Retirement Musings and Everyday Delights
Canada's birthday is coming up and, coincidentally, I've been digging into my Canadian ancestors again. I've been exploring the French Canadian branch of the family tree, who arrived in the mid-1600s. That line also includes French-Métis ancestors (as opposed to the Scottish-Métis ancestors I'd already discovered). Growing up, I was told our ancestors were English, … Continue reading Miraculous Grains of Sand
I am feeling more hopeful every day. But still, the Canadian spring seems interminable: days of bright sunshine that set the brooks singing and the spirit soaring are followed by icy rainstorms and bitter winds, and even snowstorms in April, in a cycle of hope and despair that lasts for months. That's a quote from … Continue reading Perspectives from the Past – Part 4
We finally got the snow to match the bitterly cold temperatures. And it came all at once, with between 35 and 50 centimetres falling overnight. That made for a lot of snow shovelling (on Ray's part), but at least it's a bit brighter outside now. Ray's already been out on the snowshoes a couple of … Continue reading Hibernation Season
In the third and final instalment of my genealogy series, I cover the Greenham branch of the family and their transition from British tailors to Canadian farmers. My paternal ancestry has been traced back as far as William Grinnam, born in 1470 in Somerset, England. Grinnam became Grinham, before they settled on Greenham in the … Continue reading Perspectives from the Past – Part 3
This post - the 2nd of 3 in my genealogy series - focuses on my dad's maternal ancestors, the Scottish and Metis branch of the family. My 5x great-grandfather, Malcolm Ross, was a fur trader and explorer with the Hudson Bay Company (HBC). He was born in the Orkney Islands (Scotland) in 1754 and came … Continue reading Perspectives from the Past – Part 2
One of my intermittent hobbies is genealogy research. I love digging for clues and finding pieces of the puzzle, but I'm not as good at documenting what I find. I end up with a bunch of names and dates scrawled on scraps of paper - but I don't put them together to see the story … Continue reading Perspectives from the Past – Part 1
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