Huntly Ward Davis, Montreal Architect

October 29, 2025 Janice Hamilton 1 Comment

With additional research from Justin Bur

Huntly Ward Davis (1875-1952) was a Montreal architect who designed elegant downtown homes, banks and institutional buildings in the first half of the 20^th century. Some of those buildings still stand today, others have disappeared. Many of Montreal’s heritage buildings, built when the city was Canada’s most important business and banking center, have been demolished and replaced by high-rise office towers and apartment buildings. As a result, Davis has been largely forgotten by the public, but his descendants – my cousins – are proud of his architectural legacy.

Huntly Ward Davis. Bagg family collection

Huntly was born in Montreal on October 22, 1875, the oldest son of Moses Davis (c. 1847-1909), head of a customs brokerage firm, and Lucy Elizabeth Ward (1850-1924). Moses was originally from St. Andrews, Quebec, a village on the Ottawa River between Ottawa and Montreal.¹

His mother’s father was well known in business and in politics. James Kewley Ward (1819-1910), was born on the Isle of Man, located in the Irish Sea. James immigrated to New York State in 1842 and married his first wife, Elizabeth King, there. The family moved to Lower Canada in the early 1850s and James bought a lumber mill on the Maskinongé River, northeast of Montreal.

Elizabeth died when daughter Lucy was four years old. James remarried and he and his second wife, Lydia Trenholm, had a large family. Lucy’s granddaughter later recalled how warm and compassionate Lucy was, so perhaps she grew up helping her younger siblings.

In the 1870s, the Ward family moved to Montreal, where James opened a sawmill on the Lachine Canal and expanded his business interests to cotton. A Liberal in politics, he served as mayor of the village of Côte St. Antoine (now the City of Westmount) from 1875 to 1884, and in 1888 he was appointed to the Legislative Council of Quebec. He was known for his generosity to charities.²

Moses Davis and Lucy Ward were married in Montreal in 1874, and Huntly, the eldest of their three sons, was born the following year. Huntly attended school in Montreal, then studied architecture in Boston, graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1898. He returned to Montreal and eventually went into partnership with architect Morley Hogle. After Hogle’s sudden death in 1920, Huntly worked on his own.³ He was a member of the Quebec Association of Architects and of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

House at 1814 Sherbrooke Street W. near St. Mathieu, designed by Hogle and Davis in 1908. The ground floor window was added later and the house is still there today. Photo, taken 1986, from Repetoire d”architecture traditionelle sur le territoire de la Commununaute Urbaine de Montreal, Architecture domestique 1, Les Residences.

Huntly married Evelyn St. Clair Stanley Bagg (1883-1970), eldest daughter of Robert Stanley Bagg and his wife Clara Smithers, on Oct. 26, 1910, at Montreal’s Anglican Church of St. James the Apostle. The following day, The Gazette’s society reporter called the event “one of the prettiest of the season’s fashionable weddings” and described the bride’s ivory satin gown, embroidered with seed pearls.⁴

Huntly and Evelyn lived in an apartment building that Huntly had designed on Summerhill Avenue, a short street off Côte des Neiges Road, just up the hill from the house where Evelyn had grown up. Evelyn lived on Summerhill for the rest of her life and the couple’s granddaughter still remembers the spacious eight-room apartment and the furniture Huntly had designed.

Huntly and Evelyn also had a country house at Ste. Marguerite, in the Laurentian mountains north of the city. That was where Huntly died, suddenly, on October 12, 1952, at age 76.⁵His name is on a plaque in the Bagg family mausoleum at Mount Royal Cemetery.

Huntly and Evelyn had one daughter, Clare Ward Davis (1911-2007). As an adult, she often repeated expressions she had learned from him as a child that reflected his simple sense of justice: “never assume”; “I divide, you choose”; and “a nectarine is a plum’s mistake”.

This down-to-earth approach to life was alsoreflected in the buildings he designed. Son-in-law Norton Fellowes, who was also a Montreal architect, prepared an obituary of Huntly, focusing on his professional activities and published in the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Journal.

Norton wrote, “In the early years of the 20^th century, Mr. Davis was a ‘contemporary architect’ for during this era of post-Victorian vulgarity, he allied himself with that small group of young architects who saw beyond the ornate fashion of the day and consistently designed quiet, dignified town houses, country homes, banks and institutes of learning, always in the tradition of fine craftsmanship and classical proportion. The Greenshield and Townsend country houses still grace the bays of Lake Manitou in the Laurentians and the main building of the Children’s Memorial Hospital, the Trafalgar Institute, the Walter Molson residence on McGregor Street, and the head office of the Bank of Toronto in Montreal are all still permanent monuments to a man who followed the highest traditions of the profession.

“During the last few years, although well beyond the age when others retire, Mr. Davis, at the age of 75, was still young enough to understand the trend to more functional design and it was not surprising that in 1952, he designed and supervised the building of several small, efficient new branches for the Bank of Toronto in the Montreal area. Mr. Davis thus worked with dignity and courage for a full half century as a member of the architectural profession.”⁶

Hogle and Davis designed this branch of the Bank of Toronto in Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. It features a white vitrified terracotta facade. Source: : l’Atelier d’histoire Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (AHMHM).

Neither is it surprising that he designed at least one building for his wife’s family. The Bagg family had extensive properties in Montreal, mostly in the Mile End area, just east of Mount Royal, but they also owned a few properties downtown. In 1926, Huntly designed a brown brick apartment block on Ste-Catherine Street West, near Guy, for the Stanley Bagg Corp. It was three stories, with small shops on the ground floor.

He may have been involved with another project on land that belonged to the Baggs, a commercial building at the southwest corner of Ste-Catherine Street and Peel. It was built in 1911, shortly after Huntly and Evelyn were married, however, no architect’s name was mentioned in any newspaper reports or in the building’s lease. All building permits were destroyed in a 1922 fire at city hall.

The gleaming, white vitrified terracotta façade (a treatment popular between 1910 and 1915) of the H&M clothing store still stands out at this busy intersection in the heart of downtown. Thousands of people pass by it every day. Although his name was never officially associated with it, this may be the most familiar building Huntly designed.

Notes

Some sources, including the Biographical Dictionary of Architects of Canada, spell his name Huntley, however, his baptism record and a letter written by his mother spell it Huntly. I have used his mother’s spelling. Most architectural references say H.W. Davis.

The lot on Ste-Catherine just west of Guy (St. Antoine Ward, lot 1679, minus a strip of land previously detached for a laneway,) was purchased by the Estate of the late Stanley Clark Bagg in 1885, probably as a rent-generating property. At the time, a three-story brick building and several other buildings were on the lot. The property passed to the Stanley Bagg Corp. when it was founded in 1919. The current building, designed by Huntly Ward Davis, was constructed in 1926. The property was sold in 1957.

The property at Ste-Catherine and Peel (Saint-Antoine Ward, lot 1477) was purchased by the Bagg Estate in 1879. At the time there were three, three-storey stone-front brick houses on the lot. In 1886, these buildings were converted to shops with flats above. They were demolished in 1911 and construction began on the current building, at a cost of $60,000. The Stanley Bagg Corp. sold the property in 1951.

Sources

“Mr. Moses Davis Died Suddenly Last Night”, The Montreal Star, April 17, 1907, p. 6. Newspapers.com, accessed Oct. 28, 2025.
Leslie Quilliam and Victor Neale, “James Kewley Ward”, Kelly Dollin, editor, New Manx Worthies, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, iMuseum, https://imuseum.im/search/collections/people/mnh-agent-94625.html, accessed Oct. 27, 2025.
“Huntley Ward Davis”, Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, 1800-1950, Robert G. Hill, editor, http://dictionaryofarchitectsincanada.org/node/825, accessed Oct. 27, 2025.
Social and Personal, The Gazette, Oct. 27, 1910, p. 2. Newspapers.com, accessed Oct. 27, 2025.
Huntly Ward Davis, Obituary, The Gazette, Oct. 15, 1952, p. 14, Newspapers.com, accessed Oct. 27, 2025.
Norton A. Fellowes, “The Late Huntley Ward Davis, Montreal Architect,” Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Nov. 13, 1952

This article also appears on my family history blog http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca

Genealogy, Quebec

Discovering Family Connections Through Obituaries

October 22, 2025 Mary Sutherland Leave a comment

Somerled School Kindergarten class 1957/1958

I recently discovered that I am related to my kindergarten teacher’s husband! There are certainly tangled webs of relationships all through our family histories. Following direct ancestor lines often leads you to people you might know about. Exploring other branches of siblings, aunts, and uncles can uncover connections you never knew you had. This is how this one was untangled.

The online death notice for Shirley Harris (1927-2025) in the Montreal Gazette caught my eye. Her name sounded familiar so I started reading her obituary. It mentioned she was 98, had a brother, John and sister, Ann. These names didn’t ring a bell, so I closed it just as my eyes caught the name Paul von Colditz. I remembered that there was a connection with a Shirley von Colditz and our family.

Ida Bruneau, one of my mother’s cousins, wrote a family history, “The Short History of the Bruneaus and Girods”. In it, Ida mentions Shirley von Colditz as a very dear friend of hers. They discovered they were distant cousins. Shirley descended from Medard Bruneau (1811-1892) and Ida and I from his brother Barnabé. They were the sons of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie Robidoux (1775-1847). This meant that Shirley and Ida were third cousins once removed.

My husband and I used to be members of the Montreal Badminton Squash Club. An Eric von Colditz also played badminton there. Years ago, I read Ida’s book. After that, I asked Eric if he thought we were very distant cousins. He said no. Shirley was his stepmother.

I carefully reread the obituary. “Shirley was the devoted wife of the late Paul von Colditz and the loving sister of the late John Harris ( the late Patricia Reynolds).” Patricia Harris was the name of my kindergarten teacher. I knew her maiden name was Reynolds, as my mother knew her sister Moyra Reynolds. Pat’s obituary confirmed she had sisters-in-laws Shirley and Ann. So I was related to her husband John.

Mrs. Harris and Miss Gael were my two kindergarten teachers at Somerled School in Notre Dame de Grace, Montreal. I started there in the fall of 1957. This school just opened in January 1957. I was in the first class to go through all the grades at Somerled School. I enjoyed kindergarten and remembered my teachers fondly.

John and Pat Harris had two children, Kathy and John. At one time, their son John lived on Percival Ave. in Montreal West, where I also lived. During a street-wide garage sale, my husband returned from down the street. He said, “One of your teachers is selling tea cups in front of a house.” I went and had a chat with Mrs Harris. Her son was someone I recognized but never talked to. He had a wife, three daughters and a dog. I figure John and I are fourth cousins once removed. Unfortunately, he no longer lives on Percival. I can’t tell him of our connection. Not even six degrees of separation.

Notes:

A Short History of the Bruneau Girod Families by Ida Bruneau. Ste. Agathe des Monts, Quebec, May 1993. Page 8. A copy in the hands of the author.

https://montrealgazette.remembering.ca/obituary/shirley-harris-1092955467

https://montrealgazette.remembering.ca/obituary/patricia-harris-1065848692

Shirley Harris was the daughter of Irene Bruneau (1901-1987) and Herbert Harris.

Irene was the daughter of Eugene Albert Bruneau (1875-1939) and Eliza W. Thompson

Albert was the son of Ophir Bruneau (1848-1920) and Hermaline Piche (1949-1901)

Ophir was the son of Medard Bruneau (1811-1892) and Marie S. Megrette (1822-1853)

Medard was the son of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie J. Robidoux 1775-1847)

Barnabé and Medard were brothers:

Barnabé was the son of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie J. Robidoux 1775-1847).

Ismael was the son of Barnabe (1807-1880) and Sophie Marie Louise Prud’homme (1812-1892).

Sydney was the son of Ismael Bruneau (1852-1918) and Ida Girod ( 1862-1927).

Sydney was my grandmother Beatrice’s brother

Ida Bruneau was the daughter of Sydney Bruneau ( 1893-1979) and Ruth Dawson ( 1894-1971).

This makes Ida and Shirley 3^rd cousins once removed!

Moyra Reynolds was on the women’s executive at the Catherine Booth Hospital. She worked alongside my mother, who was also a cousin of John Harris. Moyra and her friend Eileen glued my mother’s little tatted flowers onto hasty notes. These cards were sold for the benefit of the Catherine Booth Hospital. Moyra was living in the Montclair Residence when my mother moved in. They lived on the same floor. Moyra was excited that my mother was coming and hoped to make more hasty notes. Unfortunately, she soon suffered a stroke and was in hospital for a while. She came back to the Montclair. However, her needs were too great for them to handle and she moved to another residence.

One time when I was visiting my mother, a young woman was clearing out Moyra’s room. I thought afterwards that she might have been Moyra’s niece and my kindergarten teacher’s daughter. I am sorry I didn’t speak to her.

There was a family connection with Somerled School and another connection to Percival Avenue. Percival Ave is a street of just three blocks in the town of Montreal West. Ida’s sister Mary Bruneau and her husband George Davidson once lived on Percival. Their home was just across the street from where John Harris later lived. Ed Hawkes married my mother’s cousin Ephese Jousse, also related to John Harris. His parents lived a block south on Percival. I live on Percival now!

Genealogy, Greece

Greek Tragedy

October 15, 2025 Dorothy Nixon Leave a comment

Syrian girl with her wares. (National Geographic, November, 1925. Article cited below. This magazine is in the public domain according to Library of Congress. Gervaise Courtellemont. Lumiere company.

Prologue: In my last post I explained how I recently learned, through DNA, that my biological father was likely Pontic Greek on the father’s side. Pontic Greeks are Orthodox Christian Turks who believed they are descended from ancient Greeks, who once lived on the southern coast of the Black Sea in cites like Samsun and Trabzon and who speak either a unique form of Greek or Turkish. In that post, I also wrote about the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Here, I elaborate.

In 2010, I visited my older brother who lives in Denmark at his holiday home in Plomari, Lesbos, Greece. The large island of Lesbos is off the northwest coast of Turkey. On a good day you can see Turkey from the capital city of Mytilini. It’s only 17 miles away.

Back in 2010, before I explored my DNA, I naturally assumed I was half French Canadian and half Yorkshire British, just like my older brother, but I also knew, deep down in my heart of hearts, that I resembled the Greek locals, both in looks and in temperament.

Plomari village from the back window of my brother’s place.
The harbour is two streets down.

Today, I understand that I am very likely related to some of those local Greek citizens on Lesbos, perhaps even closely related. I know this because of a photograph I recently discovered in an article from the November, 1925 National Geographic magazine.

Greek refugees arriving in Mytilini. 1923

There is no shortage of online information on the 1923 Greek/Turk ‘population exchange’ that came on the heels of a horrific event referred to back then as ‘The Smyrna Holocaust,’ but I had high hopes that this story entitled History’s Greatest Trek. Tragedy stalks through the near east as Greece and Turkey exchange 2,000,000 of their people, written in real time by a world class journalist in a world class magazine, would shed some light on the path my Pontic bio-father (or grandfather) may have taken to reach Montreal, Canada in 1954.

I have tree matches in Samsun, a port on the Black Sea in northern Turkey. My mother, who lived and worked in the Notre Dame de Grace area of the city, likely knew Greek men whose grandparents fled Smyrna (now Izmir) in 1922, on the west coast of Anatolia on the Mediterranean Sea. Could I connect the two places?

I was not disappointed. Right at the beginning of the sixty page article there’s a picture of a young Greek man from Samsun. The caption reads: A Refugee from Samsun. He took part in the first trek of 100,000 refugees from the Anatolian interior.

According to online sources, post WWI, most elite Greeks in Samsun were killed off and all other able-bodied men sent into the interior to join the Turkish army.

Clearly, some of these Pontic Greek men and women escaped the Turkish hinterland to make it to the Mediterranean coast and Smyrna in 1922, in the hope of catching a ride to safety.

This 60 page article from 1925 is a classic piece of National Geographic reporting. It is workman-like in its execution with a prose style on the flowery side. The article offers readers a succinct historical and political perspective on the infamous 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The reporting is objective: The Muslim story is discussed with as much respect as the Christian story. And, of course, the article contains many, many photographs, about one hundred of them. Oddly, the prettiest colour ones all depict quiet Turkish life.

There’s a fascination here with exotic dress, from what I can see.

Still, the author, Melville Chater, pulls no punches as he uses his gift with words to capture the true horror of the situation in the port of Smyrna during the late summer of 1922: the hope, despair, death and disease and, eventually, the chaos, the total breakdown of civilized life.

Chater and his companion were in that coastal city when the Greek military lines collapsed in August, 1922, effectively ending the three year old Greco-Turkish war. They were in Smyrna in September to witness the Greek soldiers flee home on their military barques, leaving only ‘neutral’ observer boats in the habour.

Immediately thereafter, they saw the victorious Turkish cavalry enter the city, the riders’ left palms outstretched in a peace gesture, and a few days hence they witnessed the great fire of Smyrna that forced local citizens to flee in chaos to the quay and mix with the tens of thousands of refugees from further afield amassed there. By this time “the city had become a gigantic blast furnace… Affrighted faces mingled with wild-eyed animals, and human cries with the neigh of horses, the scream of camels, and, last, the squeaking of rats, as they scuttled by in droves from the underworld of a lost Smyrna.”

The beginning, late August, 1922.

“Refugees from anywhere within 150 miles inland herded seaward into Smyrna. At first they came in orderly trainloads or in carts, with rug-wrapped bedding, some little household equipment, and perhaps even a few animals, But as the distant military momentum speeded up, the influx became a wild rabble of ten, then twenty, then thirty thousand a day. Their increasingly scanty possessions betokened a mad and yet madder stampede from the scene of sword and fire, until September 7 saw utterly destitute multitudes staggering in, the women wailing over the first blows of family tragedy, whereby mothers with no food for their babies had been forced to abandon their older children in wayside villages….

….By now Smyrna’s broad quay swarmed with perhaps 150,000 exiles who camped and slept there, daily stretching their rugs as makeshift shelters against the sun, whose furnace-like heat was the mere forerunner to a terrible epic of fire.”

The Greek Army flees,the Turkish cavalry arrives.

On September 23rd, a fire breaks out in the Armenian quarter. The Turks give permission for women and children and old men to leave. People are dispatched to Athens to organize a flotilla of rescue boats. The Turks then give the rescuers one week to evacuate the refugees or they will be forced into the interior. Further chaos ensues.

“Uncounted hundreds were crushed to death or pushed over the quayside to drown, on that first day, when eight ships, convoyed by American destroyers left with 43,000 souls aboard. For those left behind there remained but six more chances—a chance a day—then the black despair of deportation into the interior.

These men were not allowed to leave Smyrna after the fire with their families. “Everyone from peasants to bankers” is how these Anatolian Greek refugees are described in the article. Also as “human derelicts” and descendants of ‘those adventurous spirits who had followed Alexander the Great into Asia.” Some men apparently escaped at Smyrna, swimming to rescue boats under the cover of night. Some wealthier men bought their way onto boats. 300,000 thousand people were evacuated in two weeks, including 100, 000 ‘cellar-hiders’ in Smyrna, uncovered by the Turks in a house-to-house search.

The aftermath:

A notification is posted permitting (well, forcing) all non-Muslims to leave Asia Minor before November, 30, 1922. Hoardes of Anatolian Greeks, former prisoners of war, men, women and children, head to the Black Sea coast.

“With ship-deserted quays, as at Smyrna, and with the Black Sea ports glutted with sidewalk-sleeping, disease breeding paupers, who had been thrifty cottagers a few weeks before, the gap was finally bridged by the arrival of Greek ships flying the Stars and Stripes and convoyed by American destroyers….

….”By January, 1923, Athens had slammed its official doors protesting against further expulsions.”

With a big nudge from the US, Britain and the League of Nations, Athens agreed to accept hundreds of thousands more Christian Greek refugees in an exchange for Muslims living in Greece.

The exchange would begin in May, 1923 and be carried out in various ways. Most Greek refugees are funnelled to the Athens region as well as to Thessonaliki in the northern part of Greece and to some Aegean Islands like Lesbos.

They live in refugee camps rife with disease and death. There is little usable land left in Greece due to past wars.

Greece, then a country of 6 million souls, would take in almost a million and a quarter refugees within a year of the Smyrna disaster, increasing its population by 25 percent.

“There is no adequate parallel whereby to convey even remotely a picture of Greece’s plight in 1923,” Chater summarizes.

Pretty heavy stuff – and yet the 1925 magazine article somehow manages to maintain the feel of a breezy travelogue.

Epilogue:

In the style of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway, I imagine a comfortably middle class lady, back in the mid 1920’s, perhaps my husband’s grandmother in her favourite club chair in her cottage in Westmount, flipping through this very issue of the National Geographic, cup of tea in one hand. The inky new pages crackle as she turns them with her free hand. “How awful,” she whispers under her breath when she gets to the bit about the Greek women holding their still-born babies at their breasts because they had no place to bury them. And, then, “How pretty,” as she eyes the flowing costumes on the Turkish women, the colourful mosques and the charming minurats. And, then, as she comes to the full-page advertisement for Campbell’s Soup at the end of the article, she perhaps thinks, “Yes, tomato soup for the children, for tomorrow’s lunch.”

Here’s the archive.org link.

https://archive.org/details/nationalgeographic19251101/page/550/mode/2up?q=mosques

Genealogy

Getting the Names Right

October 8, 2025 Sandra McHugh Leave a comment

In the last mad dash to send Beads in the Necklace to print, we had to make sure that the names in the stories were right. Genealogists struggle with the difficulties of names every day.

There was the question of those pesky hyphens. In French Canada, hyphenated names are common. But not every double name takes a hyphen. Then what about apostrophes that were simply dropped?

And accents. Some French names had accents and others not. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason.

Some of the people in our stories had unusual names. Hermonie? Maybe it was Harmonie? Or even Hermionie? It was Herminie. And is it Catherine or Catharine? Or Isabelle or Isabella?

And how many ways can you spell Jodouin? Each source document seemed to have a different spelling.

And then what about place names. Do we use the French place name or the anglicized place name? With or without accents?

All these variations in the names made me think of my husband’s surname. I asked him, “Why do some people in your family spell their name Delatolas as Dellatolas, with two letter ls?

He shrugged, “I dropped an “l” when I emigrated to Canada.”

“Besides, my father and my brother had already dropped an “l”. Anyway, who cares?”

“Well,” I muttered, “Genealogists care.”

Genealogy

French-Canadian Leadership in WWI

October 1, 2025 Tracey Arial Leave a comment

Most history books define the Battle of the Somme as a disaster, but French Canadians can claim it as their first military success.

It also represented the integration of a new kind of leadership in European battle tactics, one in which every soldier counted.

Both of those realities are due to the contribution of the 22^nd Regiment, known colloquially as the Van Doos based on its French name “vingt-deux.” Today the unit holds an official French name, the Royal 22e Régiment, an important symbol of its identity and importance.

“It’s arguable that the tactics that the Van Doos taught the Canadians won the war,” said author and historian Desmond Morton, who had authored forty-seven books about Canada by the time he died in September 2019. “It was formed and was trained in a way that was uniquely French-Canadian. The Colonel of the Regiment was an ex-cadet of the Royal Military College…Tremblay had a different philosophy of leadership and he showed it.”

One of the most recognized leaders was Lieutenant Colonel Thomas-Louis Tremblay, who led the Van Doos during their WWI triumphs and left behind his French-language diaries to inspire followers.

Tremblay was the first to use tanks to get over and past enemy dug-outs during an artillery barrage. The tactic relied on every soldier being willing to move through active artillery and kill defenders individually in hand-to-hand combat. The brutal but effective operation enabled his unit to capture the village of Flers-Courcelette from the Germans on September 15, 1916. They held the position for two days.

The 22^nd Batallion’s effectiveness in Courcelette persuaded General Sir Arthur William Currie, who was in charge of the Canadian Army, to change his thinking about Vimy Ridge. Tunnels, barbed wire and three rows of trenches protected the strategic site to such an extent that tit was considered largely impregnable by the British and French. The French-Canadian success at Courcelette made them think that maybe someone could capture the strategic site.

The following spring, the Van Doos and three other Canadian divisions moved toward the 14-km-long escarpment at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, April 9, 1917. It took four days, 3,598 deaths and 7,000 wounded men to capture the ridge.

Success was due primarily to training that ensured that every soldier knew what to do and did it, even as commanding officers died.

The Vimy capture may have relied on the Van Doo success at Courcelette, but the Van Doos themselves would never have existed without a private donation by prominent Montreal entrepreneur and philanthropist Arthur Mignault. In 1914, the head of the Franco-American Chemical Company donated $50,000 to create a regiment “composed of and officered by French Canadians.” His offer resulted in the creation of the 22^nd Battalion (French Canadian) CEF on October 14, 1914. Mignault and then Opposition leader Sir Wilfred Laurier spent the next month recruiting a full contingent of more than 20,000 men who formed the bulk of Tremblay’s men.

Migneault, who made his fortune selling iron pills to women with anemia, had already enlisted with the 65th Regiment “Carabiniers Mont-Royal” five years earlier. After his 22nd Division success, he went on to subsidize the founding of two additional French-Canadian divisions, but they got folded into the 22e to replace casualties.

Migneault had hoped to be appointed to lead a battalion. Realizing that subsidizing infantry divisions wouldn’t make that happen, he decided to fund military hospitals. Just as the Van Doos were heading to war in early 1915, Mignault succeeded in encouraging the Canadian government to build a French Canadian stationary hospital near the German frontlines in Saint-Cloud. By November 1915, Mignault was on his way to France along with 100 men to set up the hospital.

Laval University followed suit with a second French Canadian Hospital, and both became so important, the French renamed part of Joinville-le-Pont near Paris the “quartier des Canadiens.”

Mignault not only realized his ambition to become a colonel, but a month before his death in 1937, the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps promoted him to the honorary rank of Brigadier General. He was the first French Canadian to hold that rank.

Members of the Royal 22e Régiment fought in Italy and in the Pacific during World War II, in Korea, in the Gulf War, and in Afghanistan. They were also the first Regular Force regiment to mount the King’s Guard in London in 1940, and repeated the experience again for their hundredth anniversary in 2014. They also served during the Oka Crisis in 1990.

Today, the regiment forms the largest unit in the Canadian Army, with three Regular Force battalions, two Primary Reserve battalions, and a band. Its ceremonial home is La Citadelle in Quebec City, although members are stationed at Valcartier and other bases throughout Quebec.

Genealogy

Dad’s Stellar Career

September 24, 2025 Claire Lindell Leave a comment

In a previous blog entitled Dad’s Early Years the focus was on my Dad, Karl Victor Lindell, and a recollection of his childhood growing up along the shores of Lake Erie until his High School Graduation from Ashtabula Harbor High School in 1923.

Upon graduation Karl set his sights on enrolling in Michigan College of Mines in Houghton, situated in the upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was there that he spent the next few years as a student.

In 1967, Many years after his 1928 graduation, he was invited to deliver the commencement address.

Over time Michigan College of Mines, developed and later became known as Michigan Technological University.

In 1972 at Michigan Technological University Dad received the Distinguished Alumnus Award

Below is a copy of the text of the citation that outlines a summary of Dad’s stellar career.

Michigan Technological University”

Alumni Association

Distinguished Alumnus Award

Karl Victor Lindell, BS., E.M., 1928

Danville, Quebec, Canada

Most likely, it was growing up in the iron port of Ashtabula. Ohio that first stirred his interest in mining. Whatever it was that brought Karl Lindell to Michigan College of Mines in the mid-1920s, it is safe to assume that even in his wildest dreams of the future, he could not have imagined that was to unfold as a result of this decision.

Professionally, there was little doubt about his competence. Out of school less than ten years, Karl Lindell was already the assistant to the general superintendent of all International Nickel mines in Copper Cliff, Ontario. In 1945, he elected to join Canadian Johns Manville Company, and within six years, he was general manager of the Asbestos Fiber Division.

While still retaining operation of that division, he was elected chairman of the Board of Canadian Johns Manville in 1961. Six years later he was given additional responsibilities as senior vice-president and director of the parent US company.

By this time, he was world-renowned as an authority on asbestos mining and the special health hazards inherent in the industry. Even after his retirement from Johns Manville in 1970, he continues to chair one occupational and environmental health commission while serving as a consultant to another.

For his many contributions to the mining industry in his adopted country – he became a naturalized Canadian in 1939 – Karl Lindell has been honored with Doctor of Science degrees from both Laval and Sherbrooke universities. In 1967 he was invited to deliver the commencement address in Houghton and there received the Doctor of Engineering from his own alma mater. Numerous other professions and civic honors also have been awarded over the years.

It is with great pride that this Association – in consideration of the aforementioned criteria does hereby confer its highest mark of esteem upon a respected and faithful member.

In witness, there is attached hereto the Seal of the Michigan Technological University, the signature of the President, and the signature of the President of the Alumni Association.

Dated in Houghton, Michigan. This fourth day of August 1972 A.D.

His life allowed him to travel the world on behalf of the Asbestos industry; however, when he was home, he joined his sons in the sauna and enjoyed a round of golf with us.

He was a son, a brother, a husband, a father, an uncle, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, and a kind friend to all who knew him.

Genealogy

A Cornish Homecoming… Our Bulford Reunion: A Family Forged Online

September 17, 2025 Marian Bulford 2 Comments

For the numerous years I have been doing genealogy, I have found many, many family names. I have met, but only when very young, paternal family members associated with my research. My parents divorced when I was seven, and after that, I never had any further contact with the paternal side of the family.

However, 13 years ago, I was contacted via ‘Friend Reunited’, a now-defunct website, by a second cousin on my Dad’s side. Samantha was my cousin Cheryl’s daughter, and she was searching for members of the Bulford family to include in her parents’ anniversary gift of genealogy. Through Sam, I was united with Cheryl, my first cousin, and from there, I met more first cousins I had never met before.

This was SO exciting! There was Diane, my Aunt Sylvia’s daughter, Cheryl, Aunt Florence’s daughter, Joanna, Uncle Roy’s daughter and David and Jonathan, his sons.

All familiar names, but people I had never met or even thought I would ever meet. We all contacted each other via the internet in great excitement, and exchanged the information we had all collected, and they sent me photos I had never seen, of my Dad and his family.

After numerous emails, we decided to meet in the UK when I went over for my annual holiday. As this was the paternal side of my family, we met in Cornwall, where my father and my cousins’ mothers and fathers were all born. I met, once again after 68 years, my Uncle Roy, at his apartment, where he lived with his wife, Aunt Evelyn, 90,

Uncle Roy, at that time, was 94 and the last surviving member of the 11 children born to my father’s family. He died in 2022, when he was 106 years old.

Uncle Roy and Aunt Evelyn

Uncle Roy’s sons, David and Jonathan, were there with their sister Joanna, plus Diane and Cheryl, nieces of my Dad, and suddenly, just like that, I had met five cousins!

From the left: Marian, Cheryl, Joanna and Diane

My handsome Cuz Jonathan

I had brought photos and they had some too, which we all pored over. I learned so much about the family in that short visit, to add to my family tree. First though, lunch and what better way to celebrate our ‘Cornishness’ than with a Cornish Pasty? Made by Joanna, it was delicious

A homemade local treat, the Cornish Pasty, made by Joanna

I showed David and Jonathan a treasured photo of me, aged three, which was taken by Dad on a beach in Newquay, one of the last visits to Dad’s family before the divorce.

I wondered aloud where it could have been taken.

Marian, aged three, Towan Beach, Newquay, Cornwall, England.

David took me by the hand to the balcony of Uncle Roy’s apartment and opened the door. He pointed to the beautiful beach in view, and said, ‘This is Towan Beach where your photo was taken,’ and there before me, as in my photo, was the beach and the houses on the cliff behind me, still prominent today. Then I did cry. (1)

My other handsome cuz David

Towan Beach today

The next day, we all had a family reunion Sunday lunch with wives and children, in the local pub. We reminisced, we took photos and promised to keep in touch, which we have done so every year for the last 13 years. Every year I visit the UK, we have our Bulford reunion, usually in the West Country at a local pub, and each year I find out more about my Dad’s family.

Photos, war records, marriages, deaths, and some researched information I had that my cousins did not know about were all shared via the internet.

PLUS a recently found USA Bulford branch too, which is the basis for this story.

My American Cousin

(1) Source

Towan Beach (Newquay)

Genealogy

A Neighbourhood of Rural Villas

September 3, 2025 Janice Hamilton Leave a comment

In collaboration with Justin Bur

Montreal in 1832, painting by James Duncan. McCord Stewart Museum.

This view of the city of Montreal from the slope of Mount Royal was painted by artist James Duncan in 1832. In the distance, the city lay on the banks of St. Lawrence River, while in the foreground, the foot of the mountain was rural and traversed by only one road – today’s Saint-Laurent Boulevard.

This area is now a dense neighbourhood of homes, shops and commercial buildings, but 200 years ago, it was described as a neighbourhood of rural villas. Several of those buildings belonged to my ancestors, including butcher John Clark (1767-1827) and merchant Stanley Bagg (1788-1853). These homes were all torn down years ago, but fortunately, artists and photographers captured them before they disappeared. This article tells their stories.

Saint-Laurent Boulevard began as a country road passing through a landscape with a mix of rural functions. In the 1700s, a large tannery was located nearby, to the east along Mount Royal Avenue. Later, numerous quarries were excavated to provide the grey limestone used for much of Montreal’s Victorian architecture – churches, civic buildings, places of business and attractive houses. The Beaubien family acquired a large tract of land along the east side of the road in 1842, as well as property in what later became the municipality of Outremont. A railway line was built across the Bagg and Beaubien land in 1876, along which an industrial corridor emerged in the early 1900s.

During the lifetimes of the Clarks and Baggs, their property, on the west side of Saint-Laurent, was farmland. The soil was mostly sandy and rocky. Hay to feed cattle and horses was the main crop, but vegetables and fruit trees could be grown in fertile areas. Back from the road, rising up toward the side of the mountain, there were a handful of rural villas belonging to the Baggs and a few neighbours, including the Perrault-Nowlan and the Hall families.

Butcher John Clark, my four-times great-grandfather, was the first member of my family to live in this area. He brought his wife and young daughter to Montreal around 1797 from County Durham, in northern England, and began investing in land. In 1804, Clark purchased a farm on the west side of Saint-Laurent, and over the next few years, he added adjacent parcels of land. He called the property Mile End Farm, probably inspired by Mile End in London, England.¹ His choice of name is still familiar today, as this neighbourhood is known as Mile End. In 1810, he leased the farm to American-born Phineas Bagg (c. 1751-1823) and his son Stanley,² and they ran an establishment called the Mile End Tavern there until 1818.

Montreal Hunt Club at Mile End Road, Montreal, QC, 1859. photograph by J. Henry, MP-1978.29.8, McCord Stewart Museum. The corner of the building on the right is likely the Mile End Tavern.

After Phineas retired and Stanley moved on to other business interests, various tenants operated the Mile End Tavern. It was demolished in 1902 when the local municipality expropriated the land to widen Saint-Laurent Boulevard. New owners purchased the lot in 1905, and the following year a department store opened on the corner of Saint-Laurent and Mount Royal Avenue, where the tavern had stood for so long.³ The department store was converted into a commercial building during the Great Depression. Today, a Couche Tard convenience store and a Tim Horton’s coffee shop are on its ground floor.

By 1891, both Stanley Bagg and his son Stanley Clark Bagg had died and most of the Mile End Farm property was sold by the late Stanley Clark Bagg’s five adult children to developers McCuaig and Mainwaring.⁴ An economic depression and lack of basic services such as sewers and tramways delayed development for a few years. Meanwhile, the most valuable lots – the ones that faced Saint-Laurent Boulevard – were divided into five equal shares and allocated at random to the five Bagg siblings.⁵

Map of Mile End Farm and the locations of Mile End Tavern, John Clark’s Mile End Lodge, Stanley Bagg’s Durham House and Stanley Clark Bagg’s Fairmount Villa, prepared by Justin Bur, 2024.

John Clark’s house was not as well known as the nearby tavern. In 1815, Clark sublet a 16-acre square of land back from the Baggs, a “piece of ground on which is erected a new house of butchery called by the said John Clark, Mile End Lodge”⁶ – in reality, a two-storey stone house for his family. Facing south, toward the city and the river, it was located between the current Bagg and Duluth Streets, just above what was then the Montreal city limit.

After Clark’s death in 1827, his widow, Mary Mitcheson Clark, moved to a smaller house at the current northwest corner of Bagg and Clark Streets. An inscription noting that this was once the location of the Mitcheson Cottage can still be seen on the foundation of the house that stands there today,

Mrs. Mitcheson’s Cottage, watercolour painting by John Hugh Ross, Stewart Museum collection, McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal.

As for Mile End Lodge, although it remained in the hands of Clark’s descendants, no family members ever lived there again. Various tenants rented it over the years. The land around it was subdivided, with a chunk sold in 1873 and the rest in 1893, but the house itself was not sold until 1914. The badly deteriorated building was demolished soon after that, and there is now a large commercial building in that location.⁷

Mile End Lodge, watercolour painting by John Hugh Ross. Stewart Museum collection, McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal.

Durham House, the home of my three-times great-grandparents Stanley Bagg and Mary Ann Clark, was located south of the tavern and Mile End Lodge. John Clark purchased the property in December, 1814 and gave it to his daughter as a wedding present in 1819. Durham House was on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, at the current southwest corner of Prince Arthur. Early references describe its address as Côte à Baron.

Durham House, watercolour painting by John Hugh Ross, Stewart Museum collection, McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal.

This two-storey stone building also faced south. There was a covered well on the property, a barn and several other outbuildings. The original Durham House property measured 6 ¾ x 4 arpents, so it was a large piece of land, including property between Prince Arthur and Guilbault Streets, known as the Upper Garden.

After Stanley Bagg’s death in 1853, Durham House was briefly used as a school, then it housed a fruit store for a number of years. Meanwhile, the large property that surrounded it was one of the first to be subdivided for building lots. Stanley Clark Bagg subdivided it in 1846, and the Upper Garden was subdivided by his heirs in 1889. The house was demolished in 1928 to allow for the expansion of the modern TD Bank branch which sits on the spot today.

Stanley Bagg also purchased land near the corner of Sherbrooke Street and St. Urbain at a sheriff’s sale in 1837, and sold it to his son in 1844. Stanley Clark Bagg and his wife, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg (1822–1914), built a large house they called Fairmount Villa on that lot and raised their five children there. The house included a small chapel, while the irregularly shaped property, which extended to the boundary of the Durham House land, had a garden with lilac trees, statues and flower beds. The house was likely named after Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, where Catharine grew up.

Fairmount Villa. photograph, Bagg family collection.

Stanley Clark Bagg died in 1873, but Catharine remained at Fairmount Villa for the rest of her life. The house was sold in 1915, and it was demolished in 1949 when Saint-Urbain Street was widened.

The Fairmount property (lot 100 of the cadastre of St. Lawrence Ward) was subdivided in 1872, then redivided in 1922. In 1884, Stanley Clark Bagg’s son, Robert Stanley Bagg (1848-1912), built a house on one of the subdivided lots, at 436 (later 3470) Saint-Urbain. He and his young family moved to a bigger house in a more exclusive neighbourhood on Sherbrooke Street West a few years later, and his sister Mary Heloise Lindsay and her family lived in the house on Saint-Urbain from 1890 until 1906. The house changed street numbers several times, then changed vocations: it became part of the Herzl Jewish Hospital, was subdivided into apartments, and was finally demolished in the early 1960s.

This house on St. Urbain Street was designed for Robert Stanley Bagg by architect William McLea Walbank. When this photo was taken the building was a medical clinic known as the Herzl Dispensary.

Today, two large buildings that once housed Montreal’s school of fine arts are located on the former Fairmount property. The smaller one, of yellow brick, at 3450 Saint-Urbain, was designed by celebrated architects Omer Marchand and Ernest Cormier in 1923 for the École des beaux arts de Montréal. It will soon be home to Montreal’s new Afro-Canadian Cultural Centre.

The larger building, at 125 Sherbrooke St. W., a heritage building constructed in 1905 as the Commercial and Technical High School, later became the Marie-Claire Daveluy building of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec (1982–1997). It has housed l’Office québécoise de la langue française since 1999.

Notes

Built by the Sulpician priests in 1717, Saint-Laurent Boulevard was initially known as a grand chemin du Roy – Great King’s Highway. Over the years it has been known by many names, both English and French, including Chemin Saint-Laurent, St. Lawrence Street and “the Main”. Since 1905, it has been designated Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

The name Côte à Baron, or Coteau Baron, cannot be found on today’s city maps, but in the late 19^th century, this was the name of a sloping stretch of Saint-Laurent Boulevard just below Sherbrooke Street and extending a short distance north of there. Côte à Baron was described as a neighbourhood of rural villas. The first-ever Lovell’s city directory for Montreal, published in 1842, listed Stanley Bagg’s home at Côte à Barron. (https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3652365). Another building with a Côte à Baron address, at the northwest corner of Sherbrooke Street and Saint-Laurent, was an extravagant mansion nicknamed Torrance’s Folly. It was built around 1815 by businessman Thomas Torrance and sold to John Molson in 1832. A gas station is now located at that corner.

An arpent is a French unit of measurement that can refer to either area or length. It is equivalent to an acre of land, or about 58 metres in length. It has been replaced by metric measures since 1970, but can still be found in old property records.

Source of the photo of the Herzl Dispensary: The Jew in Canada: a complete record of Canadian Jewry from the days of the French régime to the present time, ed. Arthur Daniel Hart, 1926 (on BAnQ numérique).

This article is also posted on my personal family history blog, Writing Up the Ancestors. It was updated on Sept. 16, 2025 to add the photo of the Herzl Dispensary.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “The Mile End Tavern”, Writing Up the Ancestors, October 21, 2013 https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2013/10/the-mile-end-tavern.html

Janice Hamilton, “John Clark, 19^th Century Real Estate Visionary”, Genealogy Ensemble, May 22, 2019, https://genealogyensemble.com/2019/05/22/john-clark-19th-century-real-estate-visionary/

Janice Hamilton, “The Life and Times of Stanley Bagg, 1788-1853”, Writing Up the Ancestors, October 5, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/10/the-life-and-times-of-stanley-bagg-1788.html

Janice Hamilton, “A Home Well Lived In”, Writing Up the Ancestors, January 21, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/01/a-home-well-lived-in.html

Janice Hamilton, “Fairmount Villa”, Writing Up the Ancestors, Dec. 18, 2019, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2019/12/fairmount-villa.html

Janice Hamilton, “Bagg Family Dispute Part 2: Stanley Clark Bagg’s Estate”, Genealogy Ensemble, Feb. 14, 2024, https://genealogyensemble.com/2024/02/14/the-bagg-family-dispute-part-2/

Janice Hamilton, “History of a Downtown Montreal Property”, Writing Up the Ancestors, Dec. 31, 2022, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2022/12/history-of-a-downtown-montreal-property.html

Justin Bur, “À la recherche du cheval perdu de Stanley Bagg, et des origines du Mile End.” A la recherche du savoir: nouveaux échanges sur les collections du Musée McCord; Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections. Joanne Burgess, Cynthia Cooper, Celine Widmer, Natasha Zwarich. Montreal: Éditions MultiMondes, 2015.

Mile End Memories, http://memoire.mile-end.qc.ca/en/

sources:

1. Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée, Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), p 256.

2. J.A. Gray, n.p. no 2874, 1810-10-17

3. Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée, Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), p 258.

4. William de Montmollin Marler n.p. no 17571, 1891-11-20

5. John Fair n.p. no 3434, 1892-05-18

6. Henry Griffin, n.p. no 931, 1815-04-15

7. Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée, Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), p 259.

Genealogy

Grandfather’s Diary

August 27, 2025 Mary Sutherland Leave a comment

My grandfather, William Harkness Sutherland, kept a small red leather diary from January 1^st, 1920, to December 31, 1924. During those five years, he regularly jotted down notes. Not his deepest thoughts or a record of history, just about his family and his life.

The Diary begins, “Thursday, January 1^st 1920, “Very cold went to Monks for dinner and tea.” Minnie his wife and the children were still in Toronto for a Christmas visit to her mother and sister. When Grandfather was home alone, he was often invited out to eat as no mention is made of him preparing his own meals.

William was married with three children, lived in Westmount, Quebec, attended church regularly, worked as a civil engineer, owned a car, played golf and often visited friends for the afternoon and tea.

Donald, Bessie and Dorothy Sutherland about 1920

My father, Donald Sutherland, was two to seven years old during those years. It is interesting to see how often he and his two older sisters, Bessie and Dorothy, were sick. They had all the childhood diseases, chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, as well as colds, flu and bilious complaints that lasted many days. They also had their tonsils and adenoids removed, but they had doctors who came to their house!

According to one entry, Minnie, my grandmother, was diagnosed with tonsilitis and Donald’s sore neck became mumps as he continued to have a swollen gland. “Tuesday, March 30, 1920, Drs. Craig and Shaw saw Donald this morning and Craig says the gland must be opened. Dr. Shaw brought Dr Bourne in the afternoon and they gave Donald an anesthetic and opened it, removing quite a considerable quantity of pus.” Amy, Minnie’s sister, came down from Toronto as most of the family was sick.

A few days later, Amy also became ill, so William called in Dr. Smythe. The doctor also checked Donald’s neck, which was again inflamed. “April 4, 1920, brought Dr Smythe home with us (from church) to dress Don’s neck. It was not necessary to probe it for when the bandage came off, it discharged freely. Dr, S. pressed it firmly and Donald kicked up a great fuss.” Imagine, four doctors visited the house within a week!

The children were better during the summer. Although one time, Donald cut his foot at the cottage while swimming, but luckily, there was a doctor just across the lake. Dr. Swaine came over, sewed it up and gave Donald a dollar.

The family often went for drives all around the city. William enjoyed having a car and would pick up friends and drive them all over Montreal, as not many people had cars or could drive.

A few incidents outside the family were written about, such as when Victoria Hall burned down on March 8, 1924. Some of the family were at their new home on Arlington Ave, which was being renovated, when “About 4:15 heard fire wagons went out and saw Victoria Hall burn. Watched until 6:30 and then went home for tea.” There was mention of another fire, the burning of the Sacre Coeur Hospital, March 15, 1923. “ Fire destroyed the Hospital on Decarie Boul. All patients were taken safely out, but the building was totally destroyed. Minnie went out to see it and then called at Donnelleys.”

It was a busy time in his life. The family moved from Grosvenor to Arlington Avenue. Then they built a cottage in Dunany, near Lachute, fifty miles north of Montreal. Two hours and twenty minutes was a quick trip, although many took three to four hours to the cottage, which can now be reached in just over an hour.

Grandfather enjoyed playing golf. There are many entries about his games played at different golf courses, including who he played with and how he practiced indoors in warehouses during the winter. The Dunany Country Club was his favourite, where he was one of the founding members.

What would a diary be without talking about the weather. “October 31, 1920. Oct was an exceptional month, warm, an average of 7 degrees above normal. March 31, 1923. “Coldest March on record by about 10 degrees on average, still mid winter weather.” The last entry ,”December 1924 “Weather has been very cold for three weeks. At Davidson’s for tea on the 31^st.”

The diary concludes at the year’s end but since there were still many empty pages, I wonder why he stopped writing. Most likely, life got in his way. I am glad he wrote if even for a short time. By reading his diary, I learned a lot about a grandfather I never knew.

Notes:

The Diary is in the hands of the author. All the pictures are in the possession of the author.

Black Sea Germans, Pontic Greeks, Tatars

Genealogy Rabbit Hole

August 20, 2025 Dorothy Nixon 2 Comments

Kataryna, Serf. Taras Shevchenko. (Taras Shevchenko Museum) World History .ORG Creative Commons
Yes, the street in Lasalle is named after this celebrated Ukrainian painter/poet!

Exploring your genealogy is something of a luxury. You need the knowledge to do it, the time to do it, sometimes the money to do it. And you need the ancestors to do it, that is to say ancestors who came from relatively stable, peaceful places; countries where good records were kept.

People in North America and Western Europe sometimes have this luxury, the rest of the world, well, not so much.

My ‘official’ family tree is half French Canadian and half North of England, so easy to put together. My biological tree is half French Canadian and, let’s say, something not Western European, something very, very complicated and sometimes hopelessly obscure.

On Ancestry, the record makes clear that most of my mother’s people hail from the Lachenaie seigneury, north of Montreal. That’s a very small area. There are hundreds of cousin trees to prove this.

My unknown bio-father’s side is from all around the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. That’s the crux of it, anyway.

My Ancestry Ancestral regions. Not an exact science by any stretch but getting better. The Green is “French”, my Mom. 46% She has a touch British and Norway. My bio-father, a colourful mix of Germanic Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and Southern Italy and Eastern Mediterranean, with touches of Balkan, Greece and Albania, Eastern Europe, Persia, Romani, Mongolia, China. Some Crimean Tatars online who have done their DNA have similar mixes without German.

We’re talking an enormous area that for centuries was home to myriad populations, myriad cultures that for economic and/or political reasons moved around a lot.

On Ancestry, my mother’s side has 28,000 matches, none of them that close, but that doesn’t matter because I know who my mother is.

My bio-father’s side has but 1,800 matches, only one match at 60 centimorgans, likely a third cousin, and the rest at 20 centimorgans and below. ¹

Still, using Ancestry’s various tools to analyze my paternal side’s origins, my best guess is that my bio father was half Protestant Black Sea German (maternal side) and half Pontic Greek (paternal side.)²

YourDNAPortal’s 1000 year old ethnicity estimate is bang on for my French Canadian side and it gives me 11-20 percent Crimean Tatar from the bio-father’s side!

Incredibly, it has taken me a full seven years to figure this out. I must have the equivalent of a Master’s degree in Black Sea Studies. 🙂

I won’t make fun of you if you don’t know what a “Black Sea German” is, although some of the descendants of these people now live in the Dakotas in the United States and in Western Canada.³

They were people from Baden-Wurrtemburg and Alsace (many winemakers) who took their horse drawn wagon trains to Southern Russia (sometimes by way of Galicia, that is the Poland/Ukraine border or Swabia, the Hungary/Romania border) in the late 18th century at the invitation of Catherine the Great who offered them free land, no taxes, and no conscription in order to re-populate areas formerly held by Turks. Catherine didn’t want those nasty Turks coming back. Later, Alexander I opened up Bessarabia (today’s Moldova) to Germans, offering similar incentives.

It was a difficult life (if you survived the journey) but many of these disciplined, hard-working farmers prospered – until they didn’t. Many ‘extra’ sons or cast-outs were constantly on the move looking for a benevolent, fertile piece of land to call home. Young unmarried women sometimes moved away for work.

Some Black Sea Germans, Protestant and Catholic, moved on from Southern Russia/ Bessarabia to settle in the Crimea on land once held by Tatars.⁴ In later years, Bessarabian German settlers spread out southward to Dobrucha in today’s Romania at the invitation of the Turks who were still in charge there. Ironically, this is where the displaced Crimean Tatars were now living.

The North American descendants of these Black Sea Germans have done a remarkable job chronicling their ancestors’ migrations and daily lives on various websites and databases. This information includes village censuses.

The most intriguing documents, I think, are the anecdotal “village histories” written down by a leading citizen and/or self-styled local historian. Apparently, there was lots of praying as these people were pious; also lots of drunken brawling, as most every town had a tavern; and lots of hardship, too, death from disease and famine, earthquakes and plagues of all kinds. Meeting your end at the bottom of a well was quite common. Hmm.

Initially, there were a handful of ‘orderly’ villages, 25 to 100 and that number grew to around two to three thousand. Although overwhelmingly populated with Germans in extended family clusters, many Besserabian villages also harboured a few Turks, Bulgarians, Romanians and Jews.

Ancestry’s Beresen and Leibmental enclaves of Black Sea Germans, covering Ukraine mostly.(Some ventured to Caucasus because they felt Mount Ararat to be the site of the Second Coming of Christ.)

Black Sea German citizens were so mobile they often named the last village in which they lived as their ‘homeland.’

Since the borders in Austria-Hungary changed so often, even an officially listed nationality like Polish or Austrian means little.

Nationality back then was very fluid.

That’s why delving into the ‘Germanic’ side of my unknown bio-father’s genealogy, although illuminating in one sense, usually sends me down a dizzying rabbit hole.⁵

Empire of Trebizond, Wikipedia Creative Commons. “A remote and isolated splinter of the Byzantine Empire.”10
This map goes a long way towards explaining my wonky heritage.

The Pontic Greek side is even more obscure. Pontic Greeks are people who believe they are descendants of the original Greek settlers on the Black Sea in the Classical period. ⁶

They practised Eastern Orthodox Christianity brought in from Byzantium at a later date, lived in vibrant port cities like Samsun and Trabzon in North Eastern Anatolia, and spoke either a form of Greek or sometimes even Turkish. They mixed up their genes with Armenians. Some dressed like Tatars. Many converted to Islam.

Post WWI, these Christian Greeks were forced by the Turks to leave the Pontus, as it is called, in a series of expulsions and death marches, mostly pushed to the Anatolian interior or towards the Caucasus. (This coincided with the Armenian genocide.)

In 1923, Greeks in Turkiye (mostly Pontic) were exchanged for Muslims in Greece. These Greeks primarily went to Thessaloniki in Northern Greece.⁷

I know I am derived from Pontic Greeks because I have over fifty matches on Ancestry with that particular “journey.”⁸ Some of these matches live in Turkiye and have Turkish names and when I contact them they seem very upset to discover they are even a small part Greek. Others are merely perplexed.

Many of my Pontic cousin matches have the tell-tale suffix IDIS at the end of their surnames and identify as Greek. They live in the United States and their immediate ancestors hail from Thessaloniki or southern Russia. ⁶

A handful have Russian surnames.¹³

Southern Russia! I have a theory. My male Pontic Greek ancestor from Samsun in Northern Anatolia (where I almost certainly have antecedents) took a boat across roiling Black Sea waters to the Crimea, maybe by way of Sochi, where I have a tree match, and met up with my female Black Sea German ancestor. The mountains of southern Crimea had a climate good for growing grapes. I have many sure-fire ancestors in the village of Huffnungstal, near Odessa. Some of these Hoffs, Bollingers, Lutz’s, and Berreths went on to Crimea.

This is more than a stab in the dark. Call it an ‘educated guess.’

The essential point is this: Because of the complex history of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea area, my bio father back in 1954¹² Montreal may have identified as a Ukrainian (most likely) or a German or a Greek or maybe even a Turk or a Tatar. Or perhaps a Pole or a Hungarian, or even a Romanian Jew¹⁴. Or just a Canadian. His ancestors might have been Steppe nomads, serfs or slaves, farmers, vintners, blacksmiths, soldiers,sailors, shopkeepers, shipping magnates, Romani gypsies, noblemen – or all of the above.

Yes, researching genealogy is challenging for most people but next to impossible for people in my situation, with roots around the Black Sea, even if you know who your parents are.

In Soviet society, post WWII, elders kept family history and stories AWAY from their descendants rather than passing the stories on, according to an academic paper I read.⁹

This was for their protection.

“The less people knew about their family history the better.”

The Pontic Greek diaspora in Europe and North America now struggles to keep its cultural identity. Persons who went to Thessonaliki or other parts of Greece in the 1923 exchange were often slighted by natives and not considered ‘true’ Greeks, so they didn’t showcase their past.

The other surviving descendants of the citizens of the once dazzling Empire of Trebizond now live in Ukraine (Mariupol) and Kazakstan and Turkiye and many likely don’t know (or want to know) their ethnic heritage.

It’s no wonder I can’t figure out who my bio-father is – and probably never will. His relatives, if they exist at all, reside in places where they don’t do DNA – and sometimes for good reason. But, thanks to modern science and copious online sources, I do know an awful lot about his very mixed-up ethnic heritage.

THE END SON Кінець Das Ende Τέλος Koniec Sfârşit

Footnotes

1. I only get one or two new matches on that side a week, or maybe a month. Most are Americans or Brits with some Romani. (I’m 1 or 2 percent Romani) or distant descendants of Black Sea Germans (Eberhard from North Carolina!) and an occasional Pontic Greek.

2. I only know this because I have a twin who did his Y DNA and the one match had a Turkish name. J2A.. My 3^rd cousin match, a Turkish woman, is a stand-alone match, with no mutual matches. Her ethnicity profile mirrors my bio-father’s, though, suggesting to me Crimean Tatar roots. See Note 4. Bob Dylan, apparently has a similar ancestry.

3. I am almost certainly related to the Hemmerlings of Gimli, Manitoba. Are you?

Most Black Sea Germans were repatriated to Germany or Poland during WWII. As the borders changed during the war some had to go back to Russia. A few of these Germans lobbying to return to Germany had ‘mixed marriages,’ according to records kept by the Germans. The mates were mostly Russian, but quite often Moldavian (sometimes referred to as Gagauz, a kind of Christian Turk native to Romania) and but rarely Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian or Greek.

4. Ancestry doesn’t acknowledge Tatars or Crimean ‘journeys’ but on many other platforms the algorithms give me Crimean Mountain Tatar, at least way back. These people were a mix of Northern Italian (Genoa) Southern Italy and Greece, (Sicily), Allans (Persia) and Goths (Germany) with Nogai, as in Steppe Tatars who in turn have Central Asian and Mongolian. (I have all of these things 🙂 I have only one distant match with a tree totally from Crimea and, yes, the surnames are Tatar.

5. I have a cluster of family trees with people from a town called Hoffnungstal in Bessarabia (Odessa area). I also have a cluster in Galicia (Poland-Ukraine border)in a town called Bruckenthal. There was a trade route between these two areas and smack in the middle was a town called Botosani, Northern Romania, where I also have a tree match- a Jewish match with people who moved to Montreal. Yikes! (Any ideas? Contact me, please!)Added a week later: The immigration path of the Black Sea Germans in my trees seems to go from Baden area to Poland down to Galicia north of Lviv, around Moldova to that bit of Ukraine west of Odessa where Hoffnungstal and Kloestitz (my villages) are. The researcher says there were many long stops along the way. Works perfectly. Bruckenthal Rava Ruska is north of L’viv.

6. The Euripides play Iphigenia in Taurus speaks to this. Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, is saved from death by the goddess Artemis and hidden in the land of the Taurians (Crimea). The Greeks have a long history in Russia. Rich shipping families from the Aegean ran the grain trade there in the 1800s. Many of these rich Greeks assimilated into Russian society. At the founding of Odessa, that became a bustling multicultural economic center, there were already many Greek families, who often were the wealthiest citizens there. At one point the Mayor of Odessa was a Greek.(Odessa Recollected; The Port and the People. Patricia Herlihy. 2018 Boston)

7. According to one online source, the Asia Minor and Pontus Hellenic Research Centre at Chicago, Illinois: In the city of Samsun, where I very likely have some ancestors, 72 Greek community leaders were arrested and sentenced to death in 1921. Other Greek men were killed, imprisoned or conscripted into the army and the women and children sent into exile or deeper into Turkiye where they were forced to change their Greek surnames to Turkish ones.

8. Ancestry gives me no journey on the paternal side, but there is a function that allows me to see the journeys of my paternal matches. These include: all parts of Germany; Black Sea Germans/ Leibenthal Beresen Enclaves; Pontic Greek; Eastern European Roma; North Eastern Hungary/Slovak Border. (That’s on edge of Ukraine near L’viv.) I appear to be connected to Szekelers, a sect of Hungarians who moved to Northern Romania, Bukovina.

9. A. Pahl and Thompson. 1994. Family history was dangerous even for families who left for North America.

10. https://www.grhs.org/pages/Villages A concise list of Black Sea German villages. Many descendants of Black Sea Germans and of French Canadians mixed it up in the Dakotas or Western Canada later on, so I have hundreds of distant ‘unassigned’ matches with both these heritages.

11.https://providencemag.com/2017/09/forgotten-christian-history-turkey-review-byzantiums-empire-trebizond-book-review/

12. In 1954 Crimea was returned by the Russian Soviet Socialistic Republic to the Ukraine SSR. The Russians felt that the Crimea fit more naturally with them.

13. In Family Tree’s public Pontian Greek Y database, the vast majority of subscriber surnames are Russian. This appears to show the extent these people were absorbed into Russian society.

14. MDLP algorithm, that is supposed to be best for people of my bio-father’s ancestry, is unequivocal. I am Romanian. And sometimes a Romanian Jew or Gagauz (that’s the Turkish bit). Lots of Romanian Jews immigrated to Montreal. That would mean perhaps that my closest community is not Black Sea German but Danube Swabian, Wurrtemburg Germans who lived for generations in Romania, Serbia, until expelled after WWII.

This video says genetic studies prove Pontic Greeks are descendants of Ancient Greeks. Indeed, their mountain monasteries preserved elements of Ancient Greek culture long after Byzantium died out. Also, family history information was ‘encoded’ in their dress, the fabrics and patterns of their clothings, every day and ceremonial. Now, that ‘s interesting. Because of their cohesive social system and the make up of their terrain, Pontic Greeks in North Central and Northeast Anatolia largely resisted Turkish invasions.

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