Two’s Away !

Yesterday was a significant milestone in the Calgary Sandy household as we attended the graduation ceremony for our younger son Derek at York University and the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. The event was held indoors and in air conditioned comfort, which was quite nice given the bright sunny 30 C weather outside ! He did well scholastically, and I don’t need to say that we are both pretty proud of him.

For the record, York U is not on my Christmas card list, and I consider the school administration to be less competent than a small pack of demented weasels – they grossly mismanaged the recent strike, putting the education of thousands of students on hold and I won’t soon forget that. At yesterday’s event York’s keen, finely honed sense of customer focus continued, as they arranged things such that parents and visitors could not easily take photos during the ceremony – basically if you want a photo, you have to buy one at inflated prices from their photographer.

That’s all water under the bridge now, as hopefully we are finally done with York and Derek is on to the next phase of whatever life adventures await him – all he has to do now is get a job !!

An Hour in Paris on Father’s Day

As this past Sunday was Father’s Day I grabbed the opportunity to pamper myself and headed down to Paris, Ontario for the annual CVMG vintage motorcycle show and flea market. Before leaving Calgary, I had printed off a copy of the poster advertising the event, and shown to the right, from the CVMG web site and I thought that I had all the information required – Friday through Sunday and day passes cost $5. Sounded easy.

I picked up my older son early Sunday morning and trekked down to Paris which is about 90 minutes from where we were staying in Toronto. It was a pleasant drive as most of the nut cases were not on the road yet, and in addition it was not raining. The sun was out, the grass was green and touring down through Cambridge brought back lots of good memories. Our first house was in Cambridge – Preston actually – back in the early ’70’s and I’ve always liked the area.

I hadn’t been to Paris before – it is much smaller than its namesake !  It is a very nice little town in a small valley through which the Grand River flows and is notable for having been on the receiving end of the first long distance phone call in 1876 by Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

The CVMG show was in the Paris fairgrounds on the west side of town and there were lots of folks on motorcycles all heading in the same direction so it was easy to find. You can possibly imagine my surprise then when, on arrival, there was almost nothing there to be seen ! Although the poster did say the show ran till Sunday, as it turned out they’d left off the fact that it was only till noon on Sunday ! As a result, most of the sellers had already packed up their sodden tents and booths (as it had rained most of the Friday and Saturday) before we arrived, and had gone home to get dried off !  I have no idea how busy it was over the three days as most folks don’t ride their vintage bikes in poor weather, but at least there was a handful still about, and I did see one Suzuki GT750 which was nice. And as a small bonus, as we had showed up at closing, they waved us in and didn’t charge me admission or parking !!

All in all, while disappointing that there was not much to be seen, it was a pleasant Father’s Day with my son, followed by a very nice dinner with both boys and SWMBO’d in the evening – and if I’m in Ontario next year, I’ll just have to make sure I ignore the $%^#@ poster and get there a day earlier !

Lineage

Somehow or other, I have become tagged with recording and preserving some of the family history of both my wife’s and my own family’s. I used to spend hours listening to my father-in-law Warren, who passed away late last year, as he recalled in what seemed like infinite detail, the names and relationships of the McKendry and Whealy families on my wife’s side here in Canada. While he may not have been able to recall a conversation from yesterday, events of 50 and 60 years ago seemed to still be vivid and clear to him – but of course it is always good to try and check the facts if you can ! Along that line, while we were in the Kingston area travelling from my brother’s place in Delaware to our son’s graduation in Toronto we took a detour to try and confirm a few things about the arrival of the McKendry’s to Canada from Ireland. Warren had provided a lot of information and included in the files he passed along to me was a photo of a grave marker taken somewhere north of Kingston. Our objective then, was to try and find this marker.

To cut a long story short, Warren’s memory proved to be pretty accurate, and after some searching along various side roads and concessions, we were successful in locating both the hamlet of Brewers Mill as well as the small Presbyterian church and cemetery where the original family of McKendry immigrants are buried. There is a grave marker there – see to the right – on which John McKendry is listed and who was the original family elder from Ireland, born in the county Antrim and Parish of Rasharkin back in 1823 plus or minus a couple of years. So Warren was (almost) right !

I say ‘almost’ because over in the back of the same cemetery were other McKendry markers and names which so far as I’m aware Warren had never mentioned, plus we were able to locate others in the Gananoque area just to the east.

So now I have a bit of work to do when I get back to Calgary ! To date, when searching Irish records for Sandy family information in the Dublin area I have pretty much drawn a blank, as the 1800’s Irish records are very incomplete. Still, there is nothing better than a puzzle to be sorted out, so I can see I will be busy over the next short while when not playing with the old motorbikes !!

On the Road Again

In roughly a week our second son graduates from university, so of course SWMBO’d and I are on our way back east for the big event. As well, it is my brother’s birthday at about the same time so we decided to travel from Calgary to Toronto via Delaware – not the most direct route, but at least it offered the advantage of being about to buy the US subsidised gasoline along the way. So far at least, it has ranged between 12 ¢ and 25 ¢’s per litre cheaper on the south side of the border for premium fuel than it is in Calgary, which really does add up on a long trip !

We crossed the border near Estevan in Saskatchewan and the last 50 km or so of travel into Estevan defines ‘flat’ – I think the highest point of elevation is the rail way track which runs along the highway ! In stark contrast, the area south of Estevan has been churned up a lot due to open pit coal mining over many years leaving heaps of over burden, rubble and small ponds etc., seemingly with nature left on its own as far as reclamation is concerned. As you move across North Dakota into Minnesota and then to Wisconsin the flatness and openness gives way more and more to rolling terrain and trees. In fact the over whelming impression one gets as you drive east towards the coast is that the lands formerly cleared by settlers for farming etc., have largely been reclaimed by woodlands, so that by the time you have got to Pennsylvania it has the appearance of being little else but forest. And in that forest are a lot of elm trees which obviously are making a bit of a comeback ! In the eastern side of Pennsylvania and up into New York there are signs of what I assume is Dutch Elm disease, with dead elms standing ghostly white here and there, but even so there are still many mature elm trees that seem to be doing just fine which is nice to see.

Our arrival in Delaware was uneventful and we will leave for Canada today, with a detour in the Kingston area to do a bit of genealogy research.