Webmaster notes
10 Feb 2013
Tomorrow marks the 8th anniversary of the website, may not seem old, but in the web world, that's pretty old. We've come along ways in the years since. Now I'm please to announce a new member to the team - Dylan Longpre. Dylan is a former cadet and now a young CIC, technically savvy and very much committed to cadets, if you been at Connaught the past few years you'd recognize him as their PAO. Dylan will be working on the website specializing on the Connaught page, he can be contacted at [email protected] . Dylan is a great asset and I'm very happy to have aboard.
17 Jan 2013
Thank you everyone for your patience, several months of travel from Sept through December along with a move to Vernon has meant less than the usual attention spent on the history website. I'll be working to catch up wit hthe backlog of emails, photos and the like. More to follow.
24 April 2010
We've started uploading new clips to the Youtube page, please feel free to pass this info along to everyone else. If you like, subscribe, that way you'll be advised whenever we upload a new (or old) video, and there will plenty of videos to come.
13 Feb 2010
It's been brought to my attention that a few people feel the website is 'boring', well I have to admit, it is. However, it's not meant to be a splashy, fast paced, graphic intensive site. It is a repository for all things army cadets. We have enough work just trying to keep up with the amount of information inbound and requests for further information. I would gladly entertain putting a little pizzaz in the site in the future. Until then, keep the info and photos coming and we'll upload as fast as we can. Thanks!
Francois Arseneault
15 May 2008
A fair amount of work has been done on the site as of late. However, I'm looking for help. I can no longer do this alone or at my own cost. This has become too much to manage for one person. A committee is being formed with the goal of fundraising enough to make the website work for the next five years. If you're interested in assisting in this committee please contact me.
There's currently at least six months of backlogged material to scan and upload, photos, documents and more. After doing some thorough analysis of the site, I've come up with a more accurate quantity of pages, at 10,700 pages.
The goal of this website or mission statement, has been and continues to be:
"To preserve the history of the Royal Canadian Army Cadets and create an online archive for army cadets, CIC officers and staff across Canada."
Already this has been achieved, but there is a very long way to go. The daily use by, 1000 visitors per/day, proves it success already. However, there are several important objectives that need to be met in order for the website to be successful:
1 - The site needs to be bilingual. All cadets and staff should be able to learn about our history, in effect, who we are in both English and French. This goal will be expensive but achievable.
2 - Locating and securing by electronic means, photos and documents relative to army cadet history. Photos and documents are scattered across the country in archives, newspaper archives, museums, public libraries, cadets corps, ACSTCs and private collections. The total number is unknown, but realistically there are millions of photos 'out there'. In the National Archives in Ottawa, there is approximately 100,000 to 500,000 pages of documents on disbanded cadets corps alone as well as several thousand photos dating from 1910-65. That is many man-years of work in itself. Many former school corps have archives, trophies and other memorabilia. Wouldn't it be great to digitize everything in one place?
3 - Working with individual cadet corps across the country to create a system where their history, on an annual basis could be maintained. A single corps has several significant events over the course of it's training year: FTXs, Nov 11 Remembrance Day parade, promotions, biathlon and shooting competitions, sports events and of course the ACR. Digital photos are the norm, parents and/or officers take photos as a matter of course. Even just 200 photos in one year, a very conservative estimate, could be sent via CD/DVD or FTP to the history site. There currently 400 active corps x200 photos equals 80,000 digital photos per year. That easy.
Any ideas or suggestions is appreciated and encouraged. If we all work together, this will be a very successful web site.
Francois Arseneault