Today would have been my Dad’s birthday. He was born in Claybrooke Magna, Leicestershire, England on May 12, 1904. How he would have loved this wonderful technology!
He started his working life here in Canada as a Telegram Delivery Boy and soon progressed to a telegrapher for Canadian Pacific Telecommunications. He was a fantastic typist. As a child I remember sitting in our basement on cold winter nights and listening to him as he operated his HAM Radio. Nothing was more exciting than to have him make contact with another operator somewhere in the world. VE6 IR was his call number. Confirmation of contact was made with postcards and I would check the mail everyday to see if any new ones had arrived.
He never lived to see the world of computers and cell phones, but I am sure he would have been amongst the first to have such items. He was a man before his time way back then and today, he would have been on the net with all its instant communication! And Google Earth with all aerial and street views….oh my! He never flew in a jet plane! and didn’t know what the world looked like from up there.
I became interested in Genealogy about 8 years ago after I retired. Over the years, I had discovered photos of relatives left behind in England when my Dad and Grandparents emigrated to Canada in 1913. Of course, like many others, I never asked who were the people in these pictures….so, I set out to discover who they were.
I pursued much of my research using online databases. The highlight of my connection with the Alberta Genealogy Society was the London Trippers trip to England in September 2010. There is nothing like spending time in Archives with others who are as passionate about their research as you are and then being able to visit the areas in England where your ancestors once lived and to walk down those same country roads.
Originally I was interested in learning who my ancestors were and where they had come from. I started out creating all those wonderful pedigree charts. Some 8 years on, I have finished, more or less, a few! The names and dates are there for me to look at. In some cases, I have been able to go back to the 1600’s. I guess this is success. What I discovered though was, it wasn’t the names or dates that were really important, it was the stories behind them. These were real people with real and exciting lives They lived in places as far away as Calcutta, India and Coquimbo, Chile. They were tradespeople and domestic servants. They were farmers and Blacksmiths and they worked on ships as Engineers. They fought and died in the British Army in different wars. They were the true adventurers.
In the past few years, I have learned more history, geography, sociology, rural history, women’s studies, archaeology and computer skills than I did in my entire school years. It is these stories that now keep me engaged! I hope my WANDERINGS will continue to take me to the places where these people lived and died and I will be able to infuse my writings with even greater details of Lives Lived!
NEXT UP: Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations in London June 2 – 5, 2012
A Genealogist goes Wandering 
Welcome to the blog sphere. I am looking forward to “hearing” the stories you have to tell.
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