Gimme a Passport, S'il Vous Plaît

Marie Mance Vallee's family has lived in Quebec for centuries, but she's petitioning the French government for a dual-citizenship passport.

Vallee originally requested duel [sic] citizenship in 2006, but was turned down because rules then stipulated her family must have resided in France in the last 50 years.

However, a new law says anyone can claim French citizenship as long as they can prove that they have ancestors who were born in France, explained Christian Neron, a Quebec City lawyer.

Neron provided Vallee with a legal argument to back up her request for citizenship. He believes Vallee is the first old-stock Quebecer to request French citizenship because of her colonial links. [Link]

My maternal grandfather was French Canadian, so I guess I'll be blogging next summer from Saint-Tropez.

Province Just Says No

New Brunswick won't allow Sharon (Weed) Thorne to put her maiden name on a license plate.

Sharon Thorne has even brought officials a copy of her birth certificate, but they still refuse to allow her to attach a tag that says "WEED" to her beloved 2001 Mustang convertible.

"I am not promoting drug use," she complained this week. "I do not smoke marijuana, have never inhaled it even once, don't sell it, am adamantly against it and have no criminal record.

"I have always been proud my name was unique, and thought people would see the plate and realize they went to school with me, or knew my parents or something. It was meant to be a fun thing, but has turned into something really annoying." [Link]

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Dead Husband

Language Log today has an interesting post on the language of the Carrier people of British Columbia. With the arrival of a Francophone priest in 1865, and the subsequent influence of English speakers, their names changed.

There are a few family names of Carrier origin. There are a great many people named “Ketlo”, which is the anglicization of /ketloh/ (English speakers can’t hear the final /h/), which is the contracted form of /ke dʌtloh/ “squishy shoes”. The progenitor of the family was called by this nickname because he was always getting his feet wet.

As I mentioned, the idea of having both a given name and a family name was an innovation of the late 19th century, and to Carrier people it wasn’t terribly clear which was which or how they were passed on. As a result, some children would take their father’s first name as their family name and some the second. The little village of K’uzche, for example, is populated mostly by people named either “William” or “Austin”. They are actually the same family: the patriarch was named “William Austin”.

Wikipedia offers this account of how the Dakelh came to be called "Carriers":

According to noted anthropologist Antonia Mills, the term "Carrier" was derived from the mortuary tradition of carrying the husband's ashes back to the main traditional village site, where a potlatch would be held acknowledging the passing of the individual and dealing with redistributing his property. Which would make sense when considering seasonal movements and the need to bring the ashes back to the village as proof.

Cherchez les French-Canadian Ancestors

I am very pleased that The Drouin Collection of (mostly) French-Canadian vital records is now indexed and searchable. My Ancestry.com subscription runs out on Friday, which means that I'll have to put off sleeping, eating and bathing until the weekend.

Columnist's Crossing Confirmed

Cape Breton Post columnist Rannie Gillis recently wrote of a childhood trip to the U.S. One of his readers thought his story needed documentation.

It was only two weeks ago — Monday March 31 — when I received the following e-mail. “Hello Rannie, I was just reading your column “Columnist relives bus trip to Boston when he was a toddler” and thought you might like a souvenir of that trip. Here are the United States border crossing cards for you, your brother and your mother. I enjoy reading your column. Regards: Juanita MacDonald, Whycocomagh.”

Enclosed, as attachments, were scanned images of three United States Custom’s border crossing cards. The cards, dated August 3, 1946, appeared to be a little bit larger than a traditional recipe card and contained a wealth of personal information on myself, my brother and my mother.

As this was the same day that my column about travelling from Sydney to Boston on a bus appeared, you can well imagine my shock and surprise at receiving this very personal information and from an unknown woman in Whycocomagh, of all places. [Link]

Yes, Ancestry.com's Canada to U.S. Border Crossings database is available even in Whycocomagh.

Genealogue Challenge #124

Neil Richler thought this might make a good challenge. I agree.

[A] man named Leigh Wilkinson Metcalf joined the Department of Highways in Grimsby, Ontario and became a bike cop. He sadly died on duty at the age of 26, when his cycle was involved in a head-on collision.

Now, more than 80 years later, the Ontario government is planning to honour the fallen officer, but officials have a major problem - after so many years, they can't find any survivors.

What can you find out about Leigh's family?

She Saw Nothing Wrong With Tobacco Juice

Brian Tingley's entry in TierneyLab's Best Weird-Name Story Contest:

The Gazette was a bi-weekly publication of the Government of the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada. It contained the official notification of new legislation pending, laws passed, hearings scheduled, and so on. What made it most interesting was the list of proposed name changes. If you planned to change your name, the old and new names had to be published in the Gazette.

So there it was that I saw Thelma Jean Tobacco Juice had applied to change her name. The poor woman. How she must have been the subject of ridicule through her growing up years. But she seemed to have missed the point. Her new name… Mary Elizabeth Tobacco Juice.

Somebody Had to Watch Their Stuff

Newfoundland minister of tourism Clyde Jackman rejects the claim that Quebec—celebrating its 400th anniversary this year—was the first city in Canada where Europeans spent the winter.

Not true, said Mr. Jackman, who points out that fishermen were already frequenting the port of St. John's in the 1500s.

"Let's take this logically. If fishermen from the English country had equipment and so on, don't you think it's logical that they would have left people here year-round to keep an eye on that kind of stuff?" Mr. Jackman said.

"From the historical context, we're saying that yes, people were here, that they stayed here year-round, that they kept eye on all their fishing equipment. And that's our claim to it." [Link]

Their Family Histories Are Mysteries

Ancestry.ca commissioned a national genealogy survey of Canada with more than 1,000 respondents.

The results show that a staggering 39 per cent of Canadians cannot trace their roots back more than 100 years, and 20 per cent don't know where their families came from before moving to Canada.

The survey, conducted by MarketTools, also reveals that a surprising 24 per cent of Canadians don't know the maiden name of any of their grandmothers and 22 per cent have no idea what any of their grandfathers did for a living. [Link]

13 percent of respondents think that genealogists are doctors who perform Pap smears, and 2 percent spoke into the wrong end of the telephone.

A Wench and Her Bench

Nancy Millar—author of The Final Word: The Book of Canadian Epitaphs—says that tombstones are no place to settle scores.

"You cannot step over certain lines and call your wife a bitch or anything like that."

One of her favourite examples of an epitaph done right -- one she describes as "a friendly agreement between husband and wife" -- is a monument along an old logging road in Grand Forks, N.D.

The top inscription reads, 'Here sits the bench of a Viking wench.' Upon the woman's companion's death, a subsequent inscription was added: 'Now the Viking wench has company on her bench.' [Link]

Like a Community Barn-Raising, Only Different

The Mad Trapper of Rat River has been exhumed in Canada's Northwest Territories. A production company hopes to use DNA to finally identify Albert Johnson, "a gun-toting trapper who led the RCMP on the mother-of-all police chases across the Arctic during the depths of the Great Depression."

A film crew exhuming the body of the legendary outlaw in an effort to finally identify him had to dig two holes to find him — and wound up relying on the memory of a 92-year-old woman to successfully get DNA samples.

"We thought he was going to evade us one last time," Carrie Gour of Myth Merchant Films said Wednesday of the Alberta-based film company’s attempt to find an answer to one of the North’s great enduring mysteries.

Far from a macabre, horror-movie ambience, Gour described the exhumation as "magical."

"It was like a community barn-raising — only different." [Link]

Mickey and Minnie Not Cohabiting in Canada

An investigation has turned up no evidence that a Canadian census taker was instructed to make up names if she found no one at home.

The controversy began in February when enumerator Sharon Newton of Chilliwack, B.C., told a broadcast outlet she was asked to make up names in order to get the head count done.

"At the end, they just said, 'We really don't care. As long as you can find out if there (are) three people that live in that house, put down Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck on it," Newton said at the time. "We don't care about a name." [Link]

The 'Ghost Writer' Speaks

The man who's been leaving notes with genealogical info on Nova Scotian graves appeared on a Canadian television show today.

"I often drive by and all you see is stones," said the man, who appeared in silhouette on Canada AM to remain anonymous. "You don't know nothing about them or who they are and I just thought I would give some information about some of the people that's in there."

The mystery man has been leaving notes on random graves that are at least 50 years old. Some of them are dated as far back as the 1800s. The information on the letters detail the person's occupation, marital status and information about their family members and is available on the public record. [Link]

Sikh and Ye Shall Find Two Surnames

A Sikh group in Canada is upset over a policy that requires immigrants with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their names.

Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people's files quickly, efficiently and accurately.

"You can imagine you wouldn't want your file to be confused with someone else's," she said.

Singh and Kaur are common names in the Sikh community. In a tradition that began more than 300 years ago, the name Singh is given to every baptized male and Kaur to every baptized female Sikh. There are millions of Singhs and Kaurs around the world. [Link]

During the Sikh naming ceremony, the holy book—Guru Granth Sahib—is opened to a random page. The given name of the child is left to the parents, but must start with the first letter of the first word on that page.

In older days parents were not very fussy about choosing the name. We often hear such names [as] Vir Singh, Jodh Singh, Lal Singh, Kala Singh, Teja Singh and Ganda Singh. Literally translated some of these would mean red, black, sharp and onion. [Link]

Fiddle Notes

A violin acquired by an Ontario museum tells the story of its maker, Dennis O'Meara.

Inside a violin that he finished carving in 1877 in Lambton County, O'Meara penciled in numerous notes that offer clues to his life and hint about local living conditions at the time.

He wrote that "wild (passenger) pigeons were passing over in billions" as he carried the wood for the violin from the Col. Faithorn estate in present day Bright's Grove.

He cryptically mentions a revolution in 1930, which is also the year he died.

And, intriguingly, he invites "whoever takes this fiddle apart (to) see if you can find me." [Link]

Learn to Speak Canadian

If you've got Canadian relatives, you'd better pick up a copy of Katherine Barber's new book, Only in Canada, You Say, before the next reunion. It'll explain all those homegrown Canadianisms that baffle Americans.

Barber’s book is divided thematically into chapters, each beginning with a short essay, with clever titles such as Canadians Say the Darnedest Things (fuddle duddle, bumwad and come from away); Land of the Silver Birch, Home of the Beaver (capelin and noddy); Where We Live (bachelor, as in apartment); and Eat, Drink and Be Merry (rappie pie and tourtiere).

Canadians love to talk about politics, the weather and hockey. So of course, Canadians have their own words and Barber has a section on each: Peace, Order and Good Government (drop the writ and bear-pit session); weather is a subsection in the chapter A Country With Too Much Geography; and For the Love of the Game (pond hockey and puckster). [Link]

"Fuddle duddle" should perhaps have been filed in the political section, given its origins. (Warning: Contains language that could be offensive to non-Canadians.)

Don't Spend It All in One Place

It pays to have aboriginal ancestry in Manitoba. But only $5 a year.

“It doesn’t go a long way, five dollars, it’s not much,” said Lorena Hayden, a resident of Winnipeg who grew up in Roseau River in southeastern Manitoba.

The yearly $5 payment is part of seven numbered treaties signed on behalf of aboriginal communities across the province in the 1800s and early 1900s.

When the treaty was signed in August, 1871, the annuity was $3, but it increased to $5 in 1876 when the treaty was amended. [Link]

He Was at the End of His Rope

The Toronto Star has an interesting profile of John Radclive—Canada's first professional hangman.

Quite apart from his profession, Radclive was a hard man to warm to. In 1892 he started a brawl in Hull after he announced in a bar that he had "come to hang a Frenchman, and hoped it would not be the last." He was badly beaten and had to be rescued by a wagonload of police.

A few years later in Vancouver, the Star reported, he proposed to cut off the queue (pigtail) of a condemned Chinese man "and divide it up as souvenirs of the occasion, and altogether expressed himself in ways that show him to be a person of coarse temperament."

He was also notorious for selling rope to the curious after hangings – that might or might not have actually been used.

Interviewed in the 1930s, [Arthur] English said a British Columbia sheriff once actually caught Radclive in a hardware store buying lengths of rope to sell. [Link]

A Terrific Gene

I didn't think I'd be writing about the White Stripes again so soon, but then I read this news out of Canada:

When Jack White, the driving force behind rock's Grammy-winning band the White Stripes, said recently that he thought he was related to Cape Breton's famous fiddlers Buddy MacMaster, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac, not a few media types suggested that the claim be taken with a grain of salt.

Confirmation of Jack White's blood connection to MacIsaac et al. was provided yesterday by Antigonish lawyer Daniel J. MacIsaac, 56, who's a cousin to Ashley and (yes!) a first cousin once removed to Mr. White Stripe himself. "I think Jack White would like to be able to defend that he is related to Ashley [MacIsaac] and Natalie [MacMaster], but he's not quite sure of it," Daniel MacIsaac said. Now he is -- "and that's a terrific gene, isn't it?" [Link]

Canadian Man Ready to Rumble

Mark Cripps is tired of being asked if he's a member of a Los Angeles gang.

My Cripps gang arrived in Canada in the early 1800s, settling in the rough and tough towns of Barrie and Hillsdale. Since then, we have spread out across Ontario, setting up chapters in various towns including Hamilton, Kitchener, Collingwood and Toronto. Some of our members have gone beyond the south-central Ontario area to set up shop in Alberta and British Columbia.

And to be honest, we're all tired of this LA gang and its associates who are stealing our identity.

We were here first. Get a new name. [Link]