdoors. Cemetery visiting is as close as she can come to all three at once!
JIM MACDONALD
Jim and Beverley McDonald have been title searchers and abstractors in Nova Scotia for over forty years. Together, they represent the title search firm “Record Research of Nova Scotia”, and have authored thousands of research reports into the origins and ownership of property in Nova Scotia, for individual property owners, as well as for law firms and others. Jim holds an LL.B and M.Ed. from Dalhousie University, as well as degrees from the University of Alberta and Sir George Williams (Concordia) University.
STEPHEN DAVIDSON
A retired teacher, Stephen has ties to Loyalist history that go back to 1783 when his ancestors were passengers on the Union, the first refugee evacuation vessel to arrive in New Brunswick. His 1975 bachelor’s thesis on an aspect of Black Loyalist history became the basis for his contribution to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
​
In addition to contributing articles to United Empire Loyalists of Canada (UELAC) journal The Loyalist Gazette and submitting over 900 articles to the newsletter Loyalist Trails, Stephen’s research has appeared in genealogical periodicals from Texas and California to Ontario and New Brunswick as well as a national children’s magazine, a number of Maritime newspapers, and The Beaver (now Canada’s History).
He has served as a consultant for two websites created by the University of New Brunswick (Black Loyalists in New Brunswick and Loyalist Women in New Brunswick), has spoken at three national UELAC conferences, served as Peter C. Newman’s consultant and researcher, and has authored two books on Black Loyalists.
AMBER GODFREY
Amber Godfrey is a Library Technician, currently working for the Calgary Board of Education as a casual Library Assistant. She worked in the public libraries of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland for almost two decades before moving to Calgary in 2017.
A member of the Alberta Family Histories Society, she is editor of the AFHS Chinook Arch newsletter, volunteers at the AFHS library, and helps with the AFHS Family History Coaching program at Calgary Public Library.
Her love of family history started in childhood, listening to family stories shared by her parents and grandmothers. After receiving a Family History kit for Christmas when she was twelve, she started her own family history research journey which continues to this day!
DAVID MITCHELL
Dave Mitchell is a South African member of GANS, also of the Cumberland County Genealogical Society and a long-serving life member of the Ulster Historical Foundation’s Genealogical Guild.
By training, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa and a chartered accountant, Dave qualified further as a chartered financial analyst with the CFA Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in 2010 completed the Online Genealogy Certificate course run by Boston University.
MATTHEW H FRASER MOAT
Matthew H Fraser Moat lives near London, England and has a family tree of over 26,000 people, with two-thirds of them relating to Nova Scotia. Matthew’s mother was born in Willowdale, Pictou County and she went to a one room school in Rocky Mountain.
JOHN COFFEY
John Coffey has researched his family roots from Ireland, and built family trees for various surnames. He has spent many an hour pouring over historical records, searching old documents in archives, exploring century old census records. He has tramped through countless cemeteries here and in Europe in his quest to shed light on a variety of people from the past. Drawing on his oral family history passed down through the generations, he combines it with research data, DNA results, and well known historical events to create an entertaining story of his immigrant ancestors from Ireland. He lives in Marion Bridge, Nova Scotia.
WALEED KADRAY
Waleed Kadray is a fourth-generation Canadian-Muslim from Nova Scotia. He specializes in the history of Islam in Atlantic Canada. Being raised in Nova Scotia, his roots and connections to the early Muslim community in NS are deep. When he is not researching about the history of Islam in Canada, he works as a full-time teacher.
