KEEPING BUSY

In the years after I could no longer work, I kept busy with many different hobbies. Hatching baby chicks, crocheting plastic mats for Africa and nests for Wildlife rehabilitation centers, photography, gardening, genealogy and many more.

Hatching chicks

My daughter was teaching in a classroom where the teacher was hatching chicks. She was extremely excited, and one weekend, they needed someone to take care of the newborn chicks. I was asked to bring them home, and I accepted. That was the beginning of many more years of hatching. When she had her classroom, she hatched the eggs from the beginning. She would get the fertilized eggs, do the 21 days in the incubator, and then the amazing hatching of the chicks would begin. The kids were always so excited, and so was I!

There were many adventures, and I learned so much over the years. I remember one year, the eggs hatched on a Friday, but two eggs only had small pecked holes. I brought home the ones that had hatched and left the other two in the incubator at school. It was Mother’s Day weekend. I checked on them on Saturday, and they were not progressing much. When I went on Sunday, Mother’s Day, I decided to take the chance and help them along. Most farmers will tell you not to do this because the chick is not strong enough to survive. Let nature take its course.

I couldn’t stand the thought of these little chicks not making it, so I helped them out. I took the eggs out of the incubator, sprayed them with warm water, and then carefully removed some of the shells without breaking the membrane. I knew this was risky because they could bleed to death if I broke the membrane. Once enough shells were removed, I placed them back in the incubator. They had broken out of their shell within an hour, but they were very weak. They had been working at getting out of their shell for over 24 hours. There was a little black one, and he still had some shell stuck on his back feathers. I packed them up in a box with hot water bottles and towels and brought them home with me. I had another incubator at home that I called the Chick Hospital. It was worth it because the two chicks survived! I think they had so much trouble coming out of their shells due to insufficient humidity in the incubator.

One of our biggest concerns was we didn’t want the chicks going to a farm and getting slaughtered. She found a friend of a friend who owned a hobby farm, and she was willing to take them. In the first years, we didn’t know much about chickens, but I became a real “mother hen” with time. Our friend, who was taking the chicks, asked me if I would be interested in hatching different kinds of chickens. One breed she always wanted was an Americana. These hens give blue eggs. How cool is that! 

I found a farmer with different breeds, and we started hatching all different breeds of chickens. I think my favourites were the Americana and Silkies, which are small and enjoy being handled, and Milles Fleur, which are also a smaller breed and have such beautiful feather patterns.   

From 2011 to 2016, we hatched until my daughter became pregnant and went on maternity leave. At that point, I was still helping another kindergarten teacher with the chicks she was hatching. They knew they could call on Mother Hen whenever they needed advice or help. It was an amazing experience, and I hope to do it again, maybe with my grandchildren.

Learning to crochet

I grew up with a mother who would knit and crochet, but it never interested me, and I guess she knew that because I don’t remember her trying to teach me. My mother liked to crochet baby outfits. She made many dresses for my daughter when she was little. My son would get mostly sweaters. When the youngest came around, I told her I still had the ones she made for my other son. She also made the boys christening gowns.

I took up crochet much later in life. I asked my mother to show me, but she was not a very good teacher, so I went on the internet, on Youtube, and learned that way. My first projects were scarves, baby blankets, and then slippers. I found it to be a way to relax and keep busy at the same time. After a while, I encountered a group of ladies who would collect plastic milk bags and crochet them into mats to be sent to Africa. This was called Mats for Africa. Of course, I was all in and became the Bag lady of my neighbour-hood. I collected many bags and made several mats for African children and adults. Knowing that a child in Africa was sleeping on a softer surface than the ground was very rewarding.

I also found a group that crocheted nests for wildlife rescue centers. These crochet jobs were very hard on my hands because the mats and nests needed to be crocheted tightly. After a while, I decided this was not the best thing for me and stopped making both. 

I continue to crochet, but I only do easy projects for the grandchildren and some gifts for others, but only when my hands can tolerate it. I have also noticed that when I crochet, my eyes itch. I think it is probably the dust in the yarn.

     Here are a few things I crocheted for my grand-girls.

A few years before my mother died, she was still knitting and crocheting. She was in the hospital and was having a rough time. There were days that she didn’t even know who I was. I think it might have been the medication she was taking. Finally, they took her off it and her memory started returning. She was so upset when she decided she wanted her yarn and crochet hook and realized she couldn’t remember how to start. Seeing her struggle with how to hold the crochet hook was so strange. Since I had only learned a few years prior, I decided to teach her the same way I learnt. Each time I visited her, I would check what she had done. Sometimes, she would have to restart it, but within a few weeks, it was like she had never forgotten anything. Once she was in the nursing home, she started crocheting for other women at the home. I sometimes think I was guided to learn to crochet to teach my mother someday. Her last project was a baby outfit for her future great-grandchild. Her granddaughter was not even pregnant yet, but she knew she would have a baby in the future. The baby was born 2 years later, in November 2020. My mother crocheted up to the day she died at 88 years old.

Gardening

I always loved flower gardens, but I knew that having a vegetable garden was hard work and time-consuming. I didn’t start making my vegetable garden until my youngest son was around 4 years old. He was the only one interested in helping me with the garden. He was very proud to show off the large tomatoes we grew. We didn’t have the success I had hoped for. We would have had to use more property, which wasn’t possible, so I stopped having a garden until we moved in 2017. I figured I had more space and time, so why not? The problem with having Fibromyalgia is that the mind will say go for it, but the body does not want to follow. I have struggled with this for years and keep pushing myself. I still don’t know if that is the right thing to do, but I just feel that if I don’t, then I am giving up.

I’ve had a good amount of success with my gardens. My tomato plants do very well, but mostly everything else gets eaten by the wildlife, especially our groundhog Hoss. We also call him Little Joe in the early spring because he is much thinner. For anyone who never saw the TV show Bonanza, Hoss was a big guy, and Little Joe was his small younger brother. He has been living under our cabana and a large rock for years. I can’t get mad at him because he was here first. So it looks like my summer garden will be mostly tomatoes.

I started growing vegetables inside a few years ago with an Aeroponic growing system. The unit is called a Tower Garden, and you can grow year-round. Aeroponics is growing plants in an air or mist environment rather than soil. Aeroponic systems use water, liquid nutrients, and a soilless growing medium to quickly and efficiently grow more colourful, tastier, better-smelling, and incredibly nutritious produce. I could not eat vegetables from the store for many years without having digestion problems. With this system, I can enjoy my chemical-free vegetables all year long.

Photography

Another pastime and interest of mine has been photography. It has been something I have been interested in all my life. I didn’t always have the money to have a good camera or be able to afford the film, but I always seemed to have a camera in my hand. When the kids were little, I took many pictures of them. They were a great subject. Once they started at playgroup, people asked me to take pictures of their children. I then decided to start my own little photography company called Photo Olympique. We were living on Olympique St., which is how I came up with the name. I couldn’t use the name Olympic, so I went with the French version. I took group and individual photos for the playgroup, and sometimes, I also took family shots. Having the registered company helped with some of the expenses of my equipment. Also, it helped bring David’s income down for income tax purposes. I did this for a few years, but was not worth the trouble. I certainly didn’t make any money, and everyone wanted everything for nothing. Going to Sears and having your portraits done there was much cheaper. I couldn’t compete with the large stores. Now, it is even harder for photographers because of the digital cameras. They work around it by giving the customer the original digital copies; it is up to the customer to develop them.

My dream growing up was to be a wildlife photographer for National Geographic. Dreams don’t always come true! My joy of being in the woods and spotting a deer or even a bird and being able to capture, in those quick seconds, a photograph still excites me. I could spend hours just walking around and enjoying what this earth has to offer. My pain seems to be forgotten, and I focus on getting a nice shot. I can deal with the pain afterward. I am still learning so much and I hope to take the time in the future to truly enjoy this great hobby.

Ancestry Research

Family has always meant a great deal to me, and I often wondered about my ancestors. I wondered where they were from and what their lives were like. Around the year 2000, I decided to do some research on the internet site Ancestry.ca. I also discovered that I had a distant cousin on my maternal side who was also interested in our genealogy and doing some research. I contacted him, and he shared what he had found. That gave me a good start, and like everything I do, I went in at full speed. It was amazing what I found! There are many old documents, like marriage, birth, and death certificates. Before I knew it, I traced my ancestral history back to the 1020s.

My Grandmother Mary Anne's tree connects to William the Conqueror, 1st King of England from 1066 to 1087.  He would be my 28th-time great grandfather (born c. 1028, Falaise, Normandy [France]—died September 9, 1087, Rouen), duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England (as William I) from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. He made himself the mightiest noble in France and then changed the course of England's history by his conquest of that country.

My Grandmother Josephine's tree connects to Abraham Martin dit l'Ecossais, my 8th-time great-grandfather. The plains are likely named after Abraham Martin (1589–1664), a fisherman and river pilot called The Scot. Martin moved to Quebec City in 1635 with his wife, Marguerite Langlois. He received 32 acres of land divided between the lower town and promontory from the Company of New France. Abraham's name appears in the toponymy of Quebec City at the time of the French regime, the deeds of the 17th and 18th centuries referring to the coast of Abraham, and a 1734 plan even precisely locating Abraham Street. Later, the journals of the Chevalier de Levis and the Marquis de Montcalm referred to the Heights of Abraham, as did the diaries of British soldiers, who also employed the phrase Plains of Abraham. On September 13, 1759, the area was the scene of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, part of the French and Indian War, which was itself part of the Seven Years' War. On that date, British soldiers, under the command of General Wolfe, climbed the steep cliff under the city in darkness, surprising and defeating the French through a single deadly volley of musket fire, causing the battle to be over within 30 minutes. Both Wolfe and the French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, died of their wounds, but the battle left control of Quebec City to the British, eventually allowing them to take control of Canada the following year.

Once I started to build my tree and went that far back, I became interested in history, which I was never interested in when I was in school. I even failed the subject! I started to share my findings with my family and friends, but I was still waiting for someone to be interested. At that point, I just put everything in a box for another time.

About 10 years later, I decided to get back into my genealogy. I took a DNA test with Ancestry and was amazed at all my DNA matches. Most of them were 2nd or 3rd cousins, but they were names I had never heard of before. Over the years, I would talk to my mother about some of my findings, but she didn't know much about her family history. She didn't know her grandparents, and her parents didn't talk about their parents or siblings. The only story my grandmother would talk about was that her siblings moved to Washington. She would get the occasional letter from her relatives. My mother always thought this was Washington, DC, but after doing my DNA and seeing matches with names who lived in Washington State, USA. I realized that these were my 2nd and 3rd cousins. At that point, I decided to write to one of them. It turned out that her grandfather, Ernest, was my grandmother, Mary Anne's brother. It looks like most of my grandmother's siblings left to go to Washington State in 1920. I believe only 2 of her sisters stayed in Quebec, but my grandmother moved to the other side of the river, Campbellton, New Brunswick.

I have taken many photocopies of all the documents I have found over the years. I have stored them with the many albums of the family research that I have documented. I'm hoping that when I am gone, some members of the family will be interested and that they won't just get thrown out.

I also did some research for my son-in-law's mother. She was adopted and did not know who her biological parents were. She decided to do a DNA with Ancestry.ca, and after receiving the results, I began to follow some leads with her DNA matches. She had some first cousins listed, so those were the ones I looked at first. After digging, I figured out who her mother was and was thrilled that she was still alive. I think she had mixed feelings, but she was also happy because she just wanted to thank her for giving her up for adoption so that she could have a better life. She got that opportunity and met her biological mother in person on her 55th birthday. We are still unsure who her father is because the mother has had memory loss and cannot give us a definite name. I have a good idea of who it may be, but we may never know without his children's DNA.  Ancestry is a great tool, but cannot give you all the answers. People must complete their DNA test and list themselves in the database; otherwise, the results do not come up. The funny part is that she and I are distant cousins. This happens a lot with people whose ancestors came from the same area. My relatives were all from New Brunswick and Gaspé, and so were hers.

I was also contacted by someone on Ancestry looking for her biological mother. She was looking for someone with the same last name as me and that maybe I was this person or someone related. I contacted her to let her know that I was not her mother and I was a very distant relative, according to our DNA match. We emailed each other several times, and I offered to help her. She was adopted and hoped to determine who and where her parents were from. This was a very complicated search because her biological mother was also put up for adoption. She had the name she used after being adopted. This was very complicated because I could not find any records of this name. It turned out that she was actually taken in by my uncle Auguste, my father's brother. I called every relative and friend to find out if anyone knew her. My family had never heard of her and never knew that this uncle had a child. He had moved to Nouvelle, Quebec, which is on the other side of the Restigouche River from Campbellton, NB. The reason I could not find any record of her is because she was never legally adopted. She was only taken in and given the father's family name. In the 1930s, this was not uncommon, and it amazes me that she kept this name even once she found out about her biological parents when she was around 16 years old. She got pregnant when she was nearly 20, came to Montreal to give birth, and gave her up for adoption.

My research led me to a 1st and 2nd cousin on both her maternal and paternal side. This is how I could track down who her mother was and what her birth name was. Unfortunately, her mother was no longer living! After contacting several relatives, I discovered that she had a half-sister living in Costa Rica. I contacted her via Facebook and connected them, and they started getting to know each other. They talk or email regularly and are hoping to meet in person in the near future.

I was also able to connect her with her paternal side. She had a DNA match. The only information that she had when I first started helping her was that on her original birth certificate, what she was named and a family name, which was not the same as her adoptive name. When I first saw that, I told her I was pretty sure that was her father’s name. After doing a lot of research, and sometimes I felt I was going in circles, I figured out where the name was connected. It has taken me nearly 2 years to figure it all out. Her father is also no longer living, but he did have other children, which means she has a half-sister and half-brother. Only some people take this kind of information well. When I first spoke to the half-sister, she seemed happy, but then she started questioning the DNA results. There has been a lot of bad press regarding some of these genealogy DNA tests. Some companies are not legit, and people have been given the wrong information. Ancestry has been around for a long time and is known for its accuracy with the DNA results.  She has decided to not push the matter and leave it up to the half-siblings to reach out when they are ready. She has also become close to one of her 2nd cousins on her paternal side, who is such a sweet and caring lady.

I managed to get this information for her 70th Birthday. What a gift for her and me! I find it so rewarding to be able to give a gift like this to anyone.

In April of 2023, she and I took the train from Montreal to Campbellton, NB. She was finalizing a book she was writing about self-identity and wanted to send it off to the publisher from where her ancestral roots were from. She had been to Campbellton several times since we had figured out where her parents were from, and she really wanted me to go with her this time. Not only did I get to meet her cousin, but she also asked me to take a picture for her book cover. She had seen some of my photography and said, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before; why don’t you take the picture for the book cover?” It is usually the publisher who will suggest a picture from their library. I was thrilled and honoured!

It was our last night in Campbellton, and I had not brought my good camera on this trip because I was trying to travel light. She wanted a picture with a tree and water. It was late afternoon on a very cold rainy day. I headed outside with my camera and took several pictures. We had chosen a few, and she sent them to the editor to see if the resolution would be accepted, but they weren’t sure. I went into my camera settings and changed everything to get the best resolution possible. The following morning, I went out again and took more pictures. At least it was no longer raining, but it was cold and windy.

After we looked at the pictures, she mentioned that she really liked the one with the bridge. The resolution was much better and at an acceptable amount for the publisher. While I was outside, she thought about how she should have asked me to take a picture of the bridge, water and a tree.

This picture will be on the front cover of her ‘Self, Identity, and collective action’ book that she will use in her course at Concordia University.

I guess great minds do think alike!

I am so grateful that I got the chance to help these two women figure out their biological roots. This does not change who they call mom or dad, but it gives them some closure on where they came from. I have met so many great people with this process. They may not be my direct family, but I feel such love from these new friends. It has been a lot of work, but it has been worth it!

At the end of each day before you close your eyes, be Content with what you’ve done, be Grateful for what you have and be Proud of who you are.