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Well, how have things progressed in the nearly three years since then? The Information Ministry has been merged with the former Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry to form the Information Communication and Culture Ministry (which can’t seem to decide whether it wants a comma after the word Information). The new Minister, Rais Yatim, who thinks Malaysians’ use of the Internet, social media, and ‘bahasa rojak’ (the mixing of Malay and English in daily speech) are all very bad things, is unfortunately no less an embarrassment to the country than ZAM was. And unfortunately Rais is no less racist.

Recently that bastion of Malay nationalist journalism, Utusan Malaysia, front-paged an article in which Rais made comments about mixed marriages, in response to a question about the marital troubles of Malaysian actress Maya Karin. Now before we move on to Rais himself, let’s all shake our heads at the fact that Utusan chose to put that as its lead article that day, and that the paper had even seen fit to ask Rais to comment on something which was none of their business, and certainly none of his. Shame on them.

Now, on to Rais. Like I said, what happens in Maya Karin’s marriage is really none of his business. Yet there he was, using the question to deliver a little rant about the perils of entering into a marriage with someone of another race and/or nationality. Not only that, he singled out westerners, particularly white westerners. As Utusan is a government mouthpiece, it’s unlikely they just asked him about this out of the blue and he was simply giving his opinion on the spot. When asked about the matter, Rais didn’t just give his opinion; he backed it up with results of a study undertaken by local sociologists in which it was found that seven out of every ten mixed marriages end in divorce.

Well, I have some big problems with not only what Rais said, but in the so-called evidence he put forth to back up his claims. First off, let me state that I’m not saying mixed marriages are all fine and dandy. There are bound to be divorces. Just as I didn’t completely disagree with ZAM’s criticism of the prevalence of so-called mixed-race actors in local advertising, I don’t completely disagree with Rais’ assertion that mixed marriages will fail at a higher rate than marriages between people who are from the same race/ethnic group/country. But having said that, I have big problems with what he said anyway, just like I had big problems with what ZAM said. Aside from what I’ve already mentioned, here’s where Rais went wrong:

The study he referred to is outdated. According to the Utusan article, the figure of only three successful marriages out of ten is based on research that covered only the years 1995 to 1998. That was 12 to 15 years ago. Not only is the research outdated, it wasn’t done long enough for researchers to come to any reliable conclusion.

The geographical scope of the study was even more limited than the temporal scope. It seems Rais was only referring to marriages in the state of Johor and the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur. That’s a very insufficient sample.

‘Artistes’ are hardly representative of the general public. Everyone knows actors and singing stars generally go through spouses like Planters goes through peanuts. I’ll be the first to admit I have no hard statistics to offer up in support of my claim here, but I daresay this is the case in many countries, not just in the west. In pointing to failed marriages among Malaysian celebrities as proof that mixed marriages don’t work, Rais is really barking up the wrong tree. Sure, the study he’s relying on involves more than just celebrities, but highlighting them at all to prove his point is pretty silly.

He’s almost right, but completely wrong. I’ve long said that marriages between Malays and non-Malays can only work if both partners have similar ideas about religion and culture. Rais is saying the same thing, but I think he overstates the number of cases in which this doesn’t happen. Of course, considering the shortcomings of the study he uses to back that up, it’s almost impossible to say. So how can I say he’s wrong? Because since Leen and I moved to Malaysia from Canada we’ve come to know many couples in similar situations to our own. We have indeed met couples whose marriages were a bit rocky, and people whose mixed marriages had already ended. But those were the exceptions. Most mixed couples we’ve met were happily married at the time and remain so today. Sure, some of them will fail, but that is the case with all marriages. Actually, there may be higher rates of divorce with mixed marriages, but…well, see below.

For someone who doesn’t like things that are mixed, he’s sure got this mixed up. Rais actually acknowledges that one of the factors in the failure of mixed marriages is the difficulty foreign spouses — especially foreign husbands — have as immigrants in this country. He even acknowledges this is all due to rigid government policies. But here’s the thing: instead of saying Malaysians should avoid marrying foreigners because the government he’s a part of makes it difficult for them to live and work here, wouldn’t it be better for the government to actually make it easier for foreign spouses to live and work here? Oh, wait…

Rais is out of touch with current events and trends. The Malaysian government is, in fact, beginning to make it easier for foreign spouses to live and work in Malaysia. The government recently announced it would give Permanent Resident status to foreign husbands, something Malaysian women and their foreign-born husbands have long been hoping for (read here for my latest update on that). The advice Rais is doling out to Malaysians reflects either complete ignorance of his own government’s initiatives, or an unwillingness to accept them. Either way, Rais Yatim is not doing his job properly.

Just the other night I watched an interview Rais gave on TV3 and was treated to further proof that he 1) has a real dislike for westerners and their culture, and 2) is unfit to lead a government ministry. While he did make some valid points (advocating more parental guidance in children’s use of the Internet, for example), most of his comments were absolutely sickening. His skeptical comments about the Internet and social media were nothing new (he’s been saying those things for a while now, resulting in a hilarious backlash by Malaysian Twitter users and bloggers), but I have to admit I was taken aback by what he said about language. That was nothing new either (his preference for the Malay language was quite evident when he once arrogantly scolded a journalist for daring to ask him a question in English not long ago), but he somehow outdid himself this time.

When asked to comment on bahasa rojak (basically ‘mixed language’), Rais really made himself look foolish. Remember I said he doesn’t like things that are mixed? Well, here’s the proof. He looks back on a time when the Malay language — the Johor-Riau dialect, to be more precise — was untouched by other languages. Let’s put aside how ignorant that very idea is in and of itself (I mean come on, he thinks the Johor-Riau dialect was not itself a hybrid of various smaller local dialects, and that it wasn’t influenced at all by other languages? Seriously?). Let’s look at what he said next: He actually lamented the fact that there came a time (a long, long time ago in fact) when the pure, precious Malay language was poisoned by other languages. Yes, that’s what he said. He used the word diracuni — poisoned. This is what he thinks of the influence of other languages on the Johor-Riau dialect of Malay. He displayed a particularly sneering contempt of the English language and the growing tendency of Malaysians to inject it into their everyday speech. He made it clear that Malaysians who speak in Malay should not mix words from other languages into it.

Let’s not even get into the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to speak Malay these days without using at least some English loanwords. Let’s just look at the basic thrust of what Rais was saying. It is painfully obvious that the Minister of Information Communication and Culture harbours unrealistic fantasies of linguistic and cultural purity. It is also obvious that because of these delusions he is out of touch with the realities of language and culture. He is out of touch with the way this country’s national language and its culture are heading. He is even out of touch with the direction in which the government he is a part of appears to be heading, or at least claims to be heading. He is, therefore, unfit to occupy the post he now occupies.

Now, I can express my personal opinion all I want — that Rais should either resign or the Prime Minister should put him out to pasture — but I’m not Malaysian, so who am I to even suggest what the Malaysian government should do? In fact, it seems Malaysians who support the current government don’t take too kindly to foreigners telling that government what it should and shouldn’t do. Well you know what? Anyone who would rub that in my face now can just stuff it. When a Malaysian government minister uses his position to make bigoted comments about mixed marriages and/or mixed-race children, it concerns me because it concerns my wife and children. The sensitivities of Malaysians who dislike the intervention of foreigners into their affairs are duly noted, but the current government should bear in mind that while I can’t vote here, my wife can; our children, if they decide to stay here into adulthood, will be voters too. So will the spouses and children of a lot of foreigners in this country — maybe a lot more than Rais can imagine. And we’re not just talking about foreigners here. We’re talking about anyone who marries and has children out of their so-called race. Does Rais Yatim really think that he or anyone else in this country is “pure”? Please.

Just imagine if Malaysians actually follow the advice of their Minister of Information Communication and Culture. They might take his ’stick to your own kind’ rhetoric too far. Why, we might end up seeing disturbingly high numbers of incest cases among rural Mal…oh, wait a minute. I guess Rais should really be careful what he wishes for. And the people of Malaysia should be careful who they vote for.

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A friend told him that if he could get to Halifax, he could probably get on a convoy heading across the Atlantic and work his way across as a coal trimmer, which involved keeping piles of coal level in ships’ holds, feeding the coal into the engine, and helping to put out fires. When he got to England he could join the army; no one would be able to check his age over there. It sounded like a good plan, so Duncan sneaked onto a train bound for Halifax and steamed towards his destiny.

There were two things Duncan didn’t realize when he got on that train: that he had actually jumped onto a troop train, and that his mother had called the RCMP. The former he discovered when he noticed so many people wearing uniforms; the latter became apparent when he noticed RCMP officers getting onto the train at the Point Tupper ferry crossing.

The RCMP officers searched the entire train, but Duncan MacLeod was nowhere to be found. That’s because he had hustled off the train at the ferry crossing and hid in the bowels of the ferry itself, where a black man working in the boiler room gave him coffee and doughnuts. When the ferry reached the mainland side of the Canso Strait, Duncan slipped back onto the train and continued on towards Halifax.

As he hid in a dark corner on the train, Duncan thought he was going to make it. Even when a porter stumbled upon him, he thought he was going to make it. But soon after he heard the telltale click of a pistol; when he turned around he saw two Colt .44’s pointed at his head. At the other end of each was a military policeman. Duncan MacLeod’s war was over before it had even begun.

Duncan was handed over to police officers in New Glasgow, who chucked him into a holding cell because there was no judge in town to charge him with anything. In fact, the judge would have to make the trip from Antigonish, about 70 km away; since the judge wouldn’t be coming until the next day, Duncan MacLeod would have to spend the night in jail. Duncan spent the evening watching people walk past his barred cell window, which was right off the sidewalk of a busy downtown street.

The next day, Duncan was taken to the town courthouse, where he came face to face with a gruff-looking judge, who was undoubtedly not too pleased that he’d had to travel all the way from Antigonish just to deal with some young punk who’d been caught hitching a ride on a troop train. Sure enough, his voice was as gruff as his appearance.

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Duncan MacLeod.”

The judge made a face like he’d just chomped on a lemon. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, boy. I asked you a question and I expect a proper answer. What is your name?”

Duncan thought maybe the judge hadn’t heard him, so he said it louder this time. “My name’s Duncan MacLeod!”

“That’s my name!” bellowed the judge.

Duncan MacLeod was never charged with anything. The judge, Duncan MacLeod, asked him if he had any relatives in the area; Duncan said he had an uncle working in the Trenton steelworks, so the judge told him to go there, and released him. Duncan soon returned to his family in Sydney. By the time he was old enough to join the army, the war was over.

A young Duncan MacLeod.

The MacLeods would contribute to the war effort, however. Duncan’s uncle Robert, the youngest child of Angus and Jessie MacLeod, served as a member of the Cape Breton Highlanders. My grandfather told me Robert had been wounded on D-Day, but the Cape Breton Highlanders weren’t on Juno Beach that day, so Robert may have actually been wounded in Italy, where the Highlanders saw a lot of action at places like Ortona and Coriano Ridge. Anyway, as the story goes, an explosion blew Robert MacLeod’s clothes clean off and left him naked and pitch black from head to toe. He was taken back to England to recover, then went back into action.

Robert MacLeod survived the war and went back home to his family, who had other battles to fight — as did Duncan MacLeod. But those are stories for another day.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road
The Blind Man’s Biscuits
Down by the Brook
The Still
The Dummy

Hughie was born in September 1907, the seventh son of Angus and Jessie MacLeod, and the tenth of their 13 children. He was deaf and mute, which is how he got his nickname. It sounds somewhat cruel, and even Papa sometimes calls him ‘the dummy’. But Papa is quick to point out that, despite the nickname, Hughie MacLeod was no dummy.

Hughie couldn’t hear, nor could he speak; nor did he ever go to school. But he was smart, and could read lips in both English and Gaelic. He also had an amazing ability to put animals at ease. He could walk right up to a deer and pet it; blue jays would eat out of his hand. The family’s old horse was considered hard to work with, but she would always go to Hughie and do whatever he asked. The others would whip her, but not Hughie. One day the family’s old Pontiac wouldn’t go, so Hughie’s brother Ronald hooked the horse up to it and made her pull the car. Hughie, who was about 30 years old, cried like a baby, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

Hughie’s abilities seemed to more than make up for his disabilities. He knew the woods around Upper South West Mabou better than anyone. One day he led Papa and his brother into the woods behind their grandparents’ house and they walked for what seemed like miles and miles until the boys were sure they were lost. But then before they knew it they came out right at their uncle Dan’s house, quite a distance away. Hughie also seemed to be able to ‘hear’ things somehow, in spite of his deafness. Papa remembers sitting outside his grandparents’ house on evenings when his uncle Ronald (who despite being one of the youngest children was the man of the house because everyone else was either dead or away) was out. When Ronald was walking along those country roads at night he would bang rocks together, to keep bears away. Back at the house, Hughie would tap Papa on the shoulder and point down the road; sure enough, a few minutes later, Ronald would emerge from the darkness. Ronald told the boys that somehow, Hughie always knew when he was coming home. He heard him, somehow.

According to Papa, Hughie was as strong as a bull. There was a rock everyone said no one except his late brother Duncan could lift, but Hughie lifted it with ease. Occasionally, in spite of his gentle nature, Hughie would use that strength to assert himself. Ronald was going to shoot a big owl out of a tree one evening but Hughie ripped the rifle from his hands. Then there was the time one of the MacGillivray boys was teasing Hughie, calling him a stupid dummy, making fun of him. Hughie picked him up and slammed him through a window; the stunned MacGillivray lad found himself on the ground outside, surrounded by not only glass but also the entire window casing.

That wasn’t the only time Hughie did damage to the MacLeod house. One day when the MacLeod boys were all loaded drunk off a fresh batch of moonshine, they put Hughie behind the wheel of a car and laughed as he drove around in circles. The laughter only stopped when the car hit the house, though knowing the MacLeods there was probably some laughter after that as well.

Except for a couple of very brief stays in Antigonish and Port Hood near the end of his life, Hughie never left the Glencoe area. His tale is interesting but also sad, especially since he was destined to bear silent witness to the end of the MacLeods of Upper South West Mabou.

But that’s a story for another day.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road
The Blind Man’s Biscuits
Down by the Brook
The Still

The Blackberry Bold 9700 rocks!

First of all, I love the Blackberry Bold 9700. It’s bigger than any other phone I’ve used, but it’s sleek enough that it doesn’t feel too bulky. Not when it works, anyway (more on that later). It looks great too, though I have a feeling the chrome trim would look crappy after a lot of use.

The screen is obviously much smaller than touchscreen models such as the Storm 2, but it’s still big enough. The QWERTY keypad takes up quite a bit of space (hence the smallish screen), but the individual keys are quite small, which took some getting used to for me because I have really big hands. Still, it didn’t take long to get the hang of it, thanks to the unique ridged shape of the keys, which helps fingers of all sizes find their targets.

Despite the learning curve involved in using the keyboard, I definitely prefer it to a touchscreen. For me this is definitely an advantage of the Bold 9700 over Blackberry’s touchscreen smartphones and also the iPhone. Not only does a touchscreen get dirty real quick, I personally have no confidence in any touchscreen’s ability to withstand repeated pressing, especially from someone who always presses a little too hard.

Another advantage of the Bold 9700 over the iPhone, for me anyway, is that whereas the iPhone seems to be more like a toy, the Bold 9700 somehow seems more ‘professional’. That one’s a bit hard to explain without chugging another coffee, but it goes something like this: think of all the crazy things you can do with an iPhone. Oooh look! You can cock it like a 12-gauge shotgun! Oooh look at that! That app is so cute, it can blah blah blah (insert cute things you can do with an iPhone here)! But with the Blackberry it’s all about communication: instant messaging, email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are probably a million and one silly things you can do with a Blackberry, just as there are all sorts of ways an iPhone rocks. Plus I’m sure I’d do all sorts of silly things with either an iPhone or a Blackberry if I actually owned one. If I had an iPhone I might even get the app that makes the phone mimic a 12-gauge shotgun. Tee hee!

But anyway, somehow I just like the Blackberry. Oh, and speaking of ’silly things’, I have to mention that the Bold 9700 comes with a game I quickly became addicted to: Brickbreaker. I found myself playing it whenever I wasn’t doing anything constructive, and found myself feeling a little disturbed by how much time I spent not doing anything constructive. There are other games on the Bold 9700 but they’re boring as hell. I think they’re card games, I can’t remember. But Brickbreaker, whoo boy. Fun.

I didn’t just play Brickbreaker all the time because I was obsessed with it, though (which I really was, kind of). No, I played it because there really wasn’t much I could do with the Bold 9700 other than play Brickbreaker. Oh, and send and receive calls and SMS. Oh, and take pictures. The Bold 9700 has a great camera which, if you don’t shake it at all, takes decent pictures (shake it and everyone is someone from The Ring who’s going to die in a week). Other than those things, I couldn’t do much with the Bold 9700.

Where exactly is Celcom territory anyway?

I said the Blackberry is all about communication, but maybe I should say it’s all about access. Access to your contacts, access to the Internet, access to all those online applications you normally use to communicate: Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, etc. The magic of the smartphone is its ability to bring you to those things, or more accurately to bring those things to you, wherever you are.

Unfortunately, the Bold 9700 I had wasn’t very good at bringing the world to me. It did occasionally enable me to get to Twitter and Gmail, but I hardly ever managed to get into Facebook, despite having the appropriate app and, as far as I know, all the correct settings. Most of the time, the sites I just mentioned were unavailable to me, as were all the other sites on that vast landscape known as the World Wide Web. Most of the time, all I got when I tried to connect to anything was a message that said, “The network is currently unavailable, however an old version of the page you requested is available in the cache. Do you want to view the old page?” I suppose viewing cached pages has its uses, but when you’re trying to connect to email and social media, it’s kind of useless. I usually also got this message: “You are currently not in an area that can handle data communication. As a result, the Browser cannot retrieve any Web pages.” You would expect to get that message if you were in fact “in an area that can handle data communication”, but I got it when I was pretty much anywhere, including places like Bandar Sunway, Bangsar, and Cheras. As for Kajang, well it hardly ever worked there.

Because I couldn’t really connect to the Internet, the awesomeness of the Blackberry Bold 9700 was sort of lost on me. In fact, other than the fact that I could take pictures with it and play Brickbreaker, the Bold 9700 was really not much better than my piece-of-crap Nokia 1208. In fact, because of its more compact size, the Nokia 1208 might even win (and it’s even got its own addicting game, Nature Park). Basically, my month with the Blackberry Bold 9700 was like having a sleek, state-of-the-art jet but no suitable runway to take off from. It was like having a Bugatti Veyron but nothing to drive it on except old dirt roads with lots of bumps. To put it as simply as possible: it sucked. For a smartphone, it didn’t seem very smart at all.

After a month, Celcom reminded me it was time to return the phone. They offered me a really sweet deal if I happened to be interested in buying it, but I declined. Not just because I’m broke (babies are expensive, I tell ya, even before they’re born), but because I just couldn’t see myself shelling out money for something that wasn’t much better than my crappy old Nokia that only cost around RM139.

So, to review: Blackberry Bold 9700: Awesome. Celcom: not so awesome.

Yes, Celcom was full of fail this time. Not only did the connection suck, they even gave me the wrong number (that is, the number of the Blackberry I had wasn’t the number on the contract I’d signed). Towards the end of the month I got a bunch of messages saying I’d just signed up for some sort of SMS stock management service, which looked like it cost RM20 per SMS. That guy probably had my number. Then there was the day I returned the phone. I don’t normally go to my office in Bangsar because of the ridiculous amount of money I have to pay for parking/tolls/petrol, but I went to the office one day so I could meet a Celcom rep at Bangsar Village and give her the phone. Well, what was supposed to be a quick post-lunch meeting turned into me sitting on a bench in Bangsar Village until after five, then finally giving up and going home. Another Celcom rep came and got the phone next time I was at the office.

Ah, if only…

Now, despite the title of this post, and the fact that Celcom’s network pretty much ruined my first and only Blackberry experience, I should mention that I really appreciate the fact that they let me use the Bold 9700 for a month. The Celcom reps I dealt with were very friendly, and the one who stood me up in Bangsar did sincerely apologise. I should also point out that they said all the other bloggers/journalists who reviewed the Bold 9700 had great experiences with it, and that maybe Celcom had just given me a bum SIM card, one that didn’t have a good network connection.

I just wish the month had gone differently, because I don’t like having to give a bad review. I did like the Bold 9700, and in fact I do wish I still had one. Leen’s going to give birth to our second child any day now; it would be really cool to ‘live-tweet’ the whole experience. Now I’ll just do what I did when Al was born in 2006: take pictures, then share everything with family and friends (and maybe even blog readers) when I get a chance to go online, which could be several days later. If the folks at Celcom are sure my bad experience was due to some sort of glitch, perhaps they could, oh I don’t know, give me another month with a Bold 9700, one that can actually connect to the Internet. That would be swell.

Every year when the weather was just right, the MacLeod boys would make moonshine. At least, they did the two summers that Papa and his brother were there. Papa told me the whole family got involved, except for his aunt Annie MacLeod, who hated liquor, guns, and swearing, and would pack her bags and go off to stay in a hotel in Port Hood whenever moonshine season rolled around. Meanwhile, Annie’s brothers would buy large quantities of blackstrap molasses and yeast and take their 30-gallon copper pot out of its hiding place and into the woods.

At first, nine-year-old Duncan and his eight-year-old brother Hughie were given the task of feeding the dogs that their uncles kept further down the brook as an early warning system in case the authorities tried to find the still. It wasn’t long before the boys were given a more important job: keeping the worm cool. The worm was a copper coil that ran through the big copper pot and was submerged in a bucket of water. The boys’ job was to keep putting cool water from the brook into the bucket, to keep the worm cool and make the moonshine just right.

When the moonshine was ‘just right’, it would burn blue on a spoon and leave no trace it had ever been there. It was potent stuff; most people didn’t drink it straight. Papa said it “would curl the hairs in your nose” so most people only used it to make hot toddies. Duncan and Hughie would take the occasional sip of the pure shine, though, when no one was around.

The MacLeods would run the shine off three times before it was considered ready to drink. They would also brew their own beer, in two 100-gallon barrels. The Nova Scotia government, which had taken control of liquor distribution and sales in 1930, didn’t take too kindly to anyone trying to get around the Liquor Control Act, so the police often went looking for the still. That’s why there were dogs, and that’s why Papa’s uncle Alec ended up shooting an RCMP officer one day. But the police never found the still, because the MacLeod boys valued not only their freedom but also the big copper pot, which they would hide up in the trees. I think Papa was only half joking when he told me it might still be somewhere in those woods.

Duncan MacLeod would later become an alcoholic. He would also brew his own alcoholic beverages — and get caught. In fact, one run-in with the law during his teenage years would land him in jail.

But those are all stories for another day.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road
The Blind Man’s Biscuits
Down by the Brook

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Some of the things I’ve learned while researching the history of my mother’s family have contradicted what Papa told me. As impressive as Papa’s memory is, he’s human; he gets things wrong. But I wouldn’t trade his contributions to my knowledge of our family’s history for anything.

Duncan MacLeod’s grandparents, Angus and Jessie MacLeod, were still living when he and his brother Hughie spent their first summer up on River Denys Mountain, back in 1937. Papa and I were talking the other day and when I mentioned his grandparents, he said he was sure they were long dead by the time he and Hughie went up there. He said his uncle Dan would have taken him and Hughie up to see their grandparents. They would have wanted to see their grandchildren, he told me.

I don’t know why Papa doesn’t remember meeting his grandparents, and I feel bad that I annoyed him by telling him they were alive during the summer he spent with his uncle Dan. I know they were definitely alive during the summer of 1937. They wouldn’t stay alive for long though: official government records show Angus and Jessie both died in early 1938. But while Papa doesn’t remember meeting them, his memory of the story of their passing complements what the official records say.

My great-great-grandfather, Angus MacLeod, was born around the year 1848, give or take a year or two in either direction, in Inverness County, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the fourth of ten children born to Duncan MacLeod and Annie MacIsaac (the others were Duncan, Euphemia, John, Mary, Flora, Jessie, Flora Ann, Hugh, and William).

My grandfather once told me Angus’s brother William, also known as Wild Bill, was his grandfather. I later discovered through my research that it was in fact Angus, not his youngest brother, who was my great-great-grandfather. William remained single and died in 1932 at the age of 70; it was Angus who married Jessie MacInnis, daughter of John MacInnis and Mary Ann MacDougall of Judique Intervale.

Angus and Jessie had 13 children that I know of: John, John Rory, Duncan, Donald Ignecious (aka Dan), Annie, Flora Ann, Mary Sarah, Neil Duncan, Hector, John Hugh (aka Hughie), John Alexander (aka Alec), Ronald, and Robert.

According to the official record of Angus MacLeod’s death, he died at home on January 30th 1938. The official cause of death was ‘Apoplexy’, a term that was often used when someone had died suddenly, most likely of heart attack or stroke. His wife Jessie died just a few days later, on February 5th 1938. Her official cause of death was lobar pneumonia. The physician who’d attended to her, Dr. Kennedy from Mabou, reported that he’d begun treating her on January 27th, which was also the last day he’d seen her alive.

The official records yield other little bits of information that are quite useful as far as my research is concerned. You might say the records tell a story. All records do, if you know how to read them. Official records have told me a lot about my MacLeod ancestors, things even Papa didn’t know. But they still can’t tell the story like Papa can.

Angus was about 20 years older than his wife. (It was either Angus or Wild Bill who, when asked as a young man why he hadn’t married yet, replied, “Because she hasn’t been born yet.”) It must have been difficult for Angus, who was around 90, to see his relatively young wife suffering terribly from pneumonia. He had probably always assumed (though this is just conjecture on my part) that he would die long before she did. Now he was faced with something that must have been unthinkable: life without her.

Maybe Angus thought that just couldn’t happen. I’m not sure, but I know it didn’t happen. On January 30th, Angus went out to get some water from the brook. It was the dead of winter; I’m not sure why his children let him go out there. Maybe they knew. Maybe everyone just knew. Angus went out to get some water from the brook and never came back. He was found down by the brook, dead.

Just a few days after her husband’s death, Jessie succumbed to pneumonia. That’s what the official records tell me. What the records don’t say, though, is what Papa told me: that for years to come, the people of Glencoe would say that Jessie had really died of a broken heart.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road
The Blind Man’s Biscuits

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