As I’ve been interested in history and genealogy for many years now, I’ve often found myself wishing I had a time machine, to see places as they once were and meet the people who contributed to my eventual existence. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Well, what if I told you I could do it?
I was talking about family history with my grandmother the other day. It was her 80th birthday, so I made sure to call her. Nana usually confines herself to her room, but on that day she’d sat herself near the phone to field numerous calls from family and friends. She was having a great day; better, she said, than the deafening silence that usually fills the house. So while we were talking, we got onto the topic of genealogy. I told her she was related to Celine Dion, Madonna, and Camilla Parker-Bowles (all her tenth cousins, once removed), which surprised her and made her cackle (yes, she cackles). I also asked her about things she remembered that I didn’t know, things that birth records, marriage records, death records, cemetery inscriptions and census transcriptions can’t tell me. I know a lot about my ancestors, but the further back I go the less I know about who they really were. It’s difficult sometimes to imagine these people from way back as anything more than names and dates. But they were more. Anyway, Nana told me a bit about her childhood.
My grandmother, Mary Theresa (Martell) MacLeod, at age 17. The baby is my uncle Brian.
One anecdote that I found interesting was about Nana’s visits to her father’s birthplace. My grandmother, Mary Theresa Martell, is the eldest daughter of Wallace Abraham Martell and Mary Jessie MacDougall, both long gone. I remember them from my childhood, though, and called them Papa and Mama (which sounded like Puppa and Mumma). Papa Martell was from a French-speaking family on Isle Madame; Mama Martell came from a Gaelic-speaking family that was based up in Judique Intervale and Port Hastings (and later Sydney). As each had a different native tongue that the other didn’t speak, Papa and Mama Martell spoke only English to each other, and when they had children English was the only language of the home. Nana didn’t grow up speaking either French or Gaelic, but she does remember hearing both languages spoken, especially when she and her parents would go to visit relatives outside of Sydney.
Nana remembers going with her parents to visit her father’s relatives in Poulamon and Petit-de-Grat when she was six years old, which would have been in 1936. I believe it was summer. She remembers finding the place a bit strange, like a different country. The people were very conservative and somewhat old-fashioned; the women all covered their hair, and the men all wore hats as well. Both sides of her family were Catholic, but her father’s family seemed very different from her mother’s people, who were more boisterous and never said anything that didn’t come out riding on a laugh or a song. Even when the MacDougalls spoke Gaelic there was a familiarity about them that comforted young Mary Theresa Martell. But the Martells, though not really that far from the industrial center of the island, were in a world of their own.
While her father was in the house speaking French with his relatives, little Mary Theresa was outside playing. Back in those days, if the weather was nice, the kids would be booted out of the house in the morning and wouldn’t be expected back inside until suppertime. Mary Theresa was relieved to be out of the strange world of strict adults who dressed like people from books and spoke a slurring language she didn’t understand. She could play outside, a cool breeze off the water picking up her little light-coloured hair as she skipped around the yard, playing in her own little world, where everyone was happy. Not that the Martells weren’t happy, but to a six-year-old used to a less-restrained atmosphere, they seemed rather serious.
But she wasn’t alone in that little world of sin-kissed flowers and gentle sea breezes. Her cousin, I think her name was Phyllis, about the same age, would spend the entire day out there with her. There was only one swing hanging from one of the big trees in the yard, so the girls had to share. They played together for the whole day, making a little world together.
“It was funny,” Nana said to me over the phone. “She didn’t speak a word of English, and I didn’t speak any French. But we played together all day. We’d be put outside together like that every time I went there, and we always played together. We shared the swing, played games. We didn’t understand each other but it wasn’t a problem at all. We just played all day.”
When she was telling me that story, I was there, in that yard, on that summer day in 1936, watching two little girls playing on a swing. Maybe you were there too, just now. See? That’s time travel.
When you see old photographs, you travel back in time. You look upon a person or a place as they once were. It’s amazing. But when you talk to someone who can tell you about a time when you hadn’t yet been born, or even when your parents hadn’t yet been born, well now that’s real time travel. Old photographs can show you how something looked, but nothing beats a first-hand account for its ability to show you how something sounded, smelled, felt. Stories of yesteryear aren’t always accurate, especially if they’re stories someone got from someone else. But they’re all glimpses into another world. The genealogical research I’ve done over the years would be nothing but a skeleton without all the stories and information I’ve gotten from elderly relatives. Even if you’re not into genealogy, I think you should talk to the oldest members of your family, listen to the stories they have to tell. You might end up with stories you want to pass on to those who come after you. Even if you don’t, at least you can tell people you’ve traveled through time.
Tagged: Acadians, Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, French, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, Religion