A very interesting day on the matches

 My accomplishment level is low as I still have 30 matches to look at but yesterday was confirmation of some Rawlings DNA. I had one really good match, a known 2nd cousin but it was in 23 and Me so just two other siblings present. I wondered about one sibling in particular and the match at Living DNA gave me that answer so that great news. Continuing with the matches today and perhaps I might get through more three or four perhaps; time will tell.

Yesterday I cleaned out part of the front garden and it looks great. I will try to finish the other part today. Perhaps get the lawn raked as well. We will see how that goes but it is going to be mostly sunny although just seven degrees celsius to start. 

I read the National Post article today. As a nation we have survived much in our nearly 159 years since Confederation.  In 1867 we were a group of just four colonies who came together to form the Dominion of Canada. It was a struggle and early in the 1870s the British withdrew their military so we were literally on our own. But we came together to cast off the Fenian raids from the south and forged a friendship within Eastern Canada that still is a strong part of who we are as a people. British Columbia wanted to be part of Canada and so we promised a railroad and we did it and it was hard and costly. Manitoba joined us and I always think that was the beginning of the First Nations being prominent in Canada other than earlier times before Confederation when the First Nations stood side to side with the colonials, British Regulars and threw off attacks from the south. Prince Edward Island also came into Confederation having withdrawn initially at the time of union in 1867. Rupert's Land became the new sighting for our young and prospering nation and we bought it and shared the lands that lay below the agreed 1818 treaty with the United States giving up freely that portion of the purchase which was below the 49th parallel. We were on good terms with our American neighbours except for the Fenians and that has continued throughout the next century and a bit that has followed all of that. At the moment trade is a problem but we will resolve that I am sure. But as a nation when I was a child you were Canadian first because that is what works best in this modern world to be part of a greater whole than just the one province (basically an administrative unit within Confederation) that you live in. We shared when another struggled. The western part of Rupert's Land that lay north and west of Manitoba all the way to the Rocky Mountains was gradually filling up with settlers including actually one of my great grandmother's brother's family Henry Knight and his son Samuel Knight with his wife Rose Anna (Yates) Knight and their five daughters who arrived in what is now Saskatchewan in the early 1900s. The middle daughter married in particular and her daughter is one of my DNA correspondents although I must get back to that for sure. I am dreadful at corresponding; I am better at being a hermit. But the First Nations have many many areas in the west that are lived in and have been lived in by them for thousands of years and very little of  Rupert's land has been ceded I do believe. 

The Founding Fathers saw a great future where they seized opportunity and ran with it and it is that great future (we are living it) that makes Canada the country that it is. We need to build Canada though and it is not going to be easy; it is going to be expensive like the railway and like buying Rupert's Land but so worth it because being a country is more important than its parts. The First Nations plays a huge role in all of this because they do not think of parts; they see it as a whole and I think we need to do that in order to be the most successful country that we can be. We have to loosen those greening ideas but keep them in our minds as we will forge ahead with the intent to eventually make Canada greener. The process needs a lot of money input and we need to make that money to ensure the best situation for Canada. So who really gets to decide on Canada - it should be all Canadians. People always yearn for more money; money is the root of all evil and destroys societies. We have to yearn for the best Canada for the future for the children of the future. If we weaken and let money control our thoughts then we lose that great opportunity that people sought when they came to Canada in the 1600s/1700s/1800s/1900s and yes even the 2000s and were welcomed by the First Nations. We have to let possibility rule the day and build that pipeline to tidewater in British Columbia, create those mines and extract the value from the ground and sell both of them for full price. We can do it; we just need to want to do it. If it scares you the thought of all that cost then find a better place for yourself to live where you feel that you will be happy. Most Canadians are happy with what the Founders have created. We are not greedy; we willingly share with the rest of the country. I too share my dislike of the waste during the Trudeau eras (I do not like the 1982 Constitution - it restricts our rights in my personal opinion). I do not like it that mines pipelines were refused during that Trudeau time (but also during the Harper time same thing for some items). Money at that time during the Harper government was poured into Alberta to support the oil industry. I do not object to that as it was necessary but some money could have built that mine in Northern Ontario and we would be looking at an operating mine for the last fifteen years instead of nothing (that was one of the failures of the Harper government and I will not relate further on that as it does tend to annoy me). 

I still think that this Governor General to be brings to Canada a knowledge that we need simply because of this idea that one can supposedly democratically slice out a part of Canada that was created by the Founders. We are held in chains in the east by this supposedly democratic idea that an area can simply extract itself from Canada.I look at it from a viewpoint that is perhaps different as I see the Prime Minister as a westerner - born in the North West Territories and raised in Alberta. His world wide experience as well as at home gives him a unique vision and I support that vision because it is the vision of the Founders of Canada. The West is very well represented in this Prime Minister as he strives to do what can be done to get that pipeline to the west coast. One notes that the leader of the opposition is also from Alberta. Greed though is the biggest problem and is a terrible part of humanity and does need to disappear from our world. The Prime Minister balanced himself very well by choosing a Governor General who represents the East in many ways as she grew up here and is part of the East and he is part of the West along with the leader of the Opposition - interesting really. 

And I haven't even been listening to the news and will not for a bit. It annoys me at the moment but the article at the National Post caught my attention. 

On to the matches but first the Solitaire Puzzles - they soothe my thoughts.  

 

More matches

 Yesterday was a shopping day and quite successful. The store has Canadian Flags on all the Canadian merchandise; saves my eyes although I still check. But it does quite capture the items readily that I have been moving to over the last year and a bit. I do miss my favourite cranberry juice as the Canadian one has apple juice in it as well but I also like apple juice but it does weaken the rather pungent taste of cranberry which I rather like. Overall I buy only what I have to buy from outside of Canada just because we are a northern nation with snow on the ground six months of the years and a much shorter growing season than other countries of the world. When you talk the frozen north that is a lot of Canada although the sun is finally coming our way. 

Worked on the matches yesterday and this last set have all been in the Buller line. They are large and I suspect the piece of DNA being passed is ancient in the Buller line. I have been looking at trees and the area is common to my line and this goes back to the Buller-Welch 3x great grandparents namely Christopher Buller and Mary (Beard) Buller of Bermondsey, Surrey and William Welch and Sarah (Cheatle) Welch of Rugeley, Staffordshire/Birmingham, Warwickshire and Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire. They do seem quite a distance apart these two couples but Henry Christopher Buller came to Birmingham and had his businesses in both London and Birmingham, living, in one or the other place.   My suspicion is that this length of DNA I am looking at for more than a dozen descendants is from the Welch line rather than the Buller but I could be mistaken as I have not yet resolved whether this Buller line is from the Cornwall/Devon/Somerset Buller family. I think it is but I am not positive. Christopher Buller had a Slop Shop (sailor uniforms) on Tooley Street in Bermondsey just south of the Tower Bridge and connects London Bridge to St Saviour's Dock.  We were on our first tour bus in England and actually in London itself when I was looking out the window and we sat up so high and came so close to the street sign that I could actually read it and it said Tooley Street where I knew my Christopher Buller had had his shop. I was amazed and needless to say the next trip to London saw us arriving a week early so that we could walk the streets of London - it is just one square mile after all. We spent a lot of time looking around Bermondsey as well our hotel was just up the street from Waterloo Station. 

I found a number of new Buller line (looking purely at Grandparent (my maternal grandmother was a Buller)) matches in all the databases and knew the chromosomes that I especially was interested in. Going back to the great grandparents continues to feel feasible. I will continue with that sorting and entering today.  

Continuing to avoid the news for a bit as I tend to get too much into it and lose time on books. Concentration must be paramount to complete these books in a timely fashion. 

I did however have one thought on the Sovereign Wealth Fund which has been proposed to be started with an infusion from the government of $25B and it would be primarily individual Canadians building this fund. Since it would be an initial infusion by the government adding to the national debt I would suggest that we should not restrict it solely to Canadian individuals but rather have Canadian businesses and Canadian Pension Funds also be part of the Sovereign Wealth Fund as they could create the initial $25B (spread out over many business/pension funds) and Canadians could add to it as well with their money then all actual and not an increase in the national debt as it is used to invest in major projects. Not including businesses/pension funds takes away a sufficiently large portion of potential donors who could help to start this fund off in a positive position for immediate usage in funding national projects. It would remain in the public forum with a board of directors that reflected the various inputs from both individual Canadians, Canadian Pension Funds and Canadian companies. We are all going to benefit in the long run from this Fund and businesses in particular will benefit greatly with the increased GDP overall for Canada. 

I gave this some thought and actually looked on line and there is a thought with some non-governmental agency   that Canadian Pension Funds could also be part of this. I suppose the problem with including private industry might be conflict of interest if they are bidding on a project. But I still think some industries would not be bidding on mines and items like that and I thought this was the idea for the money that it would be national projects. However, we will let the Globe and Mail run with it. It just popped into my head while I was writing my blog earlier. I should check before I write things.  

Breakfast eaten and my first set of calisthenics completed before breakfast. A good couple of hours of work and then a thirty minute run. 

Solitaire puzzles to do next.  

Cleaning all accomplished

Another week of cleaning accomplished and today a research day. I did absolutely nothing yesterday on research. It was a busy day. 

 Today though, unless it rains, will see me outside working in the garden for some time. But I also want to do some research and will continue adding the newest DNA matches into my various databases. There are still 36 matches to file away. So far the matches have been as interesting as I thought they might be. I skipped over quite a few because they did not add anything to the thousands of matches I have already in my databases. 

Phasing the great grandparents is going to be an interesting item to work on although I will continue writing the Blake book as I do that. I want to spend some time on the early Latin wills line by line just to see if anything has been missed. Working on documents written by your ancestors five hundred years ago is amazing and challenging. Were these people just like my grandfather or grandmother as I search back into my own past thinking of their thought pattern? My grandfather talked in particular about his grandparents and great grandparents as he did know one of the great grandparents personally and they had all died between 1808 and 1886 with most of them dying between 1840 and 1886. In the case of his mother's grandparents she knew all but her paternal grandfather very well since they all lived in the same area and closeby each other. In the case of his father's grandparents he was not quite as lucky in that regard with only one of them living after he was born but his mother who lived to the age of 89 was right next door when her son's young family was growing up and a widow and memories of my grandfather's grandmother Blake were very clear when he talked about her. So I do spend some time contemplating what my grandfather used to say about his family. The Blake family lived in Upper Clatford and the Knights lived in Turnworth but he did spend time there perhaps because his eldest sister lived with their grandparents until she married. She is found on the census at nine years of age with them. Samuel Knight and his wife Louisa (Butt) Knight had  eleven children (my great grandmother was their eldest) but only four of them lived past infancy. Their only surviving son Henry married Catherine Crankshaw 25 Dec 1878 at Chorley, Lancashire. They had just one child Samuel who along with his wife Rose Anna Yates emigrated to Canada where all their children were born in the early 1900s. My father never mentioned if he met any of these cousins (3rd) but I have corresponded with a number of them. They lived in Saskatchewan. So I need to prod this brain of mine and find the references so to speak that bring this information back to me. 

Even though I am first generation Canadian with deep roots in the British Isles going back many centuries (indeed my Blake line carries Western Hunter Gatherer yDNA some of the earliest in the British Isles after the Ice Age which rendered life there impossible) my citizenship is Canadian (as a young child I was granfathered in along with everyone else born in Canada before the 1st of January 1947). I have no rights in England other than those that might come to me as a member of the Commonwealth but pretty limited and the same is true for people coming to Canada (with the exception of Jay's Treaty of 1794 which permits the First Nations peoples to travel back and forth across the border between Canada and the United States readily). When I first went to England back in 2001 I was so excited to actually be in the island. When it was our turn at Customs my daughter quickly said who she was and why she had come and then it was my turn and I said who I was but pondered why had I come (this was my first international travel outside of North America). I said my father was born here and three of my grandparents and mumbled on a bit (I can remember saying all of that) and he looked at me kindly and asked me again why I came (which I successfully answered with a detailed mention of what we were doing travel wise, where we were staying and when we were leaving). That told me that my very long ancestry in the British Isles has no meaning because I do not live there (in this world we are all an organized people because that is how it works best). He was right and I really appreciated his patience with me.  

I did get the H11 Newsletter published and online. I generally for the first of May keep thinking year after year it is the Pincombe Newsletter but it is not; it is due 1st of June and I need to start thinking about that. The yDNA project for Pincombe/Pinkham has two distinct lines. The one points back to Western Hunter Gather and the other points to the Continent (Flemish likely). My line is the Flemish which I believe used the spelling Pencombe which is initially found at North Molton in the early 1500s and the notation on the Visitation for Pincombe in 1620 carries the note "Pyncombe of Northmolton came there with the Lord Zouch  about the beginning of H 7" and that refers to King Henry VII who defeated Richard III King of England at Bosworth Field in 1485 and became the King of England (Henry VII). John Lord Zouch was on the side of Richard III and was attainted, stripped of his civil rights and properties. He had relatives in Northmolton where he was received and I am becoming of the much stronger opinion that perhaps John Pencombe who accompanied him to Northmolton was his jailer rather than one of his retinue under attainment with him. Mostly because John Pencombe received land at North Molton. More reading of the early records might provide that answer. 

So a few items to work on this month along with the gardening.  All this traveling by the Prime Minister and those who accompany him in several capacities as these tend to be the opportunity to showcase Canadian industry around the world. Mostly I am not watching the news or reading the news unless it is archaeological or about DNA. The Prime Minister has things in hand along with his Cabinet. I am hoping that the Opposition will find a way to help to support getting our young employed in the trades and in the military. There are jobs and these jobs are all fantastic right at the greatest changes in research and development and not sitting at a desk inputting data  which an AI will soon do much faster and with greater efficiency. Grab hold of these exciting opportunities and every elected and those wanting to be elected should be out there in their constituency helping this to happen. 

Time to do the Solitaire Puzzles.  

Busy Day yesterday

 Spent most of the day cleaning actually but finally got to doing some work on the new matches. An interesting one that was just 9 cM on Ancestry but 22.l cM on Gedmatch. The names absolutely nothing comes to mind and the countries in the family tree Ireland and Maine, USA dating back to the late 1700s. Since it is a paternal match and not a Blake I just made a file and I entered it into the databases. Just interesting and I have a dozen matches in this area where some are known to be Rawlings/Cotterill. For the second sibling match I have double that number so will have a look to see if there are any clues. 

Avoiding the news again but certainly that was most interesting to discover the name of the new Governor General to be. She will be fantastic. Thank you to her for serving at 79 years of age. Wonderful of her to do that for sure. 

Cleaning day today and it is the top floor and then finished for another week. Sometimes I feel like I spend half of my week cleaning but actually I usually manage to complete each floor in half of a day. 

Today 13 degrees celsius is said to be the high temperature so a cool May thus far and it is going to rain. Looks like rain.  

I am starting to make a list of summer projects so that I get the gardening done. Each year I like gardening even less. It was something Edward enjoyed very much and through the years I sort of gravitated towards it as we did it together. Now on my own I have little knowledge of gardening; barely recognize the plants that I am weeding around and generally prefer lawn. Interestingly Edward said to me to just grass it over as he knew I would try to keep it like he liked it. I am gradually moving to that for sure. 

Trees are budding now and soon we will be awash with leaves. Canada is a lovely country and the founders certainly had good ideas. They knew that incorporating the treaty rights into everything would protect Canada and so it does. Our First Peoples are great thinkers and doers. I will always remember our trip to Moosonee. Going to Moose Factory Island by water taxi was a wonderful experience and our time on the Island greatly enjoyed. We also traveled by canoe to James Bay along the Moose River which is a trip of about 20 kilometers. One of our sightings was a white wolf; absolutely majestic on the shore. I forgot to be frightened actually the view was so spectacular. The bird life was absolutely wonderful. When we canoed all those years in Northern Ontario we were mostly just north of the Trans Canada and did not go that far north because there isn't a road anyway all the way there. 

Soon time to clean; just have to do the Solitaire Puzzles.  

 

 

 

Appointment of a new Governor General

 I was very pleased when Governor General Mary Simon was appointed. As a member of the First Nations she became the first member of the First Nations to carry the title of Governor General. It was unfortunate that she was not fluent in French but she is a Quebecker and perhaps it made Quebec even more aware that they needed to do more to ensure that all of their citizens have the opportunity to learn French. Governor General Simon has served Canada so very well. 

The new Governor General to be the Honourable Louise Arbour is fluently bilingual (I see that as a must and she is extremely fluent in law (worldwide law)) and I feel she is an excellent choice. She has served Canada in so many positions through the years and around the world including the United Nations. We are sort of at a crossroads in Canada with two provinces - desire and greed for money on the one hand and the fear of losing the French character/tradition/language on the other hand. The first I never understand I have to be honest about that greed, envy, hate, selfishness all of these things need to  disappear from our world. The new Governor General to be has so much experience to bring to this task we have asked her to do in Canada. I am sure she will get along very well with King Charles III whom she will represent here in Canada. 

I always hope that Quebec sees that French is all across this country in every province and the great opportunity for the children of Quebec in Canada. The desire to learn languages is increasing in our world and I think that Quebec will see that respect for their language and their way of life exists very strongly across Canada. When we went through New Brunswick on our way to Newfoundland on a tour the restaurant that we stopped at just across the border from Quebec was staffed by young people who lived in New Brunswick (they weren't students from Quebec) but they spoke mostly French and they were very happy when we were able to tell them what we wanted in French (their English like my French was just a bit weak). Except my french is now more than just a bit weak. I should improve it. Keeps the brain active and I was doing so and kept it up for several months but maybe in the fall I will get back to it. 

If you want to see a culture that has virtually disappeared in Canada it is the English (I am 100% English although born in Canada with three Canadian ancestors my mother, her father, his mother). All the rest are English mostly born and died in England and I have met very few people who have retained their English heritage in my life except when I was in England so many times for our tours. Just because they speak English here does not mean they are English English. I think French is enduring much longer. Look at Montreal and Quebec City. Name a city in Canada that is very English (I haven't been to Vancouver though but I am told it is not English English but Victoria is apparently more English English). Newfoundland has more of a flair of my father's home country as he was born in England and came to Canada as a child of nine years with his parents and retained some of that English English. I have many cousins in Newfoundland by my matches and they mostly belong to the Knight/Arnold/etc families of South Dorset. Some of them when I visited there reminded me of my grandfather because his mother was a Knight from South Dorset. Having just three ancestors born in Canada though my great grandmother (my maternal grandfather's mother) was a cousin to Sir John Carling - amazing really. My grandfather learned a great deal about Canada from his mother's first cousin as a child and he shared all of that with my uncle (his son) who adored his father and was very proud to be related to Sir John Carling although he kept it to himself mostly but he shared so many stories with me about his father and what he had learned from Sir John. 

It is nice though that we still have the King of England (Charles III) as our Head of State because he means a lot to the First Nations and he has visited them a number of times. His support for them (like for Canada itself) is always there and always obvious. The King always reminds us to honour the treaties which is right and proper as they  have made us the strong nation that we are now. There have been glitches but repairing them is important. We must always walk together with the First Nations like Chief Tecumseh and Sir Isaac Brock as they defended Canada in those early days before we were a nation.