A Kiss for the Swiss

One hundred years ago in 1924,

my maternal grandparents arrived in Canada

as immigrants from Switzerland.

To mark this centennial, I've decided to

pay a humorous homage to my Swiss heritage --

Pretend that being landlocked

doesn't prevent Switzerland

from having sea creatures --

And let's not forget

Switzerland's national hero,

William Tell!

So What Does YOUR Genealogy Reveal?

October Full Moon Altar: Cycladic Goddess

The darkening autumnal month of October is the time to honour the Crone Goddess of Death and our departed ancestors. My altar features the Cycladic Goddess, whose small devotional statues were often found in ritual sites or buried in graves dating from 4-6 thousand years ago in the Cyclades Islands off Greece. Her largely featureless death mask and body prepared for burial symbolize Life's return to the Great Mother of All. The prominence of her breasts and pubic triangle promises rebirth and new beginnings.

On the altar I have placed the best photos I have of my direct ancestors, all of whom are now gone to their eternal rest.

On the top left is a photo of my maternal grandparents taken in the late 1930s on a trip back to Switzerland from their home in Saskatchewan. On the top right are photos of my paternal great-grandparents taken in the early 1880s in Ontario before they moved west to homestead in Manitoba. Beneath their photos is the wedding photo of their son taken on his wedding day to my grandmother in 1907. Both lines of forebears converge on the photo of my parents taken early in their marriage, probably in the late 1940s.

My parents, maternal grandparents and paternal grandmother all played important or central roles in my life, of course, but I never knew my paternal grandfather or paternal great-grandparents, since they died before I was born.

[Photos © Debra She Who Seeks, September 2022]

Away in Manitoba

I won't be blogging next week. My Rare One and I will be in Manitoba attending my Mom's memorial service. Here's the "Then and Now" portrait the funeral home made for her obituary. I think it's great! The two photos were taken nearly 70 years apart, in 1943 and 2011.

Blue Butterfly

I've been absent from the blogosphere longer than anticipated because my Mom passed away about two weeks ago at the age of 93. Mom had a long life, although not an easy one in most ways. She was a fighter, though, always persisting, always enduring, no matter what she had to deal with. Her lessons and example made me who I am today, no doubt about it.

I'm just back now from Manitoba, having made final arrangements and taken care of business. One task I had to do was clear out her room at the nursing home. On her closed door, the nursing home staff had placed a picture of a blue butterfly, which I came to understand was their discreet code for "deceased resident." But it is actually a very appropriate coded reference. In ancient Greek mythology, the words for "butterfly" and "soul" are the same ("psyche").

The butterfly of my mother's soul has flown away home now, free at last. I am grieving and sorrowful but I welcome that peace for her.

Charles Walker

There is only one Canadian soldier from World War I to whom my family has a personal connection -- Charles Walker, who was mortally wounded at the battle of Vimy Ridge and died a month later on May 8, 1917, a hundred years ago today.

Charlie Walker was born in Scotland in 1891 and emigrated to Canada as a child. He came to our country as a "Barnardo Boy" -- one of a vast legion of destitute, orphaned and/or abandoned Victorian-era British children who were shipped to the colonies by a British charity called Dr. Barnardo's Homes. Designed to serve as an abundant pool of cheap labour, the boys were trained to be farm workers and the girls to be domestic help. These unfortunate "home children" (as they were also called) were often overworked, underpaid and maltreated in their new lives.

Charlie Walker spent his teenage years working as a farm labourer in southwestern Manitoba. Apparently he was not treated well by his various employers until he started working for my grandfather. He became very close with my grandparents and worked for them for several years until World War I broke out.

In the winter of 1916 when he was 25, Charlie Walker volunteered for the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. He was sent to France with the 44th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry (Manitoba Regiment).

My grandparents sent him off to war with the gift of a pinky ring to remind him of home and those who loved him.

Before he died of his wounds received at Vimy Ridge, Charlie Walker arranged for the ring to be returned to my grandparents as a keepsake. He died unmarried, with no children. The ring has come down through my family and is today in my care, along with his enlistment and military unit photos.

As with all families whose loved ones were killed in the war, my grandparents were devastated by the news of his death. When their only son (my father) was born in 1924, they named him Charles Walker in tribute to their lost young man. My father also did his best during his life to keep Charlie Walker's memory alive. And now that responsibility is mine.

                               They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
                               Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
                               At the going down of the sun and in the morning
                               We will remember them.

                                           --From "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon

Slaveowner Ancestors, Part 2

John Green, my 4x great-grandfather, was born in New Jersey in 1740. During the American Revolution, his Tory family remained loyal to England. John and his four brothers all "joined the Royal Standard" and fought to keep British control of the Thirteen Colonies. Having lost that struggle, John and his brother Adam emigrated in the late 1780s to the Niagara region in Canada as United Empire Loyalists. John brought along his wife Mary, seven children and a slave named Tom.

Slavery was perfectly legal in Britain and its Empire at that time. It took British abolitionists many decades to convince people that slavery is morally wrong, repugnant and should be abolished. Change came slowly, in small incremental steps. Initially, abolitionists succeeded only in having legislative reform measures passed to undermine slavery's viability and usefulness, not to end it completely.

The first such measure was taken here in Canada in 1793 at the behest of abolitionist John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. He persuaded the legislature to forbid any new slaves from being brought to Canada after that date. While slaves already in Canada remained enslaved, any children born to them in Upper Canada would be freed at age 25.

In 1807, Britain passed its own incremental reform statute and abolished the slave trade (although not slavery itself). It took another generation of political and social agitation before slavery was completely abolished at last in Britain and throughout the Empire in 1833.

John Graves Simcoe

Simcoe and his wife were good friends with John Green and his family. I suspect it was Simcoe who persuaded or pressured John Green to voluntarily free his slave Tom now that they lived in Upper Canada. It is said that after being freed, Tom chose to stay in the employ of the Greens for wages.

John Green prospered in Upper Canada until his death in 1830. In addition to owning a farm, saw mill and grist mill, he was also appointed as a surveyor, road builder and justice of the peace. His family name was given to the village of Greensville. Today it is part of the suburban neighbourhood known as West Flamborough on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario.

West Flamborough's Christ Church Anglican and its old graveyard sit on land provided by John Green in 1817 for that purpose. John Green and his wife (as well as my 3x great-grandfather Samuel Green and his wife) are all buried there apparently, although their tombstones have long since deteriorated and been lost to mortal view.

[Final two photos by Debra She Who Seeks, 2013]

Slaveowner Ancestors, Part 1

Do you like watching those TV shows tracing the ancestry of various celebrities? I do, because both history and genealogy are interests of mine. Recently there was a news story about how Ben Affleck had persuaded the makers of PBS's Finding Your Roots not to mention his slaveowning American ancestors which the show had uncovered. He felt ashamed about his family's connection to the odious institution of slavery and did not want it to reflect negatively on him and his image today.

But facts are facts. In my opinion, it does an injustice to history (both national and personal) to hide or deny the truth. I suspect there are very few white Americans from old families who would not find slaveowners among their forebears. Descendants have to come to terms with the terrible way in which slavery benefitted their family's material well-being and advancement.

By way of contrast, I just finished watching the current season of TLC's Who Do You Think You Are? which also featured a couple of celebrities who discovered slaveowner ancestors -- Tom Paxton and Melissa Etheridge. They handled it very differently than Ben Affleck. Both were subdued and saddened to learn of slave ownership in their families but recognized that such hard historical truths were common in the times under investigation. They did not attempt to suppress that information being made public. Neither one celebrated this shortcoming of their ancestors but (quite rightly) also did not take the blame or shame of it upon themselves.

This issue is of personal interest to me because I have at least one slaveowner ancestor of whom I'm aware. I'll tell you his story in my next post.

A Milestone Birthday

I'm in Manitoba right now with my Mom who is celebrating her 90th birthday today. This photo was taken during World War II when she was 19 years old, about two years before she met and married my father. My sister and I are going to bring flowers and an ice cream cake to the nursing home and we will all parTAY!

Aging is such a bittersweet process.

PPCLI Centennial -- World War II

Continuing on with the history of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, today's post is about my family's more personal connection.

World War II

[Charles Comfort, Sergeant P.J. Ford]

The PPCLI drew its members largely from Western Canada and so when my Manitoba farm boy father joined the Canadian war effort in 1942, he joined The Patricias. The regiment was part of the Italian campaign along with British forces and Patton's American units. They invaded Sicily in 1943 and fought their way up the Italian peninsula, successfully knocking fascist Italy out of the war and diverting as many Axis resources as possible from the Eastern Front in order to provide some relief to Russia. The Princess Pats then became part of the liberating forces of Holland.

After the Normandy invasion, the Allied soldiers in Italy (who had suffered the heaviest losses in the Western theatre of war) were sometimes teasingly called "D-Day Dodgers." This caused much resentment. I remember my Dad still being pissed off about that nickname decades later, LOL!

When he was 21, my father returned from World War II with what would today be easily recognized as a pretty severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course, in those days such symptoms were dismissed simply as temporary "battle fatigue" which soldiers were just expected to endure or ignore for the short term.

But, undiagnosed and untreated, my Dad suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life. After 20 years, the worst of the extreme symptoms abated so he was no longer wild, volatile, violent or prone to suicide threats. But he remained moody and subject to unpredictable fits of rage for a further 20 years. The last 20 years of his life were the closest he ever came to living on a relatively even keel but still, his moods could turn on a dime.

His military service was the thing my Dad was most proud of in his life, but he paid a high price for it. As did we who lived with him.

Samuel Green and the War of 1812

Two hundred years ago today on July 6, 1813, my great-great-great-grandfather Samuel Green died. He was a farmer and miller in West Flamborough, Upper Canada (today part of Hamilton, Ontario). Samuel belonged to a large United Empire Loyalist family which had fled to Upper Canada from New Jersey during the American Revolution. He was 43 when he died, leaving a wife and 11 children. Samuel died performing military service in the War of 1812 with his local militia unit, the 2nd York Regiment. His wife Margaret later received a war widows pension for his loss.

Most accounts say that Samuel Green was a casualty of the Battle of Stoney Creek which was fought during the night of June 5-6, 1813. Some accounts say he was killed in action but the later stated death date of July 6 would indicate that he must have instead died of wounds received in the battle. Or perhaps that death date on the pension application was simply a clerical error and "July" should have read "June."

Or did Samuel survive the Battle of Stoney Creek but die performing another kind of military service? An entry in the Militia Muster Roll and Pay List of the 2nd York Regiment says a Samuel Green was paid for "batteauxing to York" from June 25 to July 6, 1813. Batteauxing was how the British moved military goods, supplies and ammunition over water from one strategic point to another by the use of large flat-bottomed boats. Did Samuel in fact drown in Lake Ontario or die accidentally while loading or unloading military supplies? The pay record itself makes no mention of death while on duty. Could it perhaps have been a different Samuel Green doing that job? Records were often spotty or inaccurate in those days.

It's probably impossible to know now. I prefer to subscribe to our traditional family history that Samuel Green was a casualty of the Battle of Stoney Creek. It was on this basis that My Rare One and I went to Hamilton in June to attend the Bicentennial Re-enactment of the Battle of Stoney Creek. More on that to come!

[First photo of a Hamilton statue honouring the United Empire Loyalists comes from the internet. Second photo of militia re-enactors of the Battle of Stoney Creek was taken by My Rare One.]

What's in a Name? Part 3

Another couple of my older female relatives also had somewhat unusual names -- at least, unusual for their time and place. One was named "Beryl" which is a family of crystal gemstones. Beryl comes in several colours like pink, green, yellow and clear. Types of beryl include emerald, aquamarine, heliodor and morganite.

It's a very pretty name if pronounced properly as "BARE-ill." But everyone called her "BURL" which robbed her name of any musicality whatsoever.

Another aunt from my ultra-WASP family was inexplicably given the Spanish name of "Inez." Where her parents out in the middle of nowhere on the Canadian prairies ever learned that name is a complete mystery.

Again, pronounced properly, it is a beautiful and melodious name: "ee-NEZ." But of course everyone anglicized it and reduced it to the considerably less tuneful "EYE-ness." Matching her Spanish given name first with English and then Irish surnames, my auntie was a pioneer of Canadian multiculturalism in action!

What's in a Name? Part 2

My family's admiration for all things British continued into the early 20th century. One of my older relatives was named "Baden Powell," after the Brit who founded the Boy Scout movement.

Another old uncle of mine was named "Minto," after Gilbert John Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto, who was the British Governor-General of Canada from 1898-1904, the period when my uncle was born.

Nor were women in my family immune to this commemorative mania. A female relative born in 1917 was named "Vimy" by her parents to honour the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Suffice it to say, I never ever met anyone else with any of these particular monikers. These relatives truly had unique names and always stood out in a crowd!

What's in a Name? Part 1

I don't know about your family but in mine, some relatives chose quite unique names for their children. Sometimes these names came from the Bible or commemorated famous people or events. Other times the choices were just kind of strange. I'm going to tell you about some of these names in the following three posts.

The most spectacular Biblical name in my family belonged to my great-great-great grandfather Eleazar. So who the heck was "Eleazar" in the Bible?

He was the second High Priest of Israel, having inherited that title from his father Aaron, the brother of Moses. As High Priest, only he could enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Eleazar's early life experience included the exodus from Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the desert.

I guess my great-great-great grandfather's destiny was in his name because his early life involved an exodus as well. During the American War of Independence, his New Jersey family remained loyal to the British Crown and afterwards fled to Canada as United Empire Loyalists. They settled in the Niagara region of what is now Ontario.

So thanks, Eleazar! You and your family are the reason why I live today in a country with universal health care, same sex marriage and no crazy Religious Right!

Charlie Walker's Ring and Namesake

My grandparents gave Charlie Walker a ring when he went off to war, a gold band with a red stone. He wore it throughout his time in Europe. In the hospital after being wounded at Vimy Ridge and knowing the end was near, he arranged to have the ring sent home again to my grandparents. Now that ring is in my possession.

My grandparents had seven daughters. When their first and only son (my father) was born a few years after the First World War, they named him Charles Walker in memory of the fallen soldier who they honoured.

Charles Hengham Walker

Charlie Walker was born in Scotland in 1891 and emigrated to Canada as a child. He may have come to our country as a Barnardo's Boy or as one of the Home Children who were shipped overseas from Britain to be domestic help and farm labourers. As an adult, he ended up in southwestern Manitoba and worked as a farm labourer for my grandfather. He was very close with my grandparents and I believe he worked for them for several years. In the winter of 1916, Charlie Walker volunteered for the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. After training, he was sent to France with the 44th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry (Manitoba Regiment). He was mortally wounded at Vimy Ridge in April, 1917 and died about a month later on May 8, 1917. He was 26 years old, unmarried, with no children. Charlie Walker is buried at Vimy Ridge in France.

Vigil 1914-1918

My Rare One and I got up in the middle of the night and drove to the Alberta Legislature. We stood in the cold night air and the dark by ourselves and then we went home again. Here's why.

There's a special transatlantic Vigil of Remembrance being held this year for the 68,000 Canadian soldiers killed in World War I. At some point during a night from sunset November 4th to sunrise November 11th, the name of a fallen soldier will be projected in light for a couple of minutes against various public buildings and monuments in Britain and Canada. The illuminated names start in London, England (projected onto Canada House in Trafalgar Square), then cross the Atlantic and are sequentially illuminated in Halifax, Fredericton, Ottawa (projected onto the National War Memorial), Toronto, Regina and finally Edmonton (projected onto a large screen in front of the Alberta Legislature). The westward progression of the names is meant to be a symbolic repatriation to Canada of those who died and were buried in Europe as a sacrifice to the British Empire.

There is only one soldier from the First World War to whom I have a personal connection. His name was Charles Hengham Walker and his name was illuminated this morning at the Alberta Legislature at 2:33 a.m. We were there to witness his symbolic homecoming. To greet his return, I wore the ring he wore throughout the war, including at Vimy Ridge where he was mortally wounded and subsequently died on May 8, 1917.

More about Charlie Walker and his ring in the next couple of posts.