July 2001

Spiderman is just discovering his superpowers on the Airbus 310’s monitors.

We are at 31,000 feet and passing just south of Greenland. Scotland is several thousand miles and a couple of time zones away. This time I have comfortable seats and far more leg room, so my thoughts are free to roam over the events of the past few weeks.

My wife and I have traveled thousands of miles and have retraced the movements of our respective families across hundreds of years of time. We have stood where they stood, seen where they lived, learned how they pronounced the names of their homes and villages. We have also seen where a great deal of Scottish history was made and have learned about the modern country Scotland is. We have miles of video tape and stacks of photos.

In the process of accomplishing all of this I have learned something much more personal. I have learned something of the forces that went into forging the people who were the parents of my parents and their parents before them.

And through them, I have come to understand more clearly the forces that went into creating me.

I see my father in a whole new light. Nearly 15 years after his death, I am finally close to understanding him. For all his shortcomings, he lived a heroic life. Not a Newspaper headline, rescuing children from a burning house, type of heroics. Heroics that are lived everyday and on a more human scale.

When sacrifices needed to be made, he made them and never complained. In fact, never talked about them. He lived through the Great Depression and World War II. His unit fought in North Africa, up the length of Italy, across France and into Belgium before being demobbed. Despite only having a grade 4 education, he attained the rank of staff sergeant.

His lack of education restricted him to the lowest paying of jobs in civilian life, but he was never without work and continued working until he was 80 and already dying of emphysema. At 70 and legally blind, he obtained the unlikely position of sheriff of Toronto, serving at the bench of the Ontario Supreme Court. He sat at a desk and was the last line of defense between an intruder and the judges’ chambers. Today he has been replaced by armed guards, bullet proof glass and metal detectors. But this is now and that was then, a more civilized time.

Among his possessions, found after his death, was the picture at the top of this blog. He had carried it in his wallet for most of his 84 years. For him it must have been the heartbreaking dream of a life might have been. On the back, in his cramped handwriting, it says simply "mommy, daddy and me".

Understanding better the forces that helped make him the man he was, I have not only come to terms with him, but with myself as well. My wife has noticed the difference. I’m more relaxed, less judgmental. I'm more outgoing and willing to be transparent. It's not that I was hiding before, but I'm much more comfortable being be noticed. I’ve owned some of my father’s sense of humour and I’m cautiously willing to explore the spiritual side of things I once derided.

I still don’t like mournful country music, but you can’t have everything,

And as for Scotland, it was definitely a trip worth the taking

July 2001

Over the next few days we met with several people I'd been corresponding with over the past few years.

From Dr. Reid, who wrote the history of Portgordon, I learned Dryburn is pronounced “Dra’burn” and refers to a now dry burn or brook which once ran beside the property. He referred me to Grant House in Elgin in search of news stories of the fire.

Local historian, Anne Burgess, told us of the current state of Gordon Castle in Fochabers and described for us what a typical Rent Day would have been like at the Castle while my family still lived in Dryburn as tenants on the Duke of Gordon's estate.

In Elgin we had dinner with the Bishops who had been assisting with much of the genealogical information we'd gained on our family and contracted with them for some further research.

Finally at Grant House, Graeme Wilson looked up the newspaper account of the fire at Dryburn. It was a large article filled with wonderful detail. But most wondrous of all was the discovery that the fire had been contained to the brye (the barn) and shed.

It was the barn that had burned in 1902, not the house.

The Dryburn we had toured the previous evening was our ancestor’s home! Over three hundred years old and still standing. My family had laid the stone, the walls I touched had been built by them, the six inch thick flagstones on which I had stood were placed there by my family. My heart was thumping with the discovery. Had Grant Lodge not been such a dignified place, I might have let out a “Whoop!” of joy.

I contained myself. And if my hands were trembling, no one seemed to notice.

But that wasn't the last, or even biggest, surprise of the day. When we got back to our Bed and Breakfast, there was a phone call for us from Anne Burgess.

"Are ye sittn' doon naw, Laddie?" she asked. "I've soom surprisin' news fer ye.

"Its no sech a big thing these days, I'm sure. Na one seems ta gi it a second thought. But in 1839 I assure ye it was a big deal. Are yer ready, laddie?

"Yer Great Grandfather William was born outa wedlock.

"Aye, an' its warse than that. His mother was a papist and his father was from good Church o' Scotland stock. It would ha' been quite the scandal in a wee place like Portgordon was in those days, yer James bein' the Harbour master n' all."

I was sitting down.

"Yer great great grandfather James acknowledge fatherin' the bairn and was ordered by the Church ta pay for his care. Its all in the Kirk records. Yer William was raised by the Greens, na yer family. That's how he got to be a Catholic, ye see?"

It was Sunday and the village slept. Few people were about. Our beautiful bed and breakfast sat up on the terrace overlooking the village of Portgordon with a great picture window giving us an unobstructed view of the North Sea.

“Is it everything you dreamed?” Linda asked

“More.”

It had been a long road, from Toronto to Portgordon and an even further distance back into my family’s history. My father had never talked about his past, but years of research had led me to more information about him and his family than even he likely knew.

His father Charles, wrestling with alcohol abuse, had deserted the family when my father had been ten years old forcing my father to leave school and take on the adult burden of support for his mother and two sisters. He took on two jobs to provide for his family.

And then his mother, Catherine, died of a perforated gall bladder.

My grandfather, Charles, I had learned, was the youngest son of a large and highly religious family. He had two sisters who were nuns, a brother who was a priest, another who was a Monsignor and a sister who was to become the mother of a Bishop. But none of them seemed to reach out to help. And for Charles, well, he had fled to Chicago and it was a different type of spirit that moved him.

Now I understood some things about my father that changed dramatically the way I thought of him. Now I understood his deep religious commitment, his near illiteracy, his lack of simple car and home repair skills, his lack of interest in playing with his children.

His drinking.

His searing hatred of my grandfather.

He had never had a childhood. He had been a man from the age of ten.

“What are you thinking,” Linda asked.

I shook my head. “My great grandfather. When Charles took off, why didn’t he step in to help? I've really come to admire William. He did extraordinary things. Moved his family to a new country, became an architect, a teacher, raised some amazingly talented children. What Charles did must have been terrible shock. A terrible disappointment. Why didn't he step in to help?”

But Linda had no answer,

When I went to the post office to buy a local map the next morning, the woman in line behind me heard my accent and asked, “Aye, you must be the Canadians staying wi’ Mrs. Crawford?” And when I went to the grocery to buy a soft drink the woman at the checkout told me I had to be the one staying at Katie Crawford’s. While there were few signs of people in town, news travelled fast.

My great grandfather left Portgordon 140 years ago and to the best of my knowledge, I am the first family member to return. Looking at the clean and prosperous village and the great expanse of sandy beaches, I wondered why he had left. But his were very different economic times and I don’t doubt the spirit of adventure was strong in his young man’s heart. Somewhere in town William’s father had been an Innkeeper and grocer (and harbour master and fish curer and grain merchant etc). But we have yet to discover which of the buildings were his.

But we did know Dryburn, the farm his family had built on the Duke of Gordon's estate, around 1720, and in which they lived until 1902. Years of research had led to the discovery of the names of every generation of the family. I knew something of their struggles and their toil.

Walk to the western edge of Portgordon and look up and Dryburn sits on the distant hill. But sadly, we had learned it wasn’t the Dryburn my family had known. A month before leaving for Scotland, the current residents of Dryburn had visited us in Toronto, bearing pictures and some devastating news. There had been a great fire in 1902 and Dryburn had burned to the ground. We were assured the house had been immediately rebuilt, but the current home was not one in which any member of my family had ever lived.

We were invited for dinner at Dryburn and graciously welcomed and fed. We were given a tour of the home and were shown photos of the neglected ruin the current owners had revived. I wondered if at least the great stone-walls had survived the fire, but the family had no idea.

So I paid more attention to the grounds and the view that must have remained in tact over the centuries. Five generations of my family must have stepped out the back door of the house and been greeted by the view of the land sloping down to the North Sea and the huge breakers that ran onto the beach. I stood alone and drank in the view not wanting to use either the camera or video to capture it.

This was my connection and I wanted to experience it directly.

The next day I was meeting with two local historians who would have some remarkable things to tell me that would change my understanding of William as dramatically as my view of my father had been changed.

July 2001

My Great Grandfather, William, had taken his family from Scotland to Canada in 1873, and our plan was to retrace the route he had taken across the width of Scotland.

Researching our family history had led me to discover a very ugly truth about my grandfather Charles whose actions had had terrible impact on my father. And behind Charles was William, a very powerful and dynamic man I would never have known about without extensive research, but whose influence impacts my life even today.

In order to understand Charles I had to understand William, in order to understand my father I had to understand Charles, in order to understand me, I had to understand my father. It gets complicated, but ultimately it straightens a lot of things out.

William had been born in the little fishing village of Portgrodon in Banff, on the north east coast of Scotland. There he had grown and learned his trade as a carpenter. At 26 he had left home and moved to Inverness where he advertised himself as a builder. In Inverness he met and married my Great Grandmother, Johanna.

They lived at 20 Haugh St in one of three buildings owned by Alexander Fraser, a grocer, (and possible relation) and it was here they started their large family. Mary Ann, their oldest daughter was born, followed by William and Isobella.

The offer of work then took the family to the distant and treeless Isle of Lewis, on Scotland's West coast, where their son James Green was born. But it was here that tragedy first struck the family when little James died soon after birth, far from the comfort of extended family and friends.

William then moved his saddened family further south to Portree on the Isle of Skye (pictured above) where they lived for three years and he became a Contractor on County Buildings and a Cattle Dealer. They seem to have done well in Portree, living in an attractive rooming house at 2 Bosville Terrace, overlooking the harbour, and having a servant to assist them. Their children Geraldine and Alex were born during their stay on Skye and it was from Skye that they immigrated to Canada.

As an example of the amazing world we live in, before leaving Toronto I had discovered that their home at that time, 2 Bosville Terrace, not only still exists but has, of all things, its own web site (it's the pink triple gabled house on the hill to the right of the picture). It is now an attractive bed and breakfast in the very heart of Portree.

We spent three days on the Isle of Skye, walking the ancient and narrow streets of the small village, getting contact information on the Skye Historical Society, finding books on Scottish and Skye history not available in Canada, watching a frightening storm boil up over a huge ben and roar down into the valley where we parked, and listening through the night to that same great storm tearing at our bed and breakfast and hammering on our roof.

Just as William and Johanna must have done.

Our last night there we had dinner at the Isle of Skye Pub and Linda, my wife, noticed a history of the building on the menu stating it had been built in 1850 and we imagined William dropping in for a pint after a heavy day’s labour. We gave him a toast.

The next day we retraced the family’s cross country route back to Inverness. Our little blue Vauxhall Astra made the trip in two hours, but it must have taken William days, with horse and cart and little family in tow.

For all its fame (or because of it) Inverness was a disappointment. It has grown so much since my last visit back in 1962 and has become a very crowded and busy city. The Haugh lies behind Inverness Castle away from the bustle of the downtown core. We walked the street with no exact knowledge of the location of Alexander Fraser’s grocery, where William rented rooms for under £4.

We got a better feel for history by visiting nearby Culloden, Beauly, and the standing stones at the Clava Cairns. But maybe I’m being unfair to Inverness. I had waited so long to visit Portgordon and the little 40 acre farm of Dryburn in Moray, which my family had built, and where they had been tenants on the Duke of Gordon’s estate for nearly 200 years. Now it was a mere hours drive from Inverness and I could hear it calling all the time we were there. Inverness, darkened by constant drizzle, had little hope of holding my attention.

As we finally left Inverness behind, the rain stopped and when we reached Fochabers (Moray) the clouds began to part and when we finally reached Portgordon (Banff) the sun shone for the first time on our trip. I couldn’t have paid a hollywood director for a more dramatic moment. We crested a hill and the little fishing village was nestled quietly along a great expanse of golden beach, great breakers from the North Sea rolling gently in toward the land.

“Who needs Hawaii,” said Linda.

July 2001

I was in agony. My legs had been cramped in the confined space of the Airbus 310 for over six hours. The seats were barely wide enough to sit in and lowering the food tray was an exercise in confinement. Over ten years of research into my family’s earliest roots had brought me here, and while the search had sometimes been frustrating, this was the first time it was proving physically painful.

On top of it all, Scotland was flirting with us. The captain had announced the plane was on its final descent and we had plunged eagerly into the cloud cover. Ignoring layers of physical discomfort, I was wondering what it would feel like to walk the fields and enter the homes where my ancestors had lived. Would there be a sense of coming home? A feeling of recognition, of belonging?

Of course, at that moment, I would settle for a simple release from the confinement of my seat. But we emerged from the cloud cover to find ourselves above still another layer of cloud. Scotland was not eager to reveal herself.

The plane descended through successive veils of cloud until the very moment before we landed at Glasgow Airport, when orderly fields of lush green suddenly stretched below us. Then the runway appeared and we were down, if not on Scottish soil, at least on Scottish tarmac.

I had spent ten years slowly and painstakingly unraveling the mystery that was my father. A mystery I hadn't even known existed until my wife began her own genealogical research and I suddenly realized I knew nothing about my father's family. I hadn't known that coming to understand the forces that had created my father would be the key to freeing me from bonds I didn't even know were strangling me.

My dad was not secretive and certainly was no monster. He was a warm and open man who lived completely in the now and never regaled us with tales of his past. He wasn't hiding his past from us, it just wasn't the place where he lived. He didn't think it mattered.

What I could have learned in a couple of hours of conversation while he was alive, had taken me months in libraries, Mormon Church Family Research Centers, cemeteries, on-line genealogy sites and visits with strange and unnerving relatives to piece together.

What I had found had blown me away and changed completely almost everything I thought I knew about him. For most of my life I had just assumed we had different personalities and that was why we weren't especially close. What I didn't realize then was that much of my personality had grown in opposition to his, had been determined by his, was bound to his. It wasn't just by shear chance that we were different. But I knew better now and what I'd learned about him had allowed me to change the very way I viewed myself.

Here are some of the major differences between us:

He smoked. I didn't.
He drank, sometimes to excess. I didn't.
He was profoundly religious. I wasn't.
He was passionately patriotic. I'm not.
He always worked steadily but changed jobs regularly. I've worked for the same company for 30 years.
He was maudlinly sentimental. I'm not.
He had a grade 4 education and could barely read a newspaper. I have a Masters degree.
He loved country music, especially the weepy songs. It made me cringe.
He was the life of a party and loved to throw lavish events where he was the center of attention. I was much happier off to the side in quiet conversation pretending I didn't know him.
When I was a child he never played with us. I always played with my children.
When I was a child he never taught us how to fix anything or do any home repair. I involved my daughters in everything I did.
His main recreation was watching TV. I'm deeply involved with my community.

I was embarrassed by him. He was proud of me.

Before we began researching our family histories it never occurred to me to ask, what made him that way? Like a force of nature, I assumed that fathers just sprang into existence, fully formed and unchanging. Discovering there were forces that had shaped him, was life altering.

My wife had noticed something about me. "Doing this research has changed you," she said as we deplane at Glasgow Airport. "It's made you a better person."

Little did we know what Scotland herself had to reveal in the coming days ahead.