Goderich - Family Roots Day

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I had a successfull, although long, day. It took sometime and trips to the library, the Land Registry Office, and Knox Presbyterian Church, but I found where my Dad use to live in Goderich.

The thing that made it tough was that, back in the time of the 1911 Census, there were no street addresses. However, I did find that he lived on St. Vincent and that street is only on block long. A very nice lady in the Land office pulled out the right book and I found the particular plot. Referencing that to a present map pinpointed the house.

I went over to the house and met some of the family now living there. They had no idea about the history of the place and couldn't decide amongst themselves whether they had been there 6 or 7 years. I got some pictures and went away satisfied. It was rather neat seeing the house and walking the street where my Dad played with his brothers from his age of 5 to 14 years.

I think the person in the house that was most enthusiastic about the history of the place, was the youngest son. I met him first outside the front gate. When I explained to him what I was doing his eyes lighted up.

"Cool" he said as he went running back to the house.
"Hey Mom, there is a guy here who says his Grandfather use to live here."
"Oh, I don't know if I want to talk to anybody right now," I heard her mumble.

At any rate, I did manage a short conversation with her, but didn't get her name, nor was it offerred. No hand shake, no "Come in and have a look." With this reception I decided not to push things any further.

I had a much friendlier response from the woman at Knox Presbyterian. She was quite enthusiastic about my search. She dug out some old notes from their vault for me to look at. As I scanned some meetings of 1904 I came across the day when Grandpa George was made an elder of the church. I also found a picture on the wall of the sanctuary of a group of elders and there he was.

It took most of the day to complete this key goal of the trip, but with that done I started looking around Goderich in a more relaxed fashion to see what was going on.

There was a big arts and crafts fair toing on in the town square. I enjoyed a couple of booths with images of two rather good photographers. One had traditional darkroom printed black and white prints, while the other was a woman who was using the digital medium in colour. I preferred her pictures, mostly because of her eye for an image, not because it was digital medium. After complimenting her photography and noting that her pictures were from all over the world, I said, "Boy, you've been around."

"Yes," she said, smiling, "but in a nice way."

"Oh dear, there was my insensitive male comment. I guess I'll never figure it out."

She laughed and offerred some conciliatory comment that cleared the air - thank goodness.

I went down to the beach area to have a look. Goderich has a very nice waterfront, but I'm sure it wasn't developed to this degree when Dad lived here.

I should have mentioned earlier my breakfast at Bayfield. I went there at 7am to get an early breakfast because it was closer to the campground. As I settled into a patio table at a cozy resturant, in walked a cyclist for his morning carbs. I felt driven to find out what his ride was like, so I went over to introduce muyself. I ended up joining Mike for breadfast and we ahd a great chat. Other than our common bond as cyclists, not motorcyclists, we found another connection. He is a project manager for IT projects in one of the prime automobile manufacturers. I told him that is what I was involved in when I was working. We keyed on that hand had a great conversation. After enough of that work stuff, we moved into talking about cycling. Enough - I enjoyed our discussion, but there is no need to get into it here.

In the evening, I brought my supper back to my room and got involved iwth wathcing the Tour de Fance replay. Too late I realized that I missed an event at the waterfront called Piping Down the sun. That is where a pipe band plays the bag pipes as the sun sets. I thought it would be neat to see this, as Dad loved the pies, as do I. Sorry Dad.

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Comments

[Mark Batros]

Msg number 2
Hi Jack, Ahhh yes, I should have read this entry before giving the previous feedback. Could almost be reading Bill Bryson now. Cheers, Mark