Hello, and welcome to the Shnier Family web site, a collection of history and photographs of the Shnier family.
| Family History | Family History Photographs of the early Shnier years, a Scrapbook section with some more-recent letters, and a Trivia section. |
| Updates | Web Site Updates A summary of updates to this web site. |
| Clifford | Clifford Shnier The complete wartime service record (and more) of Clifford Shnier, who was shot down while piloting a bomber. |
| Norman | Norman Shnier Norman Shnier describes how his parents met, his youth, his War years, and the beginning of Gesco. |
| Cecil | Cecil Shnier, Emerson, and Melfort Cecil Shnier started the effort to document the Bernstein and Shnier family trees, and with excellent response from family, produced a Genealogical Listing. He also wrote an 8-page letter with reminisces of Melfort, and how Phil Shnier was named. There is also a wonderful letter from Babe, all here. |
| Click by: See the Tree: |
The Family Tree With much input from Cecil Shnier and the rest of the family, Phil Shnier added over 650 Shniers and relatives (and Mira Shnier has added hundreds more relatives and applied all the updates and corrections we received) into the widely-used genealogy program Family Tree Maker. By Surnames or People, you can click on a names to traverse the family tree. From the Family Tree Web Page link you can also click on InterneTree, to get an interactive tree view. Here are the steps to use it:
But wait, there's more! Click for the family tree for Descendants of Akiva Shnier and Descendants of Itzak Eli Bernstein – surnames with (brackets) are used when the maiden name was not known. These are in "pdf" format, for which you need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can zoom (click on the plus sign in the circle near the top-centre, to zoom to 200% or 400%) and pan by dragging (make sure your cursor is a hand symbol to do this). Use the search (the Binoculars to the left of the zoom box) to search for a name. You can also view the above family tree information (and all the detail that doesn't display in the tree view) in text format, at Shnier Report and Bernstein Report. Please send updates and corrections: cities, dates, maiden names, interesting facts: we want it all. Please e-mail them to me and also to Mira Shnier at Mitchell@shnier.com and Mira.Shnier@rogers.com. |
| Picnic | The Family Picnic Every year there's a family picnic, some pictures are here. |
| Lisa Cooper | Lisa Cooper in Pavolitch Lisa Cooper's great-grandmother was Moishe Shnier's cousin. Or, another way, Lisa Cooper's great-great grandfather was Moishe Shnier's father's brother – oh, go look for yourself on the Shnier Family Tree – remember to click several times on the “+” (just below the top centre of the screen) so it is large enough to see. Anyways, based on stories from her grandmother, she has written an 80-page book about her Shnier ancestors and is currently working on having it published. Lisa was happy to let me post an excerpt from her book, and also many pictures which she took when she visted Pavolitch (where Moishe was born) with her father. These pictures are gorgeous, and changes my mental image of “the old country” being dreary and muddy. Her book brings to life many of the names on the Shnier family tree. |
| Margolis | Leah Shnier and the Immigration of the Margolis Family Akiva Shnier's second wife, Leah, had one daughter, named Chaya. Chaya married Moses Margolis, and in 1925 Mendel Shnier (Akiva's son, and Moishe Shnier's father) completed an application to bring Chaya and Moses Margolis, their children, and Leah, to Canada. Cecil Shnier was able to get over 50 pages of documents on this effort. |
| Ruth | Ruth (Paull) Shear's Pictures from Gina Shear In 2006, Gina Shear digitized some slides taken by her mother Ruth Shear (Allan Paull's sister) in the 1940s and 1950s. Here they all are. If you'd like a higher-resolution image suitable for printing, please e-mail me at Mitchell@shnier.com. |
| G. E. Shnier Co. History |
G. E. Shnier Co. The Shnier family business web site is here, and a history of the company is here. On February 4, 2006, a “snapshot” of the Company Information and Company History was taken. You can hear the 30-minute announcement in .wav (higher quality) or .mp3 (most compatible), or .mp3 (lowest bit-rate) format. |
| Allan Paull | Allan E. Paull Allan Paull (his mother's sister was Moishe Shnier's wife) served overseas as a radar technician. At his web site here, he has wartime memoirs, a booklet (with copies of some very interesting documents) describing his grandfather's arrival in Canada in 1890 and settling in the “North West Territories” (now Saskatchewan), and more. |
| More | More Family Trees Here are some family trees for spouses of people in the above trees. |
| Download | Graphics Viewers The images on the Clifford web site are in PNG and TIF format, at high-enough resolution that it can be better than looking at the documents with a magnifying glass. However, by default, Windows PCs normally displays these images using Internet Explorer, which does not allow you to choose the zoom level. By installing a new graphics viewer program, you can zoom and pan around the image. At the amazing Wikipedia I found one that seems to work well (and is free) called XnView, and it can be downloaded from here. After installing it, if you'd like XnView to automatically start when you click on a PNG or TIF image, in XnView, go to Tools | Options | Associations, and click to put a check-mark for "Portable Network Graphics" and "TIFF Revision 6". You can then use your mouse's scroll wheel or click on the magnifying-glass symbol to enlarge the image, and the up/down arrows on your keyboard to scroll up and down. |
If you have problems that images or web pages don't display when you click on them, be sure that you have only a single browser session open.
If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me at
Mitchell@shnier.com.
Mitchell Shnier
Toronto, Canada