Life Imprisonment for selling fentanyl

Pierre Poilievre has put forward the idea of a life sentence for peddling fentanyl. Great idea; I support that one 100%. People who do it are literally killing those users! I think never parole for older adults but young people (teens) do get caught up in things (depending on the amount trafficked) should have the opportunity to retrain and prove they can live a better life. Actually our prisons could have training in trades and make things to help support the prisons (and money to send home to support their family which is probably why they got into it in the first place) and when people leave they would have something to work at for which they already had training. I think it is a great idea and likely our good friends to the south would agree (life imprisonment for selling fentanyl; I tend to be a dreamer and my thoughts are unlikely to catch any attention).

Got distracted yesterday so wrote this up but I did get some good thinking in and working on the documents. They are in Latin so the process will be slow. British History Online is still not totally up and running so I have not been able to take a subscription yet. Looking forward to that access. 

Managed the first bit of the document (it is 11 lines and is a large vellum in terms of width but not very long) and it reads thus far:

"Those in the present and future know that I Robert Denysmyssh have handed over granted" 

Amazingly my Latin is actually working well. I actually recognized the first part of the first line and was able to translate it. Unfortunately this document has a problem with blurred spots so may not be able to reproduce all of it but it is the content about the Blake family that interests me. It is dated 1386 at which time there was a known John Blake (of the Calne Blake family) living near/at Quemberford (Parliamentary Archives) and finding that there was a Robert Blake married to a Joan (unknown) Blake with Robert now deceased and they had at least one son John. This linkage from the 1300s to the 1400s is very important. Proving the link from Robert back to Richard le Blak is one of the next steps but also bringing John down to Robert Blake who married Avis (Wallop) Malewyn in the early 1400s  and operating a Fulling Mill at Quemberford absolutely essential to the proofing of this hypothesis. 

The list of Blake wills yesterday are mostly in the area around Calne moving south towards Salisbury which was the known area of the Calne Blake family as they generally moved towards the south or they went to Gloucestershire suddenly at the time of Charles I (he demolished their home at Pinhills because they would not take a title). 

The election here in Ontario is in full swing. Off to the polls towards the end of February. Personally I have been pleased with the Conservatives here in Ontario. Premier Doug Ford is putting the needs Ontario front and center but I of course see that the need to rebuild our lost industries due to NAFTA/CUSMA should also be very very important.

More snow today and that is good news although still pretty cold here at minus 18 degrees celsius. 

President Trump gave an address at the bi-partisan National Prayer Breakfast this morning which was televised. I was somewhat amazed as he mentioned a number of interesting colonial Americans - namely John Winthrop, Roger Williams and others. My husband is descended from or in a cousin relationship with all of them and when he was first searching for a job after completing his PhD in Chemistry and MLS in Library Science he did send an application to the Library of Congress and they contacted him and were very interested but he decided not to go for an interview. It was actually one of his regrets in life especially as he came to really enjoy working on the history of his family. So much was lost by the time that he was growing up probably because his maternal grandmother died when his mother was just seven years of age and she had married someone who was not in that same colonial line (and they did not live closeby). Interesting really. I was happy to go anywhere (and Washington would have been a real treasure to work in for sure) basically for reasons of my own which I have mentioned. But his background was Chemistry and he worked at the National Research Council at CISTI (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information) here in Ottawa for nearly thirty years. The interest was already there in his own family line of Kipp (he talked about it when we were dating actually) and it was only when he decided we should go to Boston to the NEHGS special weekend work session in 2005 (not long after he retired) that he really started to pull out his mother's family and discovered all of these fascinating individuals from whom he was descended. Gary Boyd Roberts pointed him to several really good sources that gave him so much information on his family lines. Later in 2007 we attended the 350th Anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance in Flushing, New York where his ancestors John Bowne and Hannah Feake were remembered. That was a truly excellent weekend that he enjoyed so very much. Hannah was his link to the Winthrop family. Her grandmother was Anne Winthrop sister to Governor John Winthrop. A lovely address which I am sure many Americans will have greatly enjoyed listening to. 

As a first generation Canadian on my father's side and fourth on my mother's side I tend to think of myself mostly as a newbie in this country possibly because three of my grandparents were born and raised in England to adulthood (and past that) and my father was born in England coming to Canada with  his parents at the age of nine years as an only child. So my years as a young child were spent with people who talked about another country quite a bit actually. But they loved Canada and it was their home. I think they just wanted me to know where I came from which I treasure to this day that they took the time to teach me so much about my ancestors.