Good morning everyone from balmy Canada (It is -30 with the wind chill factor. Great for sleeping out in my tent).
As I am third generation removed from Northern Wales I am looking forward to learning to speak this language and maybe meet someone from grandma’s home town. Some words are easy to catch on to but others are going to take a lot of practice
This is a picture of what we have been experiencing almost every day for two weeks. <img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/e/eecfb5c432f7947946e96a84a7a7d09c73899d42.JPG" width="300" height="225">
Whereabouts in Canada are you, and which was your Grandma’s town?
I have some relatives in Vancouver Island, which really does have a balmy climate by comparison with yours, from what I hear. Some of them were visiting recently, and apparently, my great-niece is planning to go to university in Edmonton, Alberta, which apparently has winters as bad as yours.
I like Vancouver when I was there but Vancouver Island had monsoon like rains every day when I was there panning for gold.
I do not know what town she came from. All’s I know is she came here about ninety years ago. She had a sister still living in Wales. Her daughter became a nurse and her daughters son was a member of the Welsh boys choir. I lost contact with them about forty years ago. I have tried to search the records but come up blank.
Your great niece is in for a shock when going to Edmonton. It is really cold there. I stayed there while waiting for the oil rigs to get started drilling when I was a rough neck for a couple of years. My preference would have been Calgary over Edmonton because the folks there are friendlier.
Did you try birth registrations? I don’t have a link to hand, but in the past I’ve successfully found birth records, and I think they would go back to the likely period of her birth.
You’d need ideally a full name and date of birth. Year and month might be enough, or even just year.
Again, ideally you’d need the place of birth, or at least the registration district. If she was born in a small village the registration district would likely be the nearest large town.
Do you have any clues, like North Wales or South Wales, that sort of thing?
Oh, btw, does Canada keep immigration records for that sort of period, like the ones at Ellis Island for New York? (I found my grandad in those - he went there, but then came back to the UK later).
In fact I think some people got to Canada via Ellis Island, so might even be worth looking in those records. If you could find her there, it would give at least another snippet of information about her.
If you type in Friday the thirteenth in Ontario you will find it is famous for folks coming to a little town called Port Dover on that day. Here is a link (although it is about ten years old it describes what it is like) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th_motorcycle_rally
Type in Port Dover on Google Maps. You will see a town north west of Port Dover called Simcoe. That is where I am from.
Many folks come to this area because of the warm beaches and great fishing. Other famous area’s around here is Long Point which has a famous wild bird sanctuary almost as good as Point Pee Lee’s.
I lived for about five years in Waterloo which is the sister city to Kitchener. Has you wife shared interesting stories of OctoberFest ? I only went once, it was too crazy for me. Has she explained Mennonites at the St. Jacobs market to you? They have fantastic meats.
Way back in my IT '‘career’, I remember Waterloo University being well known in academic computing. (I worked in a lab that had close links to academia). There was one thing in particular that istr it was famous for, but I can’t bring it to mind right now. It will probably come back to me.
I stayed there while waiting for the oil rigs to get started drilling when I was a rough neck for a couple of years. My preference would have been Calgary over Edmonton because the folks there are friendlier.
