O Canada!
Our home and native land!
A day late and a dollar short, as usual. I hope all you Canadian blogger buddies had a festive Canada Day. Happy Canada Day. Merry Canada Day. Whatever greeting is appropriate on the occasion.
In Scarecrow's youth, his family always spent summers in a cottage his grandfather built on the north arm of Lake Gowganda in northern Ontario, making an annual trek up from Florida. We went up to the cottage a couple-three times when we lived in Michigan, although I'm afraid Tuffy was too young to remember. Since we could only manage two weeks of vacation, we tried to predict (with only limited success) when the wild blueberries would be ripe, and schedule our trip to coincide with the height of the season. What do you think? Late July? If they haven't had much sun, maybe they'll ripen late. Maybe early August would be better? We haven't been back to Gowganda since we moved to Seattle, distance and logistics and disability issues being what they are. It comes to mind this time of year. We can visit vicariously, but it's not the same.
As it happens, I've been Stalking Dead Canadians lately.
Scarecrow's mother's family comes from Ontario. After some digging around, it was starting to look like some of them arrived in Canada when British loyalists decamped from the colonies around the time of the American Revolutionary war. Thinking that was kind of cool, I told Scarecrow what I'd turned up. His response left something to be desired on the shock and awe front. Apparently family lore said something to that effect, so he wasn't surprised. Seriously. When I tell you I managed to track down a guy named "William Bates" in Burlington, Ontario, in 1800, you could at least pretend to be impressed.
I got to tell you, it's a little weird reading about the French and Indian war from the French perspective, or about the American Revolution from the Canadian point of view. Refreshing, and interesting, for sure, but weird.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
Posts
Hello world!
10 months ago
As a kid, I loved singing O Canada in music class -- didn't have that ding-dang high note!
ReplyDeleteI wanna go! To Gowganda that is. Great pics on that fellow's blog. Besides, it would give me an excuse to keep saying the word Gowganda...Gowgonda...gowgonda...ok, I'll stop now.
Impressive regarding the genealogy research. If you're so inclined on a post, tell us what resources you used. I went to grad school with a guy who was into that and he's now a genealogy librarian. What a cool job.
Take care.
Gosh Gowgonda genealogy! Very cool link to blog also.
ReplyDeleteReading history from another view point is always enlightening. The old history text (prior to the re writing of history) are interesting also.
Jan
LOL, yeah, funny how history is---"his" story, depending on who "he" is! HA! Not living through it all, best we can do is piece it together, kinda fun, like searching dead Canadians. My partner grew up in MI, had boat marina dealy in Ontario, so she spent a bit of time in that area and loved it. Me? I only know Oh Canada from South Park. DOH.
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