As a result of yesterday's extremely short post, I neglected to mention the very good video that my younger brother and I watched in the latter morning of Odessa Orlewicz interviewing ... well, the title says it all: August 1- Chris Vandenbos Canadian Police Officer Speaks Truth To Me.
Chris Vandenbos is a co-founder of Police on Guard for Thee.
The video was a little more than 50 minutes in duration, and it's the second time within this week that I have watched Chris being interviewed. He speaks well. It's difficult to believe that he is an actual serving Ontario cop ─ I'm just unsure if he's provincial, or a city cop.
Late this morning, my brother and I did not watch anything quite so educational ─ a 2017 New Zealand 'Western' titled The Stolen.
The lead role belonged to actress Alice Eve, a name unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, her acting credits indicate that I have watched her before ─ for example, I saw every episode of Iron Fist, yet I do not recall her character "Typhoid Mary" Walker, for some reason.
In the movie, at times I thought she resembled Nicole Kidman.
The feature was interesting enough, but it was difficult to believe that the character she played could have endured the people and bad experiences that she had to survive.
I found it appalling how so very many 'frontier' people back in the early 1860s were simply not even remotely friendly, kindly, nor honest. How accurate was that, I wonder?
This was the only show that my brother and I watched together. For some reason, he left for the afternoon ere it was quite noon.
And soon, rather than nap, I debauched. Heck, I never did have a nap. If I had taken one, I knew that I would likely not get in any afternoon sunning, and I have already missed four consecutive days.
I was also in jeopardy of not getting in any exercise, either, so I felt that I just had to own up.
Even so, it was already 3:27 p.m. by the time I began an hour or so of sunning.
I did do something else this afternoon that may or may not prove of great value to me. Namely, I took the plunge and invested $75 into having research done to try and determine the parentage of my great grandmother.
Around mid-July, I had left an enquiry for help in that effort at a website called the Manitoba Genealogical Society.
Then just about two weeks later, I got this reply (on July 29):
Please excuse the delay in our response. Our office remains closed due to the pandemic and we have recently had several changes to various roles within our organization. We do not have paid staff and are all volunteers.
I am the research volunteer assigned to your file and have been asked to write regarding our performing some research into the birth and parentage of Sarah Barcelo nee Bird. While there are never any guarantees in this work, there may be some Manitoba based information that can be examined for the ancestry of Sarah Ann Bird. Manitoba's civil records from those early times are incomplete, and adherence to records keeping spotty especially in some rural areas. But we have some older records at MGS, and you have given us some avenues to pursue.
For non-members, we charge $75.00 ($60.00 for members) for a one person search, and that buys six-hours of research time from a volunteer, although many of us put more time than that into our work, simply because we enjoy it. We love to find information for our clients.
If you are interested, please go to the MGS website, and in the right column "MGS Research Service" and scroll down to "MGS Research Package" and "Start MGS Research Package". This will bring up a page that asks for your information. Please fill it out, however you do not need to re-enter the information about Sarah that you have previously sent, only any other information you may have that is pertinent. But do mention my name so the Treasurer is able to refer the request back to me once payment has been received. It will then be just a matter of clicking "checkout". You need not be a Paypal member; credit cards are accepted as well.
We look forward to hearing back from you with a research request. Such things help us run the activities and pay the bills for our reference library in MGS.
It took me until today to finally take the plunge and gamble that they can do what has thus far seemed impossible, and actually find out who my great grandmother's parents were. I only have my pension as income, so letting go of $75 for something that has no guarantee is no easy matter for me.
I had a fair amount of information to yield, and it took time to organize it. But I hope something among what I sent will turn the trick.
Otherwise, if this fails, I do feel that I am going to have to accept that her parents will forever remain unknown to me.
What is so peculiar is that she was born on Valentine's Day (February 14), 1862 ─ supposedly in Winnipeg or in that area. By contrast, her eventual husband ─ my great grandfather ─ is someone whose ancestry I have managed to trace directly back around 300 years earlier than that. To wit, roughly 1565, in France.
So why is it so damned hard finding my great grandmother's parents? She was supposedly a granddaughter of Andrew McDermot; and supposedly three of her uncles have been identified as being "A.G. Bannatyne, John McTavish and Jas. Logan all of whom were leading factors in the founding of the Hudson Bay Co., in the Canadian Northwest."
The only reference I have found to either of her parents was to her mother who visited Sarah's husband and children in North Dakota late in the same year after Sarah had died (1905):
Jno. Welsh and mother arrived in the city last week from Manitoba and are guests in the family home of U.S. Customs Collector Geo. Barcelo. Mrs. Welsh is the mother of the late Mrs. Barcelo and has resided in Winnipeg for the greater part of her life.
Sarah's mother had apparently remarried and was no longer a "Bird", but with no first name offered, it is impossible to figure out who she was. As well, her surname might be a misprint ─ she could have been "Welch" or anything similar.
Knowing that the mother had a son with her named Jonathan (or something like that) has been useless.
Oh, gosh, it is after 7:30 p.m. ─ I must stop for today. I have a can of Cariboo Malt (8% alcohol) chilling and awaiting guzzling.
My wife apparently had a full day at her friend's Thai restaurant, so she left here this morning around 10:30 a.m. to make her 11 a.m. start. She will thus be back at some point later today.
I hope to be smartly to bed by 9 p.m. to try and nap away the latter evening so that I can sit up overnight and get some work done here at my computer now that I won't have any salacious temptations diverting me.
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