Dans un Petit Village

I have written about my parents and I have written about my father's parents. It would only be reasonable and fair to write about my mother's parents.  There is so much to write about that I will actually have to consider what I want to include and what I want to leave out. Let's start with the basic facts. Joseph Joachim Ulric Voyer was born on July 5, 1892 in Quebec City. According to the 1891 Census of Canada for 1891 , the year before Ulric was born, his father and mother, Napoleon Voyer and Marie Rose Delina Dion were living in St. Roch at number 542. It is interesting to note that the Bedard family was living next door at 541. Ulric was the fifth of seven children. He had two brothers and two sisters who were born before him. My grandfather was a polymath if there ever was one. He was a composer of operas, a playwright, a professor of piano, church organist, court clerk, shorthand instructor, publicity manager for J.B. Renaud (a commercial company started ...

 To be fair, it is time to write about my mother's side of the family, the Voyer family and of course I will start with my mother. Unlike my father, I knew who my mother was. Marie Anne Gemma Voyer was born on July 7, 1918 in Quebec City, Quebec . You could say that my mother was a war baby to put her birth into perspective. World War I was approaching its end. The Allies were about to break the deadlock on the Western Front and the beginning of The 100 Days Offensive to the end of the war was not far off. A week after my mother was born The last German offensive of WWI, the Marne - Reims Offensive was to begin. The Allies had full knowledge of this offensive and the German offensive was crushed. Also, a week after my mother's birth the Czar Nicholas and his entire family was murdered by the Bolsheviks . Of course, when my mother was born no one knew that these events would happen. You could say that my mother was born during turbulent times. My mother was born into a ...

My grandparents were Nicklous (Nick) Parent and Corinne Marie Lalonde. My grandfather was born in North Gwillimbury township, York county, Ontario on May 26, 1880. North Gwillimbury is not far from Magna International, an automotive parts supplier in Aurora, Ontario . I used to pass by North Gwillimbury often when I was on company business. It is interesting that without knowing it, I was close to the birthplace of my grandfather. The question that I would ask is how did Nicklous Parent come to be born in North Gwillimbury, the Parent family originally settled in Beauport Quebec when the first arrived from France in the 17 th century. There is definitely a story about how and why my branch of the Parent family arrived in North Gwillimbury. This is definitely a research topic that I will dig into. My grandmother was born in Midland, Ontario on June 25, 1889. Midland is about 100 kilometers from North Gwillimbury using our modern road system like highway 400. I would imagine...

Who is Gildore Parent? That was the question that I kept asking myself when I realized that Maurice Gauvin was not my father. Who is Gildore Parent? Fortunately, my newly found cousin, Leonard Parent, actually remembered something of Gildore. It was not a lot but at least it was something. Leonard is about ten years older than me so he would he would remember things that I would not even be aware of and he did meet my father many times when he was young. Leonard told me that my father was very friendly, he like to talk and he told Leonard stories about the war. He told me that my father stayed on in France after the war and was part of a clean up crew. I am not sure that entailed but I imagine that there was plenty of cleaning up to do after the war. My father told Leonard that the French were very happy that Canadian soldiers were helping them and because my father could speak French he got along quite well with the French. he also said that they had very good wine. Leonard told me ...

Imagine my surprise when I realized that I was not who I thought I was for most of my life. When I received that fateful email from Leonard Parent giving me information about myself that I never knew before, my reaction was visceral. For a moment, I was physically dizzy until I regained my composure. I had always suspected that there was something not quite right about my parentage. For one thing, There is ten years between the birth of my youngest sister and me, my youngest sister was already eight years old when I was born. The second thing is that I have absolutely no information or knowledge of my alleged father; Maurice Gauvin. I knew that was married to my mother, he was a RCAF pilot in WWII and he was supposed to be the father of my three older sisters and me. Whenever I asked about my father when I was young , I was often faced with either silence or the subject was quickly changed to something else and I would forget about the question until the next time. Even, before my ...

When I left off the last post, my first genealogy post, I stated that have my family tree dating back to the 17th century when my ancestors first came to "Nouvelle France" was good enough for me. And so that is where it remained for over 30 years. In the Fall of 2018, my oldest daughter sent my wife and I a copy of her DNA tests that she had analyzed by the company 23andme . She had the complete set of DNA tests done which not only shows who here DNA relatives where but gave a complete health + ancestry report based on her DNA profile. The DNA profile showed her ethnicity plus possible siblings and relatives. I proposed to my wife that we should buy DNA kits and see what it would tell us about our ancestry. We chose Ancestry .ca because it seemed to be more focused on genealogy. The kits arrived between Christmas and New Years. We decided to wait until after the holidays because we did not want the samples to be lost in the holiday mail rush. The first part of January 20...

Where does it all start? I could say my interest in genealogy started about 30 years ago. One of my maternal uncles, Marcel Voyer gave me a copy of a family tree that he had commissioned from a genealogists. It showed all the generations from Francois Voyer and his spouse, Mathurine Chauvet all the way through each generation in direct lineage to my maternal grandfather, Joseph Ulric Voyer and his spouse, Alice Bedard. At the top of the tree was my maternal uncle, Marcel Voyer. I remember that Marcel was very proud to show me his family tree. He framed the original but he gave me a photocopy, I still have a copy of that family tree. At the time, I was so impressed with that family tree, that it was possible to trace our ancestors all the way back to the 17th century. I was inspired at the time to try to find out about “my ancestors”, my “Gauvin” ancestors. I am not sure how I found out about the Tanguay Collection (Quebec, Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families, 1608 - 18...