AUNT LUCY

       Aunt Lucy was my Mom's aunt and she was my Grandma's sister.

       Aunt Lucy was a very tiny English lady who was very able to look after herself. She wore her iron gray coat and hat...a straw hat in the summer and felt hat in the winter. She always wore a substantial pair of shoes.

      In the late 40's early 50's Aunt Lucy visited our place every year...usually late fall. A series of letters would be exchanged and arrangements made. Aunt Lucy would be picked up from the train. She had two large and heavy suitcases. We liked to see her come as she was a great visitor. She was a talker and had lots of stories.

    After a ten days or two weeks she would move a couple of hundred miles down the line to where her twin daughters and grandchildren lived.

     She would stay there about a month and then travel to the west coast. There she had two sisters and a son. She went from place to place and visited and in the late winter she would travel back to Winnipeg. 

    To us kids there were mysteries. We didn't know what happened to her husband. We didn't know how she made a living. We didn't know how she became this tiny independent English lady. 

    As kids we didn't know much about aunt Lucy .

    So why am I telling you this. I recently got Ancestry and found aunt Lucy and a bit about her life so I can piece together a story about her.

   She came to Canada in about 1900 and they decided to farm as there was lots of good cheap land. In 1914 she was left as a widow with five children with her youngest child only two years old. I'm not sure what she did after that but records show that she was in the same area as the farm. Somehow she raised 5 kids. I would guess that she received some support from relatives.

    Later on she moved to Winnipeg as some of her children lived there. Now When she visited us and went on to the coast she probably still lived with family as she was able to leave her place. 

   So with a little inference it was fun to put together more of aunt Lucy's life. 

   So far with ancestry I've found much more than I thought I would. I know I won't find any famous or high class people. The people on my Dad's side of the family were peasants who farmed. The people on my mother's side seem to have been farm workers in England. For example, my Grandpa did butchering. When a farmer was going to butcher an animal my grandfather was called and did the job. 

ONE SHOULDN'T SNICKER

    When I was still teaching one year on the last day before Christmas holidays a kid came to the concert with a newly broken arm. I said to the kid that I had never had a broken bone.




     Well guess what? The next day I fell and broke my wrist. Worse than that I was doing the Christmas bird count so I was fair game for all kinds of ribbing like " I didn't know birding was a dangerous sport. "

     Well on my last post I made a few remarks about people who have spring weather that is ten times better than mine and they still wanted better weather. I should have known to keep my mouth shut. 

    Over night we had 15 to 20 cm of snow. Lovely soft white stuff just made for shoveling. The snowplow had just finished yesterday. 

    Why don't I keep my mouth shut? 

SNICKERING ABOUT SPRING.

     I admit it. I snicker about some of the comments that are being made about spring on some blogs right now. I'm not snickering at the blogger...just the perception of spring.

    You see we have some very wide perceptions of spring. It depends on where you live. 

     I got thinking about this today because of the weather I have. Today we had a high of minus 12 C (14 F) and a 50 - 60 kph wind. It was a very, very nasty day. Now my calendar said Mar. 6 and the first day of spring isn't until Mar. 21. But what I snicker about is someone complaining about flowers being late and cold spring weather like 40 F. I snicker about people wanting warmer weather when they have 50 F. So when I have a nasty day it's funny when people want more than 50 F

    Now on the other hand I think other bloggers might be snickering at this blogger for being in such terrible weather. What I have is winter weather and fairly frigid winter weather at that. 

    So here we are one is snickering about some great spring weather that somebody has and they want still better weather. Another is snickering because somebody's weather is just like winter.

   Well right now I would like some warmer weather...maybe something above 0 C !

    Spring comes with changes in light. At this time our daylight starts to increase rapidly. We will get warmer temperatures but most of all we will get more of the sun's energy per day so our plants will grow and develop rapidly. We will have nice spring weather , just at a different time of year.

   I didn't get a photograph today but I found an older photo that shows what things look like.

Yesterday they snow plowed my street.

    My path to the bird feeder looks like this.

WE HAD A SURPRISE LITTLE EARTH QUAKE

     The area I live in has very few earthquakes and they are all small.

     Well this morning when I checked Face book some of my friends were talking about an earthquake! In fact, my friend Cynthia, was quite shook up   about it. The earth quake occurred around 6:00 AM. Not many people were up at that time but many of them were well aware of what was going  on.  No damage was done but people get a little shook up when the ground moved and things rattled.

     The earthquake we had was 4.6 and was originally thought to be caused by fracking in the area. Later it was shown that it was caused by fracing.

     So I was still pleasantly asleep at six AM and heard and felt nothing. Many days I am awake around 6 AM but not today when something exciting was going on.

MORE REFLECTIONS.

      The other day I listened to a documentary about violence toward teachers in classrooms. I was dismayed to hear that young children are hitting, kicking, threatening, spitting at teachers and more.

      The micro manager and I were talking about this situation over dinner. One wonders what has happened  for this situation to develop. 

     Many changes have occurred in society and the education system. So there's endless speculation. One of the things we talked about was the inclusion of all students in a regular classroom. Students who never would have been in  a classroom a few years ago.

    This got me thinking about a situation I encountered in my first year of teaching in 1958.

    My nine little munchkins in 1958 with their cool teacher!

    One family in the district had two boys with Down's syndrome.  These two children were kept at home. Most Down's syndrome kids were kept at home or institutionalized. They were not in the public school system.

    This couple decided that they wanted to send these two boys to school with me. They didn't talk to me. They conferred with the trustees. The trustees were wise and referred the matter to the superintendent. The superintendent came out to see me and we had a long discussion. The superintendent discussed all pros and cons. Then he said that I had to make the decision as to whether these kids entered the school system. I said , "No."  He had very skillfully slanted his comments to me so that he got the answer he wanted.

    This topic was discussed in the community and they were against the boys entering the school system. 

   I've never forgotten this issue. These parents were a bit ahead of their time. When I said no they didn't  pursue the matter any further.  I often wonder what happened to the two boys and the family. There was no support for families at that time.

    So inclusion of all students was beginning a long time before it happened

ANCESTRY

     I recently wrote a post telling of my early Father's Day gift. My son in law got excited about a project and no little issue like it's not Father's Day would stop him. 

    Well, the stopping issues started with me. My computer skills are not great. So here it comes. Ancestry sends an email. The email asks you for your information to sign into the program. My first problem was that it would not accept my postal code. It insisted on a zip code. We are used to those problems. So phone for help. It turned out that the helper and help requester were both at about the same level of expertise. She asked me to do all kinds of things that even I knew had nothing to do with the problem. 

    The problem was that I was looking at an email that she knew nothing about. She would ask if I could see something? Well, no I wasn't on that page. She apparently was not aware that ancestry sends out an email first.  

    Finally she was able to look at my account and tell me that I was in business as she could see everything in my account. But I say how do I get into the program? With that she left me as she had been with me for an hour. So I thought things over and said ah ha I know what to do. I did know what to do but my pass word had been mangled. There was no way I could reset my pass word from their system. One more call. I got the nicest guy in the whole telemarketing world. I did complement him highly.

    So off I went to look at ancestry. 

    My maternal grandfather was a rather dour little Englishman. I never heard him talk about relatives . So very quickly I found him with his three sisters and his parents. So the first thing I found in minutes was my great grandfather on my mother's side.

     My Grandpa is on the left. It's the only photo I can find of him.

    My biggest disappointment? I couldn't find myself! Isn't that vain?

   Maybe the next program I get, I will be able to register without a problem.

REMEMBERING A GOOD HIKE ON A COLD WINTER DAY

    Again , this is a location we looked at many times as we drove down the David Thompson high way. This area is called Windy Point. So one Saturday, out we went to see if this would be a good place to take students.

    You start this climb as soon as you cross the highway ditch. Did I say it was steep? It's steep so there is some scrambling like use of hands . Again we were looking at a point or a peak that we wanted to get to. We had to take a trail at the bottom of the cliff to the back of it and then more. 

    This is the last time I tried going up a chimney. 

    We got to the top of the cliff at the back and then had to walk to the cliff face. It was a great view and a good place for some stunt photos. 

   It was not a good place to take kids. One time we took kids on this for about 45 minutes before you get to the dangerous stuff.

     About half way up I'm crossing a saddle.

    I can be seen in this photo on the bottom right.

   You can see the highway down below on the right.

Mugging it up for the camera.

     Scrambling about half way up.

Looking toward the dam.

   
 Mike posing for a dramatic shot. One step back and he was in space and free fall.