Update from the Great White North

What fun we are having in my other country. My sister Moxie and I always have a grand time together, of course. And my aunt, a tiny, impish, clever woman who has gone over her lifetime has been a television producer, a high school teacher, and a priest, has a wonderfully quirky sense of humor and uses words like "wee" and "madly" in regular conversation. Together, we have been taking Edmonton by storm.

I finally - FINALLY - managed to get my Canadian passport photos taken. Of course they are a different size than US passport photos so getting the photos has been a significant holdup in the whole passport process. So that was high on my list.

We went to a book store, and I always appreciate the opportunity to get books by Canadian authors on Canadian subjects. It's virtually impossible to find them in the US.

We visited two archives, one of which was incredibly casual and almost chaotic, and had a lot of family papers that weren't all that informative but were nonetheless interesting. The second archive was state-of-the-art, where we had to leave everything except pencils and paper outside. We thought we'd find something new there, but it proved to be something we already had. Then we found a ledger book from 1860 for the Anglican mission at Fort Simpson, where we could see what our great-great-grandfather contributed for the Widows and Orphans Fund and the Indian Mission Fund, as well as how the priest described his various Indian parishoners. (He considered most of them to be "careless" or "indifferent.")

All in all, a fun day. Our aunt is going to help talk to a distant relative about surrendering the remaining family papers either to me or (better) to an archive. It may entail another trip up, to Calgary this time, but that would be fine.