CHRISTMAS IN GRAVENHURST -

NO SNOW DOESN'T MAKE GRAVENHURST A LESSER ENTITY - OR CHRISTMAS ANY LESS FESTIVE - IF FESTIVE IS WHAT YOU WANT

NOTE: FOR YOUR CHRISTMAS PLEASURE - I HAVE FOUND A NICE WINTER LANDSCAPE (POSTED ABOVE)…..A SMALL OIL ON BOARD, DEPICTING A WINTER LANDSCAPE, POSSIBLY OF A MUSKOKA WOODLANDS, THAT WAS FOUND AT A RECENT SALE HERE IN GRAVENHURST. IT'S NOT THE SNOW YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT, CLOGGING THE DRIVEWAY…..THIS SNOW IS JUST NICE TO LOOK AT……AT HEARSIDE, WITH A GRAND, FIRE-BATHED YULE LOG ON THE GRATE. I CAN LIVE WITH AN ARTIST'S DEPICTION OF WINTER, AND A POET'S REFERENCE, TO STOPPING IN A SNOWY WOODS…..FOR A WEE GANDER.

FAMILY HISTORY AT CHRISTMAS OR ANY OTHER TIME OF THE ROLLING YEAR……

I don't require snow in order to celebrate the Christmas season. While it's true, it does look a little English out there, I'm good with that. I love to explore our roots back to England, Scotland and Ireland. I can so clearly see those charming country villages, with the cobbled paths, so snowless and picturesque, and feel pretty good about my family's own connection to a heritage of gentler winters, and oh so much more rainfall. I can even imagine my ancestors ambling to the village pub, for a wee glass of ale. As for no snow here, in Gravenhurst, I just fall back on history, and let sentiment do the rest. As for the pub, and the amber brew……our house is decorated in pub decor, and all I need is a peak cap, an umbrella to wave about, and then place in a wooden stand at the door. As long as I've got the nightly back-to-back episodes of Coronation Street, and a corner booth at the Rover's Return, the snow isn't as important as the mood here at Birch Hollow. The Christmas mood of course. And here's one of the ways we enhance the festivities……other than the Scottish, Irish, English, Dutch and German beer (from our forefathers' and mothers' connections).

As a now annual treat, to the inmates of Birch Hollow, we're ordering another year of service from Ancestry.ca, to assist family research. This will be Suzanne's third year, using the online genealogical material, that has infilled many blank branches on the old family tree….her family's and mine. It started when a historian friend of mine, Hugh Macmillan, presently of Ottawa, began telling us about the work he has done for decades, tracing his own family heritage……a big whack being from Scotland. His family had a connection with the early fur trade in Canada. Hugh was once connected as an archival hunter-gatherer, with the Ontario Archives, and is no stranger to the National Archives either. Hugh was a legend in the pursuit of historically important paper heritage, and documents, and travelled thousands of miles looking for elusive collections, anywhere and everywhere, and he wrote a book about his exploits, entitled "Adventures of a Paper Sleuth." When Hugh and a mate stayed here at Birch Hollow, over a weekend, some years back, he and Suzanne talked for hours about the work involved investigating family history. You couldn't get a better tutor that Hugh, all for the price of lodging, good drink and good food. While Suzanne had done some preliminary work, they were pretty bare trees when she started. And this included rough work we already possessed, that had been done by other family members. What we have since found, was that some of this work had been in error, and that was a time waster, chasing down names and their kin, that had no relevance to our own family. It's a common error and that's why, like Hugh Macmillan, you have to be dogged in determination, to ferret-out what's right and wrong, through the cluster of what has been attributed to and as family members.

When we learned more about the network of Ancestry.ca, we agreed help was required if we ever wanted to leave a properly done, accurate paper-trail for our sons, Andrew and Robert. We wanted them to be proud of their roots…..even when we didn't have a clue what we might find out there in genealogical information. So for a number of years, we have given ourselves a combined gift, at around this time of the winter season, of a year subscription to Ancestry.ca (you can look this up online, and find out the rates for the service), and as a bonus last year, we included the European archive connection, because this was the biggest gate to open to find the rest of our family members. From the North American option, to the European network, was night and day difference, in what was made available to us. We were thusly able to go back hundreds…..and I mean many hundreds of years, following the branches of the tree literally as far back as records were available (this varies widely depending on the country records you are searching…..due to calamities of the past that might have resulted in the destruction of census material).

Once again this Christmas, we didn't have to think very hard or long about what to give ourselves as a Christmas present. It's an easy shopping run…….no gas required. We are able to renew online and bingo, bang, bongo, we're back in business for another year. It's fascinating once you get hooked. On the other hand, is it addictive? Well, you know from the news, about computer-game obsessions. I have to physically remind Suzanne it's time to go to bed. "I'm so close," she'll say…..almost every time, as an excuse, to beg a little more time in quest of family heritage. I don't think, other than a little sleep deprivation, she'll suffer ill consequence, in this adventure in history. For me it's been great, finding out, for example, that I am of United Empire Loyalist stock, amongst the earliest settlers in Prince Edward County, and the Trenton area, of Southern Ontario (shore of Lake Ontario), of the Jackson clan on my mother's side. Her mother was of Dutch ancestry, a Vandervoort, connected to families in New York, at the time of the Revolutionary War. This is where the intermingling and procreating gave us our German connection, Waldenmeyer, as well, and it connected us to many interesting characters, and definitely a few rogues. So I come by it honestly. I was also interested in finding out about my family's volunteer service during the War of 1812, as part of a regional battalion, and the founding of the town of Belleville. I was meant for politics. As for the Jackson family, Stanley Jackson (of farming stock, a builder, and a violinist) they had several beautiful old farmsteads, we were able to find in Ontario guidebooks from the late 1800's, and we've recently found old tombstones belonging to these same pioneers……we didn't know about until Suzanne began digging through the huge quantity of online resources, courtesy the Ancestry.ca registry. I found out that I had family members in conflicts from the Revolutionary War, in America, to the War of 1812, between our countries, and both the First and Second World Wars. I went from a minor amount of knowledge, to a literal sea of information. The next project for Suzanne is to more clearly identify one male of the Jackson family, a member of the clergy in Warrington, England. I've always known I had one foot in heaven……the other….well, you know. The one in heaven has always saved me, thank God.

Suzanne started with a little better foundation, for her family, as one of her aunts was a member of the archives division of the Church of Latter Day Saints, the folks who have a huge volume of ancestry data you can access. Suzanne is of pioneer Muskoka stock; the Shea and Veitch families of the Three Mile Lake, Ufford region of the present Township of Muskoka Lakes. Her uncle Bert Shea wrote two family histories. Her ancestor's dug-out canoe is on display at the Muskoka Lakes Museum, in Port Carling. Her father was the son of Sam Stripp, of Windermere, a boat builder, painter, carpenter, who was famous in Muskoka, for the way he painted ice surfaces, (in Bracebridge arenas) in preparation for skating carnivals. If you've ever seen a vintage Bracebridge postcard, (of which there were thousands printed) of the set-up for a skating carnival, the red ice was Sam's handiwork. There was a picture of this, on display at the present arena. But she was able to find a huge amount of new information, her aunt had not been able to locate, and it puts so much of what she did know, in a clearer profile. Once again, it is heavy in Ireland, England and Scotland. For years I've kidded her, that it was one of her Shea relatives, responsible for the killing of the Black Donnellys, in Lucan, and she's worked feverishly to disprove this claim ever since. She's not done yet, and neither am I. "My family wasn't part of a lynch mob," I remind her. Which makes her even more determined to kick my arse with fact……instead of hearsay.

This is the year Suzanne plans to launch her own family-history blog, as part of our blogging family, and offer a help-site, to provide some relevant information on the adventure and of course, misadventures, on the mission to find genealogical connections, and the problems of false leads and hunting-gathering gaffs, passed on by even formal official records, and the misguided attempts of previous family historians to fill those branches with ancestors…..whether they rightfully belong or not. She admits the process can be frustrating and lead to premature resignation, that you'll never get anywhere. In fact, and she'll admit this……that most of her most impressive finds, came during those same peaks of aggravation, at taking wrong turns…..because it just made her more determined than ever, to fix what went wrong; and then find the right direction to turn at the very next crossroads. A second blog will be devoted to the finds she has made thus far, and hopefully it will inspire interaction with other family researchers working on roughly the same project…..from a different branch of the family legacy. What's great about it, is that the project is always ongoing, and as for a research hobbyist, there's so much more you can find, even beyond the facts of births, marriages and deaths. What did the ancestors we know about, do for a living? And here's an amusing anecdote for you. As I come from tin-smiths and farmers, Suzanne has one relative, from the old country, who was listed, in an 1800's census report, as a "sock knitter." What's funny about this, is that Suzanne knits and sells socks through our son's main street Gravenhurst business. She only found out about the sock-knitter in the family, in the last month. Suzanne has been knitting mitts, scarves, hats, sweaters and of course socks, since her early teens. I've made it very clear, I won't wear knit pants or underwear, but I'll take all the socks she can muster out of that mountain of wool I live with here at Birch Hollow.

Have a look at Ancestry.ca yourself. It doesn't cost to have a look at the options. Suzanne hasn't turned pro yet, as far as a genealogical tutor, but she can answer some personal questions about what the online service can open up for the rookie family historian. Also keep in mind, that when you embark on this adventure, you will make many other connections, beyond the initial ancestry service, as you find, generally by happenstance, that there are other family members from all over the world, doing the same as you……and when you network together, what fun you'll have searching for dead people….the folks who put us where we are today. And you never know, it might inspire some genealogical travel in the future……and for me, it must involve a village pub.

I never had to worry about finding Suzanne the right gift for Christmas, and for that, thank you so much Ancestry.ca.

Merry Christmas.

GOOD TO READ ABOUT A GRAVENHURST COUNCILLOR DEMANDING SOMETHING - ANYTHING

I WAS EXCEPTIONALLY PLEASED TO KNOW THAT SOME MEMBERS OF THE PRESENT GRAVENHURST COUNCIL ARE GETTING FED-UP WITH RECREATION CENTRE DELAYS, ESPECIALLY THE PART WHERE "WE CAN ACTUALLY USE IT." MAYBE EVEN SOME WATER FOR THE POOL TOO, AS A CHRISTMAS BONUS. YOU DON'T GET TO READ MUCH ABOUT COUNCILLORS EXERCISING A LITTLE DESERVED COMMOTION OVER AT TOWN HALL, ABOUT THINGS LIKE LONG-OVERDUE OPENINGS……OF MULTI, MULTI MILLION DOLLAR RECREATION FACILITIES, MIRED IN CONTROVERSY AND THIS AND THATS FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS NOW. BUT I REMEMBER THE STORY ABOUT BRACEBRIDGE'S CRYSTAL PALACE POOL LEAKING WATER AFTER IT WAS OPENED, AND WE DON'T NEED THAT TO HAPPEN HERE. SO I CAN BUY THE "BETTER SAFE" PROTOCOL.

GOOD ALSO TO READ ABOUT THE NEARLY 1,000 CITIZENS WHO HAVE ALREADY BECOME MEMBERS. I HOPE IT CONTINUES TO INCREASE. GRAVENHURST DESERVES THIS FACILITY, ESPECIALLY FOR THE MONEY THAT'S HAS BEEN INVESTED IN THE REDEVELOPMENT.

THE ONLY THING ABOUT THIS, I TRULY OBJECT WITH, ARE GRIP AND GRIN PHOTOGRAPHS AND HUGE PUBLICATION INFO-SPREADS, SHOWING US HOW VISUALLY APPEALING THE FACILITY IS……BECAUSE FOLKS, WITH WHAT THE LOCAL AND NATIONAL TAXPAYERS HAVE CONTRIBUTED HERE…..AND WILL CONTINUE TO CONTRIBUTE, THE CENTRE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, AND WITHOUT FLAWS…..REALLY. THAT'S WHAT THE TAXPAYERS ARE LOOKING FOR……..NOT A PRINTED REPORT…..NOT A FRONT PAGE NEWS REPORT…..NOT PROPAGANDA, BUT THE REALITY, WE GOT EVERYTHING THAT WE PAID FOR…….AND THE RELIABILITY OF THE FACILITY, WE DEMAND, AS FOLLOW-THROUGH FOR OUR INVESTMENT. THE TOWN DOESN'T NEED TO PITCH THE REC. CENTRE, AS BEING BEAUTIFUL, OR EXOTIC, OR TAJ MAHAL-LIKE……IS IT WHAT THE COMMUNITY WANTED? DOES IT HAVE ALL THE FUNCTIONS AND RELIABILITY TO MAKE US FEEL WARM AND COZY ABOUT THE DEBT YET TO BE PAID? THIS IS THE REAL "GOOD VALUE" REPORT…….THAT COUNTS. THE ONE THAT COMES FROM THE FOLKS WHO WILL BE USING THIS CENTRE, FROM HOCKEY AND SKATING TYPES, TO FITNESS ENTHUSIASTS, AND SWIMMERS. YOUNG AND OLD, WILL THEY APPROVE OF WHAT HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED?

THAT'S THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS WE SHALL PAY MOST ATTENTION TO……NOT THE PROPAGANDA.