We are experiencing a reluctant spring here in Ottawa. The ground is still frozen, the neighbourhood lawns sit brown and matted, tiny buds hold tight to tree branches. For an April-born soul like me, this extended grip of winter is like a tether I’m chafing against. I need the soft spring warmth and new green sprouts of my favourite season to renew my inspiration and energy. Are you feeling the same way?
It seems that for now my challenge is to seek out the few brave tips that have broken through the crust of soil and find inspiration with what nature has to offer, instead of complaining and protesting the latest weather forecast.
So I took myself out into the back yard and found these brave tips:
And I took myself out into my community and found some more brave tips and with them, the inspiration for this month’s poem, The Only Way You Get to Bloom.
I remind myself that Nature is wise and patient and steadfast – all things I am not. I’ll take these early signs as proof that spring is emerging… albeit on her own timetable. May you also experience the wisdom of Nature this month!
The Romans called today the “ides” of March – the middle of the month – and in Shakespeare’s play a fortune teller warns Julius Caesar: “beware the ides of March.” (He didn’t listen and was murdered on this day in 44BC.)
For me, March 15 is all about renewal. Every year about this time I feel the urge to plant something. Try something different. Start something new. Of course the ground is still frozen in Ottawa, and I’ve been shovelling the driveway this week, and nothing green will show up in my gardens for at least another month.
So I’ve been experimenting with new (to me) forms of poetry, and studying photo composition. Walking around the village of Richmond looking for new sites to photograph – when it’s pretty enough to do so. Cleaning out that basement closet to open up physical space, which always invites more open creative space too.
This month’s poem is in two parts: the first part is in the form of a “prose poem”, which looks a lot like a paragraph, but which strives to be more lyrical, more graceful in language and description. Part two is a story in free verse, where I imagine the answer to a mystery car that is only revealed in the early spring or in winter, when there are few or no leaves on trees to provide cover. I took the photo of it near our cottage in Muskoka.
Hope you get to feeling renewed and energized in March! Meanwhile, please pause and ponder this month’s “somewhere beautiful.” Where does this mystery take your imagination? I’d love to know! Here’s “Ridge Road.”
I recently investigated the whereabouts of my ancestors in 1867 – the year that Canada officially became a country. But the seeds for my country’s formation were actually sown over a hundred years prior to that, when the “Seven Years War” between England and France and their allies came to an end. Key battles in that war were fought in North America, including at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, in Montreal and at Quebec City. These brought about a major turning point for North America and set up the circumstances that would lead to the creation of Canada. They also led to dramatic changes in some of my ancestors’ lives.
Here’s what North America looked like in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years War:
Here’s why that war was a turning point for North America:
Control switched from France to Britain. After 150 years, France surrendered all its territories to Britain and North America became English. Explains why I don’t speak French!
French was protected in Quebec. “New France” was gone, and with it the French (Catholic) religion, the French language and French common law – except in Quebec, where Britain made allowances for the French settlers who decided to stay. Canada still struggles with this today.
First Nations land rights were recognized. The red line shown on the map is where Britain declared the western boundary of its settlements to extend; land to the west of that was acknowledged as “Indian Territory.” This was the first recognition of First Nations’ rights to land and titles. The proclamation did not last; some historians say that what happened to the natives once the Europeans arrived was in fact genocide. And the fallout from ignored and/or disrespected native land treaties established in 1763 is still in the news in Canada today.
And here’s why the Seven Years War is important to my family history:
I had ancestors living in North America at the time. The “British Colonies” noted on the map were the first settlements of what would become the United States. Thirteen colonies stretching from Georgia to Maine, they had first been established in 1607 and were already British from that time. I had many ancestors, all from my father’s line, living in the 13 Colonies in 1763.
I had at least one ancestor who fought in the Seven Years War.
My Soldier in the Seven Years War
78th Fraser Highlanders wore Highland dress into battle, however the tartan style is unknown.
I know of only one ancestor who was directly involved in fighting in the Seven Years War: my 5-times-great-grandfather Daniel McIntyre. Daniel signed up with the 78th Regiment Frasers Highlanders in Inverness Scotland in 1757, at the age of 21; he was likely a farmer before that. He fought for Britain – in his kilt – at Louisbourg, at Montreal, and at the decisive battle on Quebec’s Plains of Abraham. When the war ended, his regiment consisted of 887 men. Of these, almost half chose to be deployed to other regiments in North America, while others boarded ships back to Scotland. Some settled in Quebec (as many of them spoke French) and some, Daniel included, decided to set up homes in upstate New York or Vermont. Daniel received a land grant of 200 acres in Vermont for his service to Britain.
My Family’s Presence in the 13 Colonies
When Daniel McIntyre settled in Vermont after the war, he unknowingly joined other family members from my father’s line who were already living in the 13 Colonies. Although there were battles fought during the Seven Years War in what would become New York State and Pennsylvania, I have no information that indicates any of these family members from the Colonies were involved:
By 1763, the Wilcox family had been in North America for 130 years! My 10-times-great-grandfather Edward was the first immigrant, from South Elkington, England. He settled in Rhode Island in 1638. At the end of The Seven Years War, his descendant, Benjamin Wilcox, my 5-times-great-grandfather, plus his wife Elsie and daughter Hannah, were living either in Massachusetts where Benjamin was born, or New Jersey, where they moved to at some point.
Fretz homestead in Pennsylvania. From Fretz Family History by Rev. A. J. Fretz, pub. 1890
“Weaver John” Fretz – so called because he was a weaver as well as a farmer – was head of a large Mennonite family living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They farmed together on 230 acres. “Weaver John” had emigrated from Manheim, Germany as a child, somewhere between 1710 and 1720. By 1763 the family consisted of John, his second wife Maria, their eight children and many grandchildren. “Weaver John” was my 7-times-great-grandfather.
The Boughner family were newcomers to the 13 Colonies, originally from Unnau, Germany. Johann Martin Buchner and Elsa Zehrung had arrived in September 1753, just three years before the war began. They settled with their seven children in New Jersey. Martin was a school master; he and Elsa were my 5-times great-grandparents.
The peace negotiated in 1763 would not last long. Within 12 years a new war would erupt, caused in part by the terms of that 1763 treaty. As a result of the new war, the map of North America would be redrawn again. Daniel McIntyre’s fighting days were not over yet. And many more of my ancestors’ lives would change dramatically.
I’ll continue this story in another post. Meanwhile: what world events have had a direct impact on your family? I’d love to know!
After a busy and productive January, I find myself in a quieter, more reflective state this month. Maybe brought on by weather? Winter in Ottawa this year has been a cycle of relentless cold followed by seemingly endless overcast, yet more snow to shovel and then you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me rain. I have not been out on my snowshoes once!
But lately… I’ve noticed the longer day length. Winterlude got underway in Ottawa. And Canada scored another medal at the winter games! I’m starting to feel a bit more energized.
Whether you escape February altogether in search of warmer climes, or find something uniquely wintery to enjoy, I hope you find a way this month to pause and re-charge your batteries. Meanwhile, here’s a poem and photo about different ways of staying charged: INTROVERT
Sometimes my back yard provides all the recharge I need!
Hello there! I hope your 2018 is off to a strong start!
As you see from this picture I took recently in my back yard, we’ve been in a deep freeze for most of December and now again in January. I could not resist bundling up and going outside to take this shot of what looks to me like a snake, a snow otter and an elf hat. Reminds me that Mother Nature has a sense of humour! It also reminds me that I can find inspiration all around me if I only take the time to look.
This month’s poem was inspired by exactly that: looking around me and making some connections with what I saw. I found a perfect photo match for it in my collection of pictures taken at the cottage last summer.
So, what do you think about taking some time this month to look around you a little more closely? You may be surprised, and inspired! Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy Evidence of Angels.
Lee Ann
P.S. This is one of two of my poems that was recently awarded Judges Choice, and published in “The Bannister,” an anthology of 2017 contest winners by the Niagara Branch of the Canadian Authors Association.
One day when I was about 12 years old, my Uncle Bob came to the house with a leather-bound, yellowed passport. While he talked excitedly about how his Aunt Lucille probably didn’t realize the value of this when she sent it to him, I paged through it slowly, along with a sheet of paper which translated the words from Hungarian. The passport, issued in 1905, recorded my great-grandparents, Jozsef and Julianna Gerencser and their two sons immigrating to Buffalo, New York from a small village in central Hungary.
Cover page of passport for Gerencser family, 1905
This was the first time I heard that my grandfather had changed his name from Istvan Gerencser to Stephen Granger. The first time I understood from my mother and uncle that their dad, Stephen, had denied his Hungarian heritage his whole life.
Being twelve years old, I was much more fascinated at the time with the fact that the passport described my ancestors as having “regular” noses. But over many years, as my Uncle Bob continued with his research – a slow process in the 1970s! – I started to ask more questions when he arrived with new stories about the people in my Granger-Gerencser family. Like Christmas in Buffalo, where Stephen and his brother would receive – in “a good year” – an orange and a nickel. How Stephen’s sister, Julie, nearly froze when being taken to church for her baptism in a traditional, but flimsy, dress during a frigid Buffalo winter. Uncle Bob also had plenty of tales about growing up with my mom St. Catharines, Ontario: the piano that fell through the floor at Mr. Zabut’s; my mother wearing her mouse costume on backwards during a skating program. And the story that began one day with his question to my mother, “So, Sis, what is the word for people whose parents were never legally married?”
Granger family, circa 1942. Clockwise from top: Mary-Jane, Stephen, Bob, Mary
It was the stories that hooked me. When my mother passed away, I decided I wanted to record what I’d come to think of as “the Uncle Bob stories.” So I arranged to meet him in St. Catharines, in the neighbourhood where he and my mother grew up. We walked the neighbourhood; he talked and I recorded. This afternoon of reminiscing became the genesis of my book, “Strength Within: The Granger Chronicles,” published in 2005 to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the Gerencser immigration.
By the time I wrote that book I had learned to ask much more often, the question, “why?” Why did they immigrate? Why did they “skip town” to get married? Why did he deny his heritage? This question, of course, leads to the stories. But it also led me to much more. I learned about historical events and their direct impact on my family members. I learned how to counsel other family historians about what the options might be to dealing compassionately with family secrets. I learned how to take genealogical data and turn it into stories that people might read and enjoy.
I got started in genealogy thanks to my Uncle Bob, one of the best storytellers I know. I stay in the game because I’ve discovered I love to tell stories too. For me, genealogy is not about building a huge database of records, but about reaching beyond those records and turning data into story.
How about you? Who are the storytellers in your family? Can you think of ways to tap into those stories before they are lost?
