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My ancestoral background hails from England, Wales and Germany.
My Great Grandparents on my Mother's side immigrated to Canada from a small village in Germany in the 1800's. By all accounts my Great Grandmother was quite a desireable woman who apparently shamed her parents by becoming pregnant. A well off gentleman, who was considerably older than she took pity on her and married her. Hence my Grandmother was born. At some point after the birth of my Grandmother they immigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal where they had four more children. One of the four children was suspected to be the result of an affair that Great Grandma had.
When my Great Grandmother was barely 30, the elderly husband died leaving her a young widow with four children to raise on her own.
My Great Grandmother was apparently a fairly lusty woman who enjoyed a good romp in the hay. While struggling to make ends meet, she and her eldest daughter Helena became involved with a pair of brothers who lived next door to them.
Great Grandma found herself in the family way again and coerced the much younger Tom to marry her. Meanwhile Helena married the other brother George. As you can imagine this resulted in some confusing family relations. To make matters more complicated still, Tom and Great Grandma had a child named Josie, who latter married yet another brother named Frank. So my Great Grandmother and Tom were both sister and brother in law to their children as well as mother and step father. While Josie married her uncle and became her father's sister in law.
Helena and George had five children who called their Grandmother "granny" and her husband Uncle Tom. Talk about confused relations!
This search for further information on this convaluted family has just begun and should prove to be interesting to say the least.
On my Father's side I believe there were some interesting characters too. For example my Great Grandfather was a deaf mute and used to get attention by making rather peculiar sounds and was subsequently known for them. His inability to communicate was undoubtedly frustrating for him. I believe that this was before the time of sign language. He apparently used to go around with a cane and he would get attention by running the cane along the banister's spindles or by yelling "Abah, abah!"
Although we think of ourselves as ordinary people there were certainly some extraordinary characters among our past.
Even though my father came from a working class family he aspired to be on stage and pursued a career as a ballet dancer, and an actor. He later became a talented but frustrated artist. A very quiet, sensitive man who loved my mother, sailing, classical music and apparently adventure.
My mother also seemed to enjoy an adventurous life. She and a friend went to England and Scotland and travelled by bicycle and hitch hiking while in her early 20's. After returning to Canada she married for the first time. Her husband (my brother's father) wanted to be a pilot and apparently the Canadian Air Force wouldn't take him for some reason. So they went to England where he joined the RAF and became a pilot. He susquently died during the war.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, while her husband was away on manuevers, my mother travelled alone in Europe. An unheard of thing for a woman in those days.
My mother returned to England and wanting to do her bit for the War effort she became an abulance driver and continued to work until she had to give it up in order to give birth to my brother. At some point after she was widowed she met my Father.
My brother and I were both born in London England during the war and as my mother likes to tell it, she had one of us for each of the major bombings of London.
Ultimately my Mother was married three times during the course of her life. My Father too had been married before to another ballet dancer whom he had married on the rebound from a love
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