Finally,
this section of the website provides some historical context
for the migration story of my family and gives some brief historical
details of the families' journey to Canada from the UK in the
mid nineteenth century and then from Canada to the UK in the
1960s.
The
Journey to Canada
A
vivid account of the journey has been preserved in the family
archives by my mother...
"It was about this time in the early fifties
that all the early fifties that all the descendants of John
Davidson, with the exception of his son Walter, emigrated
with their families to Canada. The voyage was long and tedious,
due to the fact they came by sailing vessels which took from
eight to ten weeks to cross the Atlantic. After landing at
Quebec they were forced to take smaller craft to Hamilton,
their final destination......After securing suitable farms,
they at once set to work to clear the forest and establish
homes for themselves. By dint of hard work and that splendid
community spirit which was evident on every hand, they soon
became quite independent. Yet in all the struggles and hardships
incident to pioneer days they did not forget to pass the
same on to their descendants. All honour to the memories
of those true-hearted, noble and God-fearing Highlanders
who came from Easter Ross!"
The
above extract from a letter by an unknown author found in the
papers of May Davidson,(my mother's grandmother) describes the
migration of the Davidson family from the Highlands of Scotland
to Canada. Despite the fact that when my Mother was born in 1937
in Canada, her family had been living in Canada for three generations,
the importance of Scottish roots was a dominant feature of her
childhood.
Click
on the audio panel below to listen to Janet describing this and
read the transcript below
"Nobody
talked about the old country, none of the people I ever knew
talked about having been in England or Scotland, but they were
very conscious that that's where they came from."
What
was the significance of being Scottish?
"Oh
God, it was the chosen race. There is no doubt about it that
we were brought up with a strong sense of pride that we
were, I mean we were so lucky to be Scottish. Because it was
part of my background,
it's hard to kind of realise how strong this was but I mean,
being Scottish was majorly important, absolutely
major..."
On
the Sturgis side, there was less emphasis on the family "roots" though
Jim's brother, "Bev" was named after "Beverley",
the town in Yorkshire where one branch of his Mother's family
had come from. On his maternal side Dad says the following:
"There
are actually two books on the subject, one that deals with
the emigration of the West family and they left Yorkshire
in the late 1820's and they settled in London township and
my Mother's Mother was a Patrick and they were actually from
Ireland, Protestant Irish from Tipperary. This is fully documented
in a book my cousin Calvin Patrick has written. There's quite
a bit known about that side of the family. My father used
to tease my Mother sometimes because she still had some Yorkshire
traits, for example used to refer to her brother as "our
Bill."
The
Journey to England
My
Mum and Dad left Canada for the first time in 1961. Mum describes
her desire to travel abroad in the following way:
"I
was very keen to leave Canada and see something of the world.
Many of the friends that we had at University came, there
were loads of us, we just sort of migrated because there
was no restriction on emigration. If you were a commonwealth
citizen you could just turn up in England and see how you
got on. I definitely wanted to go somewhere else. I wasn't
interested in studying and Jim was so our plan was that we
would combine the two."
For
my Dad, it was in part his studies which brought him to England:
"It
was partly a practial reason, I was doing historical research
and had to come to where the records were. Also, in 1961
when we came to the UK, it was an opportunity to have a different
experience...I hardly ever travelled more than a circumference
of 25 miles...so the idea of going to London was partly an
experience of let's see what it's like living in this huge
metropolis and then at the same time I'll study. Of course,
also some of my very good friends were here, people we'd
gone to university with....The University of Western Ontario
had quite a bohemian grouping in the 1950's including Graeme
Gibson, the husband of Margaret Atwood, John Hicks and Jim
Jensen..so we had quite a little colony of people from the
University of Western Ontario who were in London at that
same time."
My
Dad feels that migration is often brought about by a desire to
improve oneself and to learn and develop from experiencing a
different way of life:
"Success
may well be brought about by leading a settled life but it
may also be stimulated by moving family and home to completely
different surroundings - in this way our family experienced
a foretaste of the world that we are going to be living in."
This
sense of the over-riding importance of hard work and the need
to improve oneself through education can be seen throughout my
family history and very much reflects the pioneer spirit of my
ancestors which has been kept alive through the generations.