A very interesting presentation for the new campus of The Ottawa Hospital at noon yesterday. I have not been up on Carling Street for a couple of years. I did not realize that the new campus had actually started to build. I am still amazed with my very tiny Canadian line that my great grandmother (my first Canadian born ancestor) was a first cousin to Sir John Carling after whom the street is named. The Sir John Carling building of Agriculture was pulled down to make room for the hospital campus when I was still working at the Hospital. Sir John was very involved in setting up the Experimental Farm amongst other items. A very busy man for sure. My grandfather remembered him very well (my mother's father) as he talked about him to my mother but her father died when she was eight. She would have been nostalgic I am sure as we did go to see The Experimental Farm and the Agricultural Building when my parents were here in Ottawa visiting years ago. I think their plans for the Old Campus is a great idea - Long Term Care. The halls are perfect for a good walk and there is plenty of room plus an auditorium for events and if there is some sort of a pedestrian bridge the grounds around the new hospital will also make for a good walk. I did enjoy my walks around the campus when I worked at the Civic Campus for six years.
My cousin George DeKay did a few pages on Sir John in our mutual family book but he wanted to add to that although he passed away before he was able to work on it. In my list of books to write is a revision and update to his book but it comes after Blake and Pincombe. I have so very much work to do. God willing I will accomplish all of it. George did a great job collecting the family material right up to the middle of the 1900s. I have taken a number of the lines further back into England which I could add in. Then some more information on some of the families that form the nucleus of his work would be most interesting and that was also his idea. Our most recent common ancestors were Robert Gray and Elizabeth Cobb who lived at Holme in the Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. I descend from the eldest son Robert and he descends from the youngest son in the family James. Most of the members of that family stayed in England except for Robert, William and James who all emigrated to Upper Canada with Robert coming in 1832 and William as well. The land that the Gray family worked as a copyhold in the Cherry Burton area gradually became unavailable so Robert came to Canada (William was a wheelwright I think, must check). Robert married Elizabeth Mary Ann Routledge and they had four daughters and one son. My great grandmother was Grace Gray who married William Robert Pincombe. It was (Elizabeth) Mary (Ann) Routledge's sister Margaret that married Thomas Carling and they were the parents of Sir John Carling and four other sons.
But back to the new hospital building and it is looking very handsome one might say. The Research tower will be a wonderful addition. After my daughter completed Medical School and Residency I said why not do your PhD now? I think that research is really the arm of medicine that is the best part in some ways. Of course the healing/caring is also important and she said no I am going to be a Family Physician in the north and so she is. I suppose in this day and age I would probably think that way as well although a medical missionary was certainly my aim in my youth.
My small donation will go in on Christmas Day in memory of Edward. The Civic was the first hospital I was ever in here in Ottawa as I suffered a miscarriage a few years after we arrived and they took excellent care of me. When we first arrived here with our nearly one year old I became very exhausted, again my memory is wiped for a short time, and had to go back to my parents house to rest for a couple of months but came back hale and hearty again with our little girl who was missing her daddy very much. My husband's family had come to stay and I was still not strong enough to manage all of that. Seems hard to believe now how exhausted I used to get. No missing memories though in all those years since then. I still wonder if it was blood hemoglobin being only 32 and actually as low as 28 before it started to rise again. I was given iron and drank Stout (my first beer drink and last!) as the physicians tried to make my blood levels rise plus I was also nursing the baby. I have never actually had a transfusion although it was considered but I was a young healthy 28 year old who regularly ran and did a lot of exercise. A fluke of nature that my first daughter's birth would involve so much blood loss. My second thought for the ultrasound with my second child was "where is the placenta!"). Understandable one might say. The first was to admire that beautiful tiny person just 18 weeks gestation - so perfect and so tiny. Ultrasound is such a marvelous tool in pregnancy.
Good accomplishment on the 12th generation. Since my cutoff is 1920 this does not involve quite so much research into the different lines. Hopefully I will be able to get most of it done by mid week next week. Time will tell. Then the chapter on autosomal DNA. Footnoting the appendices. Proofreading, indexing and I do have a few figures to create. I sometimes feel as if I lost a month working on it as the process just seemed so slow but a bout of migraines can do that to me. I decreased my aspirin dosage which has always controlled my migraines so I do have the occasional flare up but the dosage does seem to control the ocular migraines very well which was my hoped for result. Generally I have migraines when my brain needs to rest!
On to the day.
