Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Basement cleaned and main floor next plus 2% GDP for our military this year

The good news yesterday was Prime Minister Carney following through with his commitment to bring Canada's military up to scratch. There will be in this year's expenditures an increase in the spending to a full 2% of GDP.  Thank you Prime Minister Carney. The last good Prime Minister with regard to the military was Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and it went downhill very rapidly when the Liberals dominated the government for most of the time after that except of course when Prime Minister Harper was in power from 2006 to 2015. He had promised money for the military but in his constant desire to balance the budget he let that slip and I shall be forever on my guard watching to make sure that the Conservatives do not do that again. So thank you Prime Minister Carney for this very important announcement. I still say the ultra-wealthy could support the military with ships as a donation or other equipment. I love to hear that the corporations that they represent are doing such good work for Canada. 

 The rhythm of my week does centre around the cleaning as it occupies Monday to Wednesday most weeks although I also do just Monday and Tuesday. It depends on what I want to do mostly. So today is the main floor and I shall begin around 9 or so. 

Yesterday I did spend time on the matches for the brother that least resembles me and I am on the third page of 50 results  and I have now reached 87 new matches. There will be fewer new ones as I work my way forwards through the results of five siblings but on the other hand because of the layout I am missing some of the singleton matches where the results are within the range that interests me (i.e. 20 cM or greater). But a lot more results with the total still quite high because of endogamy in some cases or simply the frequency of my particular grandparent's surnames coming together has a greater chance in England where all of my ancestors were either born or descendant of English born people. Interesting really and the ethnic results for each of the five of us are slightly different (primarily English of course) but the mixture of Scot and Irish is always very surprising but shouldn't be after all they lived (most of them) in those Isles for millennia perhaps. I do have the Question family from France as Huguenots in the latter part of the 1400s but does it actually show up and yes that is the answer it is there as a small percentage in the ethnicity. There is also German and I have no idea which ancestral line has German although tempted to think it is there in the Buller line perhaps. There is also Scandinavian and the Gray family of the East Riding of Yorkshire is perhaps that particular bit of interesting ethnicity (they were tall people I would say by the picture of my great grandmother Grace (Gray) Pincombe). It is the only picture that I have of that family. The Routledge family as Highlanders may also contribute to that Nordic ancestry not sure. 

I wondered if there would be a lot of transfer between the databases for Living DNA from Ancestry, from My Heritage, from FT DNA and from 23 and Me. There is some although people could have just bought new kits as I did for this brother I am looking at right now and myself. At every testing company I wanted to have at least two new kits where you could upload and for most I have more than that. The results are always similar although will shift about somewhat because of the particular data points that are chosen within the chromosomes by a particular company but it is quite small as an effect. The number though of people from my current database that I am adding Living DNA results to is quite small actually. I was surprised and actually it is great as most of the people are living in the British Isles and the results show the endogamy I anticipated with both the Knight family (my great grandmother Maria Jane Knight married Edward Blake at Upper Clatford but introduced this huge line from Dorset into the results) and the Routledge family tended to marry their cousins in Bewcastle giving me endogamy there. They were my first Canadians - the Routledges. Elizabeth Mary Ann Routledge was fourteen years of age when she arrived in Canada in 1818 and it would be another fourteen years before she married Robert Gray from Holme in the Wolds, ERY here in Canada. He emigrated to Canada in the early 1830s (I know where he was on the land in 1831 and then he was here marrying Mary Ann at St Pauls in London Ontario, now St Paul's Cathedral (Anglican)!).  

So today the cleaning and more extraction. Great fun! I did start the Pincombe Newsletter yesterday and will also work away at that today. My mind is flighty at the moment but will soon settle. 

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