For Duncan and Hughie MacLeod, summers in Glencoe weren’t all about play. One day they were sent to help old Mr. MacDonald down the road. The old man was part of a large family known locally as the Bornish MacDonalds, to distinguish them from all the other MacDonalds, who were (and still are) legion in [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland
Not long after their walk up over River Denys Mountain, nine-year-old Duncan MacLeod and his eight-year-old brother Hughie went to church with their uncle Dan and the other MacLeods. Saint Margaret of Scotland Church in Glencoe had been completed in 1841 and had literally grown with the community: it had actually been split in half [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, MacLeod, Nova Scotia
On July 2nd, 1937, after school had finished for the summer, Susan MacLeod put her two eldest sons, nine-year-old Duncan and eight-year-old Hughie, on a train bound for Boisdale. The arrangement went something like this: they would spend a night with the Boisdale stationmaster, who lived above the station; the next day they would get [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, travel
The death of her husband at noon on the 2nd of June 1937 was a harsh blow to my great-grandmother, Susan MacLeod. But if she thought that day couldn’t possibly get any worse, she was wrong. After the funeral, Father MacGillivray showed up at the door of her small apartment on Intercolonial Street with two [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, photos
My great-grandfather, John Rory MacLeod, was born in July 1889 in the area of Cape Breton island which contains the small communities of Glencoe and Upper Southwest Mabou. (There are several distinct places up there associated with my family, such as Glencoe Mills, MacLeod Settlement and Upper Southwest Mabou, but my grandfather always refers to [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Nova Scotia, photos, Scotland
With all the family history stuff I write here in my blog, one might begin to wonder why I don’t write about my wife’s family history. Well unfortunately genealogy is a very difficult endeavour here in Malaysia. A lack of accessible records (and in many cases a lack of records, period) means you’re forced to [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: family, genealogy, history, immigration, in-laws, Indonesia, Islam, Java, Javanese, language, names, photos, Religion
One of the biggest problems most people will face when researching their family history is that as they go back through the generations they will find fewer and fewer women. The women were there, of course; after all, they make up fully half of anyone’s genealogy. But in days gone by, women were commonly ignored [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Acadians, Cape Breton, family, France, French, genealogy, history, immigration, language, Martel, names, Nova Scotia, Paris
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 [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Acadians, Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, French, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, Religion
As a Canadian living in Malaysia, I find it interesting whenever I find some connection between the my country of my birth and the place I now call home. That is, I find it interesting when two seemingly separate aspects of my life intersect beyond the boundaries of my little family, like one time when [...]
Categories: Miscellaneous
Most people who know me (and probably most people who read my blog) know that it really annoys me when someone spells my last name wrong. Actually, it annoys me a little less these days, just because I’m so used to it. But it’s still annoying. No matter how many times I tell people it’s [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: English, family, Gaelic, history, language, MacVay, migration, names, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, photos, Scotland
Today a friend (who could hardly contain his glee) told me about a great online resource called Sejarah Melayu (Malay History), which bills itself as A History of the Malay Peninsula but contains goodies from all over the Malay Archipelago. What’s especially interesting is the Sejarah Melayu Library, which is described as…
…perhaps the largest public [...]
Categories: Miscellaneous
My family’s pretty Scottish, despite the fact that the most recently anyone in my family tree actually lived in Scotland was around the middle of the 19th century. When the Scots on my mother’s side of the family — all Catholic, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders — migrated to what is now Nova Scotia, they lived in little [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland
Last night, after a good workout at the gym, Leen and I were on our way home when in the course of a conversation about post-workout close physical proximity I joked, “Well, it’s not like you have cooties.”
I expected her to ask me something like, “What the heck are cooties?” But instead she said, [...]
Categories: Miscellaneous
My great-great-great-great-grandfather, John MacLeod, son of Duncan MacLeod, was born sometime between 1762 and 1770 in the village of Laig on the isle of Eigg and married a woman named Effy (short for Euphemia), who was born in 1771 in nearby Grulin (on an island that small, I suppose everything is nearby). John and Effy [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, Eigg, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, Ireland, language, MacLeod, migration, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland, Ulster
Yo Rais: Your Views on Mixed Marriages are Mixed Up 13
Those who have been reading my blog for a few years now might remember that back in 2007 I wrote a post calling out Malaysia’s Information Minister for things he had said about children of mixed parentage. Basically, the Minister at the time, Zainudin Maidin (aka ZAM), didn’t want to see such children in local [...]
Categories: Commentary
Tagged: English, family, language, Malay, Malaysia, twitter, Youtube