pier 21
the friday five... why not?
1.What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from? mom's family is from hamilton, on & weston-super-mare, england and dad's family is from carrickfergus, n.i.
2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit? ireland.
3. Which would you least like to visit? Why? we'll say hamilton. i've been to the aviation museum there (my mom's dad was in the air force once upon a time, so i guess it was a heritagey thing for me to do) but that's just b/c it was beside the airport. i can imagine what hamilton is like. i've seen enough of ontario. i don't need to visit.
4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage? you know, if macdonald's still had green shakes on st. patrick's day, i would. i still remember the crushing blow of going to the mcd's on broadway when tim & i lived in vancouver and getting heartily disappointed by their absence. there are still some english christmas things my family still does--such as stockings on the end of the bed, trifle and plum pudding, that sort of thing.
5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)?that would be my mom's dad's family, the ones in hamilton. they've been in canada for about 8 generations, but i have absolutely no history on them prior to my great grandmother (the only one still alive when i was born). my mom's mom's family came to Canada in 1903, and farmed in saskatchewan before moving to the coast. my dad and his parents emigrated on the aquitania (spending christmas on the ship) and landed at pier 21 in halifax on dec. 27, 1948. from there they took the train to vancouver, arriving on new year's day. at the time you could take an overnight boat to victoria, which is what they did--arriving here on jan. 2, 1949.
i went to pier 21 last month, where there's a neat little museum now. i would be the first family member to return to the site of our landing--and i bet i spent longer there than my father & his parents did. apparantly imigrants with final destinations other than halifax had about 45 minutes between processing paperwork and boarding the train. i spent about 2 hours in the museum myself. there was a cruise ship the size of the aquitania docked at pier 21 when i was there, and the size floored me. 10? 13 stories maybe? it was huge, a scale much larger than the ship i imagined my dad coming on. and there's a car from the old trains sitting on the rails right outside the pier too, which surprised me. i always imagined the family would have seen something of the harbour city before setting out for the west coast, but apparantly not.
two picnics with differnt generations of my mother's family
my dad with his mom and dad, outside ted's autocourt, their first residence in victoria, bc, january 1949.
