Husband-and-wife volunteers Art and Marjorie Keates are working to preserve and make more accessible the priceless documents of the diocese of Ontario's history.

Knowing that old church registers would crumble and be ruined after being constantly touched and used, the genealogy lovers set out to photograph, photocopy and index the books. They began the project in November 2000 and estimate that they have at least a year-and-a-half more to finish the work.

There are 574 parish registers in the diocesan archives in Kingston, Ont. There are about 115,000 pages to copy.