M A C V A Y S I A

I often talk about my maternal grandfather; I quite often write about him as well. But I never knew my paternal grandfather, Frank MacVay, who died a few years before I was born. All I knew of him was the occasional comment or story from my parents or other relatives. I knew that he always ran up stairs; that a stint as a door-to-door salesaman left him with a fear of dogs; that he served overseas with the Canadian army during WWII and was injured in London during the ‘Blitz’; that he was an alcoholic; that he watched his eldest son drown; that he never took another drink after losing his son and spent the rest of his life helping others kick the habit; that he was my hometown’s deputy clerk treasurer or something to that effect; that he had a bad heart and died of a heart attack while on a hunting trip at the age of 62. I knew those things but not much else.

One day when I was fifteen or sixteen, I was sitting in my father’s living room looking at a black-and-white picture of my grandfather when I began to think seriously about the history of my family. I had long been interested in history, but my family’s history wasn’t something I’d given much thought. Looking at that picture of Frank MacVay, all serious with his slicked-back black hair and black horn-rimmed glasses, I wondered: who were his parents? What were their names? Where did they come from? Where did we come from? Thus began my fascination with genealogy, a bug that didn’t bite most people until they were much older.

My father didn’t know much about his grandparents, as they had both died long before he was born. But he did know where they were buried. So we went up to Hardwood Hill cemetery and after a short search found the large stone marking the graves of my great-grandparents, William and Frances Amelia MacVay, and some of their children.

It just so happened that at the time one of my favourite places was the local library. Like I said, I was fascinated by history; I used to spend quite a bit of time at the library, escaping my angsty teenage life through books about other times and other worlds. I knew the library had archived copies of the local newspaper on microfilm, so I copied down the names and dates from the tombstone and went to the library to see if I could find my great-grandparents’ obituaries. I searched through the Sydney Post Record (the old name of the Cape Breton Post) from the date of my great-grandfather’s death and soon found his obituary. Then I found my great-grandmother’s obituary, as well as those of some of their children. Those discoveries led to further discoveries and revelations, more mysteries, meetings with relatives I never knew I had, and visits to some of the places my family had been. I was hooked.

In the twenty years or so since then I’ve done a lot of research, from talking to relatives to sitting in libraries, trudging through graveyards, calling and emailing people and doing a lot of online digging. I’ve managed to put together a pretty impressive amount of information about my family and its history. But it’s not just about information. It’s about stories. It was while talking to my maternal grandfather about my mother’s side of the family that I understood why I felt so driven to learn about our past. I have inherited not just a collection of stories but a tradition of telling them and a desire to pass them on. Storytelling is in my blood; I figure if I’m going to be a storyteller, I should tell stories about the people from whom I inherited that blood, people who had hopes and dreams, tragedies and fears, and experiences that made them who they were, made us who we are, and played a part in making me who I am.

Despite all I’ve been able to discover about my family, there’s always something yet to be discovered, and many things that can never be known. In fact, nothing I write about my ancestors and their times and experiences can really do them justice because most of them are strangers to me. I’m almost afraid to write about them in any creative way because I don’t really know their personalities, their quirks, their ideas, their hearts.

Still, they are a very real part of me, their blood flowing through my own veins. I think it’s nice that they — we — can live on in the blood of those who come after us, and in their memories and their words. So, since I want to write more often anyway (really, I do), I might as well write more about my family history too. That’s the plan, anyway.

I guess I’d better start going through my notes, and the stories in my head. And the ones in my veins.

Tagged: family, genealogy, history, MacVay