After I posted my last post, I reached out to one of my followers that had been married to a member of the Dagenais clan. She put me in touch with her daughter. And her daughter sent me links to a marriage licence and a census report.
So, I’ve made decent progress on the maternal side of my family now.
I don’t know how much luck I’m going to have with the paternal side of my father’s side of the family. I have made out pretty good with the maternal side of his family. I should know everyone up to the my great-great-grandparents on the maternal side of my father’s family.
And here’s what I’ve been able to piece together for Susan’s family.
I don’t really know much if anything about Sue’s side of the family.
Whenever she’d go shopping at Knob Hill Farms in Oshawa we’d always stop in for visits with her parents on Gibb Street so I spent far more time with her parents that I did with my father’s father.
I’m pretty sure that both of her parents spoke English, but with very heavy Dutch accents.
Even when Richard was with us we’d never go visit Arthur Herman Gill.
Not once.
After we moved to Canadian Forces Base Greisbach in Edmonton in October of 1980 we inherited uncle Jimmy’s samoyed dog named Lady.
Uncle Jimmy lived in Fort McMurray and had worked on the tug boats on the Athabasca river hauling tar sands from the pits to the refiners.
Jimmy was having health issues and he couldn’t look after Lady any longer. And Lady had always been an outside dog with little discipline.
On Greisbach she was always getting us in trouble with the base officials as she’d dig up the lawn around the PMQ and in the spring and summer she’d shed her massive white coat.
But once we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in April of 1983 Lady was sent to live with the Zwolle family out in Oshawa.
I think Lady died sometime around 1986.
The Zwolle house is long gone. It looks like it was possibly bought along with the two other houses on the patch of land they occupied by the Oshawa school board to allow the expansion of the school grounds.
So far as my background, it looks like this.
- First Nations relatives.
- German relative.
- French relatives.
- Scottish relatives.
- Icelandic relatives.
- Irish relatives.
- And a bit of Scandinavian thrown in for good measure.
No wonder when I used to ask my father what my background was as a kid he’d always say that I was a mutt. Not an “Indian” like my grandmother, not Irish like my grandfather, not French like my mother.
Just a mutt.
Beeshive 