Prompt # 43 - Emigration

 Prompt # 43 - Emigration

I was born in Rivers, Manitoba, Canada and I have never lived in any other country. I love Canada, both where I was born and where I live now, in Hope, BC. This summer, I cannot visit the prairies where I grew up so I am reading prairie stories. I just finished Gabrielle Roy's The Road Past Altamont. Altamont is a town near where my brother lives. I just started reading Homesick, a novel by Saskatchewan writer Guy Vanderhaeghe, with a cover painting by Gathie Falk, a BC artist who came from Manitoba.

Twice in my life I have visited England, Scotland, and Ireland. I could live in any of these places if I win the lottery. Both my grandmothers were born in England. My mother's mother in Portsmouth, Hampshire with family origins in Essex and Norfolk. My father's mother in Somerset. They both emigrated to Canada shortly before WW I. One came alone, to Kaslo, BC and the other came with her mother and two siblings to join her father who had come on ahead. On my tour last summer, I visited towns and houses where they both lived before leaving England. I took pictures. This is the house in which my mother's mother lived with her mother, grandmother, and two aunts, from 1904 to 1913.

In 1978, through a long series of coincidences, I spent Christmas in a small town in Ireland. I knew nothing about Ireland other than “the Troubles” in the North as reported in the news. I absolutely loved the country—the pubs, Dublin, Connemara, castles, monasteries, ruins, people. I felt very at home. Several years later, at least 30, I learned that my grandmother's grandfather had been stationed in Dublin with the Royal Navy when he died. Then, slowly, over the next 8 years, I learned that he had actually been born there, in Cork, where his father was also a doctor who taught at Cork University, and that he and several generations before him had all been born in Ireland. Later still, the more I Googled the family name on my mother's side, the more astonished I became. There is a bay. There were landowners around Kinsale. One of them was married to a Butler of Kilkenny Castle, which I had never heard of before the bus stopped there last year. There were graves with the family name a mere four miles from sites I had visited on my first magic trip to the emerald isle. I also stumbled upon a marriage between a man with my father's name and a woman with my mother's family name (although in Canada these families lived half a continent apart and knew nothing of each other.) Then, pursuing the matrilineal name with Kinsale, I came up with the final coincidence (so far). That a woman with my patriarchal name and my first name lived in Kinsale in the 1820s where she started a service group called The Sisters of Mercy. If you know how much I love Leonard Cohen, you will understand what this means to me. I think the word is gobsmacked.

I still continue my genealogy research. I have yet to make the link between Norfolk and Kinsale. It seems several archives were lost during the fight for independence. But I'm one of those genealogists more inclined towards “family history” and “blood memory” than I am towards “the paper trail” and “hard evidence,” so I'm enjoying the journey and the mystery.

PS  My mother's father's family moved from New Brunswick, Canada to Red River and then to British Columbia in 1891. My father's family came from Cornwall. His grandfather homesteaded in Manitoba in the 1891 after retiring from the Royal Navy.

Prompt # 42 – Handwriting

Prompt # 42 – Handwriting


The deterioration of my handwriting I shall blame on fifty years of keyboards. Although it never was beautiful. I've always admired a really artistic hand like many architects and artists have, especially those who design their own fonts. Like Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

One of my prize possessions is a poetry book which my mother received as an award for her handwriting in 1932. And I also have an autograph book in which she wrote to me: Away back here and out of sight, I write my name with all my might. I'd write it better if I could, but nature said I never would.

Above this page is the signature I also treasure, in an ancient geography textbook which belonged to my other grandmother Margery, autographed by her when she was around ten years old, before she emigrated to Canada from Somerset. When she married, she changed both her names to avoid confusion with her husband's sister who was also a Hilda.

The Bliss Carman poem is in my grandmother Winifred's, my mother's mother's handwriting. I also have copies of letters in Anne's, my mother's grandmother's handwriting.

And last Christmas, my cousin Carol gave me an old postcard mailed in December 23, 1917 from Richmond, Surrey, to our grandmother Winifred from her grandmother Jessie who died in 1920. Incredible. There is a photo of a dog on the front who I guess may be named Rip and the copy says: Rip joins us in love and best wishes for the new year. J*B

This topic made me look and it made me see. I found another surprise in that same old autograph book.

Forget you! no I never will As long as I can whistle. I may as well forget to jump When I sit on a thistle. Daddy.

Prompt # 41 - Blood Type

Prompt # 41 - Blood Type

Blood type O for Ordinary.

I used to give blood, but I stopped because I would faint afterwards.

Prompt # 40 - I Think

Prompt # 40 – I Think

I hardly ever think about thinking.

Where do I think? I used to think a lot when I was driving. Now I drive much less, maybe 3 or 4 times a week, usually just around town. And since my new car is a standard, it takes more concentration, with less time to think.

To me, there seems to be two kinds of thinking - creative thinking and problem solving. I do a lot of creative thinking, thinking up projects I want to write about and then thinking how best to word them - fiction or non-fiction. My problem-solving challenges vary. How am I going to get my three sections of chimney replaced? How am I going to motivate myself to move out of my house? Or should I give myself another ten years here? Or should I pay off the mortgage? Should I self-publish, POD? With this type of problem-solving thinking, especially if any numbers are involved, or mechanics, I will usually ask for input. Often from my brother. Or accountant. Or friends who have been through this already.

I have to write everything down, in order to remember, and make a TO DO list, to make a commitment. I have notes on scraps of paper everywhere. I get a lot of ideas while I am reading, so I make notes. I also find that writing helps me figure things out and think things through. Sometimes I don't know what I think until after I get into it, writing. Even with creative writing, the re-writing phase is the part I most enjoy. Making it better, once I've figured out what it is I am writing about. Maybe that's because the type of thinking shifts from creative to analytic and problem solving.

So, I guess I do most of my thinking sitting at my computer keyboard, or in my reading chair. Or while busy at other tasks around the house and yard. Trying not to think, not trying to think, seems to be one trick that works for me. That's when the ideas slip in.