Ancestors & Cousins

August first was our last day in Canada and it was also my favorite run of the entire visit. Actually, it was the best run that I’ve had in some time.

Near Boyd & Carols house is Linley Park which is actually several smaller parks that the city has merged into a single park. From the map, it looks like there are about ten small ponds in the park but I was only able to run past three or four othem.

Once you’re in the park you feel like you are in virgin forest, it is stunning. The trails range from very rough and tough to an easy walk on paved pathways. I’m guessing there are probably fifty miles of trails all totalled but I was only able to cover nine of them.

 

After a very enjoyable morning run, I showered and we got ready to host some new visitors.

Years ago Lisa took a DNA test where she had some amazing (but very delayed) results. One of those is that she was able to connect to a relative in England who is connected to Lisa’s great gandmother (Annie Robertson).

I was actually able to meet Lisa’s great mother before she passed away at ninety nine years old.

Through this connection she learned that several relatives that Lisa was unaware of, actually immigrated into Canada and one of them, Boyds second cousin Pat Budding lives near Nanaimo. Working through her daughter (Lisa’s third cousin Kathleen) they arranged a visit and they brought a ton of pictures with them.

Lisa got a LOT more pictures for her collection and I assume they will end up in Family Search shared with the world. Lisa told me early this year that her goal for this year was to upload pictures and memories into her ancestors files. It looks like she has made it happen. Let me see if I can get the geneology correct.

The common ancestor was Mary McCall.

Mary McCall

                     Annie Robertson                                              Mary Roberston
                     Thomas Shaw                                                   Catherine Cochrane
                     Thomas Boyd Shaw                                          Patricia Budding
                     Lisa Shaw                                                         Kathleen Budding

Several years ago I took a few weeks vacation and flew to Edmonton to clean out Donna’s house. We love Donna and she was the perfect grandmother to our kids but she was a serious horder. Things had gotten so bad that she could no longer live in her own home and was renting an apartment. As I was digging out the basement I came across some very cool medals that I assumed were Lisa’s great grandpa Shaws.

As it happened, Boyd was in Edmonton at that time on some business trip, so I called him and asked if he wanted to see these. I didn’t want to give them to Donna because they didn’t belong to her relative and she would just lose them again. Actually, there were a couple of medals that we thought might belong to Donna’s dad, and I did give them to Donna, and now they are gone, so my concern was valid.

So I went and picked up Boyd from his hotel and he picked out the medals that he was sure belonged to his grandpa and he has mounted them in this beautify shadow box. I had never seent hem all polished up and displayed like this so I asked to check them out. It is difficult to imagine the sacrifice that these medals represent and the horrors he must have witnessed. Boyd explained to me what each medal represented but I no longer remember what that is. I know one of them represents a number of days in the trenches. It is so sad what human beings are capable of doing to each other.

---------------trivia---------------

If every nuclear bomb ever made were detonated at the same time, the energy released would still be much less than the energy released by a single hurricane.

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