November 10, 2006

McGee and Me

It is 5:39am. Another hour and a half and I can crawl back into my nice (un)comfy bed and snooze another day away.

I'm pratically see-through, because whatever sun we've had in the past month I've missed do to my decidedly nightly schedule as of late. This can't be normal.

Anyway, to the point. McGee and Me has nothing to do with anything, other than I was looking up Gummi Bears on YouTube and recalled the cartoon/live action McGee and Me that we used to watch on special occasions. You had to get the VHS from church, not a normal rental place... oooooo, awwwww....

Speaking of old times, I was over at the Nova Scotia Archives to see what I could see and it's actually pretty interesting (if you like boring things). They have the death records from the turn of the century scanned into the system, so you can look up specific names, causes of death, occupations, etc. In the nearish future other vital stats. will be on there, and it's easy to search through. There are some other online databases on there, and I was able to find the record of my Great-Grandparents divorce in the 40's or 50's, and discovered that they had her name as Oreida, instead of Ouida (which is what I know it to be). There was some kind of phonebook/business registry from the early 1900's and there were lot's of familiar names in there. I found some great-great uncles who were twins, one with the name Downie, the other Downey, as well as some other enterprising kin-folk (mostly farmers and carpenters). It appears that Downie and Downey are used interchangeably, so I'm not sure which is actually correct. Especially since two generations back it became Downie and Downing (my grandfather is Downie, his brother is Downing).

It appears that disagreement and disfunction go way back.

I'm sure this is only of interest to me, but some of y'all may enjoy searching through the records and finding ancestors. I'd like to know why my ancestors decided to immigrate to Canada. They came from Ireland, and were loyal to the crown (the Orange third of the flag). We were kind of mean to the Roman Catholics (the Green third of the flag), and were generally well off comparatively. My guess is they wanted to find greener pastures, and Nova Scotia was British territory at the time, so it makes sense... Being Irish it seemed natural to feel affection for St. Patrick's day, but my ancestor's were actually more fond of July 12th, which was the day William the Orange did mean things to Green Catholics.

Two pretzels walked down the street, one was a-salted.

Ha! Get it? A little "Halifax is becoming a violent city" humour... Too soon?

I figure talking about dead ancestors can only be more interesting than anything else I can say these days. I could complain more about how sleepy I am and how bad shift work is for the soul. Or I could complain about how my kittens decide to run around and attack things right when I want to be going to sleep. Or how I never get to do real people things like go to movies, or go shopping, because I'm asleep when those things are going on. Bah humbug!

Speaking of which... the Christmas schedule comes out on later today, and I have a feeling that things won't go in my favour. I have no kids or dependents, which naturally means I don't care what I'm doing on Christmas day, and that means they can schedule the heck out of me. *sigh*

Ok, it's 6 am, time to look lively.

1 comment:

Shannon Skafte said...

Oh Ev'y I find your family history Fab... and it helps me to understand the relatives i've met.

I love your witty perspective...

sigh. I miss you