Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph in Ottawa was as always perfect in every detail; even the rain came down as tears from God/Mother Nature for our soldiers lost to us but never forgotten. I remember our first time attending here in Ottawa when our oldest was 18 months old. The canon frightened her but gradually she got used to it. Perhaps that is the way no ideas on that. But it was wondrous to be there in our capital city on Remembrance Day and we never missed year in and year out until I was working on Remembrance Day at the Hospital but retirement saw us back at the Cenotaph year after year.
When we toured France in 2014 perhaps as much as one third of the tour took us to the Normandy Beaches so well known in the Second World War and then through the west side of France to Ile de Ré and back across and then up to the trenches of the First World War near Verdun. The perfectly maintained graveyards are a tribute to France's appreciation for her liberation. A country where democracy was born by fire and maintained through the centuries every time a dictator threatened that freedom. France rose to defeat that and carry on their democracy. Paris is perhaps the most beautiful city I have ever seen; a walk down the Champs-Elysées a never to be missed opportunity. We were there for a special ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe back in 2014 in June having walked from the Hotel St James. Everything was in easy reach of that Hotel as we went on our own to Notre Dame and took a ride back in a bicycle taxi. That was a beautiful experience all in itself. L'Eglise Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Paris also reached easily from the hotel - a stunning piece of architecture which fits so beautifully into the Paris landscape. Touring le Jardin des Tuileries just across from our Hotel; there was so much to see beyond the tour itself.
Must get back to my French on duolingo soon. I will also work on my German although I do not think I have any recent German ancestry but I still have this thought on my Buller line and time will tell. Not necessarily the Buller itself but marriages into the Buller line in the early 1700s. The French/German DNA does mystify me although it isn't huge it is still enough to have an ancestor from the 1700s in my line. It shows up in all of us a little; in some of us more and with five tested one can really look at these things. I have become most interested in the autosomal DNA now although retain my interest in yDNA and mtDNA. I do know I have 10x great grandparents who were Huguenot thus accounting for the possibility of French DNA although it would be small for sure but sometimes you have these sticky pieces of DNA that just get passed on and on.
I always say when my children ask that I have traveled enough for an entire lifetime and will do no more. I want to write now and get everything recorded in case in the future one of my parent's descendants becomes curious about their ancestors (they have eleven great grandchildren). For myself, I did not have that curiosity really but I loved to listen to my grandparents and they told me so much and I must pass that on; that is my duty in my life that I have left to live as I see it. Mind you I do want to see more of Canada I have only been as far as Winnipeg to the west, to James Bay to the North and I have spent a lot of time in the Maritimes as Edward had a number of Reunions there that he wanted to attend. I have even been to Labrador where the whales put on a show for us that one day and at the end they seemed to be saying goodbye. It was amazing actually. I will always remember that.
We have been to every State in the Eastern part of the United States and some of the central almost all the way to New Orleans and then to Utah. I have been further west in the United States than in Canada so must remedy that one of these days and get to the west coast. I have especially spent a lot of time in the New England States and New York State as Edward visited every grave yard to find his many colonial ancestors. We have been back in the bush many times finding old graveyards still preserved and maintained by a caring people.
Basement cleaned yesterday and today the main floor and the top floor and another week of cleaning accomplished. Routine is a wonderful thing actually as it maintains a sense of normalcy in your life as you adjust to changes.
I did put the corrected Siderfin book up online and go to my website:
http://www.kipp-blake-families.ca/elizabethmain.htm#SIDERFIN
and you will find the book at the bottom of the Siderfin section. The changes are in reality small but I found them to be enormous in my mind but perfectionists are like that.
The Companion Charting book continues to be prepared to go online and I have no idea when that will happen but hopefully soon. I want to get back to my Blake and Pincombe books so will not dally with it.
Tea all drank and solitaire games to play and then Breakfast, start the cleaning and then Latin in my rest period. The day passes much too quickly sometimes and I am at the end of the day with not quite everything accomplished that I wanted to do but there is tomorrow. But I do not see an end to the things that I need to accomplish as there is still a great deal of Edward's material to work through. Hard to believe as so much of his library is now at the Archives but I will persevere and complete this task in a hopefully timely fashion. But I do have a tendency to meander through life and was perhaps one of the things Edward liked about me; I was never in a rush to do anything and didn't try to rush him!
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