I attended the Good Friday service at Emmanuel Loughborough online and also the Good Friday service at Christ Church Cathedral. I found both of them very meaningful. Christianity has been the support of our civilization for two thousand years and before that the Celtic Church was very much God-centred. Now there is a recognition that the Neanderthals also followed rituals that speak of a religious portion to their lives. The Bible is a fascinating book and having read it cover to cover in my youth and read in my adulthood the daily reading every day, I find it is a centre of my life.
Worked on the matches yesterday and perhaps accomplished fifteen or twenty. They take time as I want to have them fully integrated into all of my charts and spreadsheets. Blake is actually the largest group of matches. John Blake and Ann (Farmer) Blake, my 2x great grandparents had ten children and 53 grandchildren and the great grandchildren are well into the many hundreds. Since there are like 3x, 4x, and at least 5x great grandchildren living today I would anticipate there are now many thousands of people descendant of this couple hence the larger group. The Knight family (Edward son of John married Maria Jane Knight) is large and endogamy occurs in that family thus adding to the numbers of people who are in the Blake column of descent although the number of descendants of Edward and Maria Jane are much smaller. They had twelve children but five of them died young or died in childbirth without any issue or simply did not have children. My father was an only child. However in total the matches in my database that I consider to be significant and traceable number 1,132 but I have pulled almost no matches from Living DNA or the more recent ones from FT DNA. The Ancestry matches that I utilize number nearly 1000 with a cutoff of 21 cM in one chromosome length. The use of TIMBER by Ancestry to eliminate "common areas of DNA due to ethnicity" could make these lengths larger which is why I do go to 21 cM. I know for a couple of known relatives that the reduction can be as high as 50%. There are no new matches at 23 and Me that include chromosome information (sad to say as it is an excellent site and really that was terrorism that struck them I think).
Still thinking that I might vote today but no idea on how I will vote. I will decide by the time I get there. My preference is the Conservative Party I will be honest but the Liberal and Conservative platforms are very similar with regard to how to move ahead with the need to increase our pipelines and electrical grids across Canada West to East principally but also East to West. I like what both parties are saying but who will do it the best? Who can best manage in a situation that is a crisis really? Experience especially when it hasn't actually gone the way that you would have liked gives one a tremendous advantage dealing with a crisis as you have already seen the drawbacks and the downfalls. I think that is the hardest part for the Conservative Party; we have no idea the individuals he will choose to be in his Cabinet to help advise him. We do have a clearer picture with the Liberal Party in that regard. The bulk of the Conservative candidates running do not have a vast amount of experience which can, of course, only be gained by being in government. However, they are younger and eager to bring Canada along so will have to contemplate very carefully. This is a very significant election for Canada as we continue on our way fulfilling the potential of this great country side by side with our First Nations peoples. I liked the way that Mark Carney included the First Nations in the English Debate with references to their support in projects. But he also has the knowledge of that but I think probably all of the parties do in fact but he mentioned it and that is important as well in my thinking. I do want the First Nations to always be a part of our government. I think that the Premiers of Manitoba and Nunavut both members of the First Nations have really fantastic ideas on how to grow Canada and visually we have seen them working very well with the Prime Minister Mark Carney. All of these things are in my mind as I go forward to vote. I have also been watching Premier Ford here in Ontario who has not really taken a stand in this election but yet he too has worked extremely well with the Prime Minister Mark Carney. Just a few more days and the new government will be in place.
I think we may have had our last significant snowfall of the spring. Time will tell of course but the snow is nearly all melted.
Teatime and solitaire.
Voting completed and I did make my mind up on my way to the voting place. Round trip it was 3.5 km and was lovely. I am still trying to protect my eyes after cataract surgery although it has nearly been a year (getting close) as suggested for a year but it is hard to see with sunglasses when it is dark out so I didn't wear them and put my hood up instead. On my way home the doorman said he was sorry I had put my hood up (I thought he was worried about rain so reassured him that rain was not happening) and I took the second to explain about my cataract surgery. Then I was quickly on my merry way for my walk home. My vote is going to be secret. But I feel that either candidate Liberal or Conservative will give their all for Canada - we will just have to wait and see (but they will keep each other on their toes for sure); I just voted with my considered opinion.
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