jeanives: Connections

Here’s a typical PEI story: we were on the board walk at Tignish Run and started an idle conversation with a woman visiting from Vancouver. She was touring the Island with her family having just sold their summer house in Wood Island; down east and I hope you have a map in front of you because by now you should be lost. Her husband came along and with further chat we introduced ourselves and I thought his name was familiar, Roger Larrabee. We shared our ages and realized we went to the same high school in the same class; Betsy, his brother Eldon would have been in your class or at least your grade. When I started rhyming off names of fellow class mates we got into that excitement you feel in those random and happy connections and parted with a hug. What are the odds of that meet-up?

not a relative!

Another day we were in a restaurant/diner in Crapaud, the Red Rooster, and I swear our server’s mother or grandmother was a student when I worked at Bluefield High School, she looked so familiar. I restrained myself and did not interrogate her on her ancestry which I would have done had she been a bit older. At her age she might have thought I was bat-crazy, justified of course.

I see people all the time that I almost recognize but not enough to remember a name or even be confident of the identity because everyone is at least 30 years older. Or I’ll see someone I’m sure I know and then find out, no, I was wrong.

There is a “look” in PEI, probably from genetic crossovers because like any pioneer area there were only a few families and they had to intermarry for lack of choice.

Luckily they had lots of kids, 8 or maybe 20 in one generation so the gene pool got mixed up fairly quickly. We know a woman of Acadian background who has 97 first cousins just on her mother’s side of the family. No one has tried to count them on her father’s side but there are many more.

I recently sent my DNA to ancestry.ca which coughed up all kinds of interesting connections. I share a double great grandmother with a Victoria friend, born in South Lake, PEI and the great grandfather of another friend from South Lake was the brother of a different double great grandmother of mine. Did you know you have 16 ancestors at the double great level? We know someone who traced his family back about 1000 years and told us there are 17,000 in the direct line if you get back that far! Good grief! It gets very complicated very quickly with immigration mis-spellings (Jim’s mother’s last name had three versions), repeated names through generations, and here’s a good one – if an infant died sometimes the same name was given to the next born.

And occasionally there is a complete surprise like this one, the Ives name in the Acadian territory of Miscouche otherwise known as Lot 7 from the time the Island was partitioned to favoured friends of whatever King was on the throne.

On the other hand, we spent the weekend at the PEI Shellfish Festival with kitchen-party entertainment on the main stage and an international chefs competition on the kitchen stage, and I didn't know a soul other than Michael Smith who is VERY tall and Andrew Scheer, also tall but not as.

I also stopped by at a big-ish street market on Queen Street and no known faces jumped out at me. It can happen.