My mother has a theory on why I started working on the family tree and I’m sure most of my relatives do as well but when it comes down to it, it all started with Mrs. McCutcheon and our Man in Society class.  One of the projects was to do a little family tree, nothing fancy.  Me, Mum and Dad, grandparents, great-grandparents.

Grandparents.   On the surface, easy right?  There was Memere and Pepere, I knew their names, where they were from – Mum made sure of that.   Dad’s side was tricky, on Dad’s side there was a complication.   That complication’s name was Marcelline and she was my grandmother.   I never knew her, she died when my dad was 12 but she’d had lymphoma and had been sick, dying, for most of Dad’s childhood.  What Dad remembered of his mother’s family was laughably small.   Dad’s step-mother was a cousin and you’d think she’d be a little more knowledgeable about the family but she didn’t want to tell me about my grandmother, she wanted to tell me about her father’s family which wasn’t part of the project, they weren’t blood.  She got angry, I hit a dead end until my Papa asked me if I wanted to go get lunch one visit and he gave me a little information in the car.  Not much, but enough.

starting tree

The family tree I ended up submitting for class looked something like this….  yep, it’s a sad looking tree.

It was a start and that start was about thirty years ago.   I shudder when I think about that.

Some people might think that it’s the history geek in me that keeps me plugging away what has been both a labour of love and the primary source of sore spots on the scalp from tearing my hair out.   The history is part of it, but I love a good mystery and the chance to puzzle out clues and learn new things.  That was the hook and I’ve learned a lot along the way.   I’m truly Canadian, at home nowhere more than here.   A little bit English, a little bit Welsh, a touch of German way back, a splash of Scots, French Canadian and Irish by the parcel and enough Ojibwe to explain my cheekbones.

Thirty years teaches you odd little details – that one of the most pivotal battles ever fought in Canada happened on my many-greats grandfather’s property – Abraham Martin, owner of 32 acres that later become known as the Plains of Abraham or the Heights of Abraham.   A goodly portion of the francophone family originates in Acadia, not Quebec.  My great-great-great-grandfather on Dad’s side was one of the signators of the Robertson-Superior treaty and I could go on and on.

The family tree looks very different from that original shrub and I’ll share you a quick glance at one portion (more details wait for other days).   Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting more about the family tree and the project to take it from this rather inflexible software screen cap you see below and into a hardcover book that I can take with me and talk to those who really want to know about it.  family tree snap1