Learning about yourself by exploring where you come from

by Kathy Buckworth

Finding out where you came from can be revealing, exciting, surprising or maybe even distressing. But following in the footsteps of your ancestors can prove to be a once-in-a-lifetime travel experience and can result in finding out even more about the relatives and the lives they lived, as they continue to shape your life today.

I’ve always known that my paternal grandfather was the Mayor of Canterbury in the 1960s-70s and as a child, I visited several times with my parents. I’ve been back a couple of times as an adult, most recently about six years ago, with two of my kids. We visited the site where the butcher shop he owned had once stood (it’s now a hair salon), and walked the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral, where my grandfather had once stood on the roof, looking for incendiary bombs during WWII, and throwing them off. He and my grandmother are both buried on the grounds.

But there’s so much more to explore in their history, and their grandparents, and beyond that, which I hope to do one day. Not to mention my maternal side, who came from Coventry, England. My parents immigrated to Canada in 1959.

Finding the mother’s identity

For women looking to travel down an ancestral road, losing the mother’s identity (through a change of surname at marriage) is a constant challenge. Besides that, in England, it wasn’t until 2021 that the mothers of the couple were named on their child’s marriage certificate, as the fathers’ names had been since records were kept. This made it nearly impossible to follow the lineage down the maternal line.

“If you only follow the maternal line, you’re missing half of your story”, says Fiona Mahoney, the Head of the Irish Family History Centre about tracing lineage in Ireland, as the “ancestry travel” trend heats up. Luckily in Ireland, the mothers’ names have been included since 1956. In Canada, the names of mothers were included as early as 1896 (Ontario), with the rest of the provinces adopting the policy in the early 1900’s. But that still allows for a lot of lost names, not just in these countries, but around the world.

This is just one hurdle for those looking to trace their family heritage and plan an Ancestry trip.

How to get started in ancestry travel

Mahoney is a genealogist who specializes in helping people to find their story, specifically for those of Irish heritage. But where to start?

“The best place to start is to find out when your relatives came to Canada,” she advises. “Civil records started to be kept in 1864, and the first census was in 1881.”

With census information, birth/marriage/death records and church records, you might be able to start piecing together a family tree.

Familysearch.org: If you have no idea where to start, Mahoney recommends going to the search engine FamilySearch.org (which is sponsored by the Church of Latter-Day Saints but does contain a broad record base).

Do you have Irish ancestry?

If you find that you are one of the 70 million people in the world who claim to have come from Ireland (which only has a population of 7 million today), visiting the EPIC Museum in Dublin will give you a good overview of the Irish diaspora over 1,500 years for background.

Narrowing down your personal search can be done through the Irish Family History Centre and working with a genealogist (like Mahoney) who will provide consultation and research, for a fee. (There are also online tutorials and courses available on their site.)

Mahoney had several famous Canadians discover and review their Irish roots, including Shania Twain and Justin Trudeau. Trudeau was traced back to the Earl of Bantry and has had seven times great-grandfathers who have attended Trinity College. In another successful search, she also unveiled three generations of cheesemakers, going back to the 18th century.

I submitted my DNA for testing with Ancestry.com, and to no surprise, I am about 98% English. I suppose that’s a little bit interesting, but what if I wanted to know more about my ancestors besides just what’s in our blood? Where did they live? How did they live? What did they do?

And no, I didn’t change my name when I got married, so I’m hoping future generations can trace their own past (including me) more easily.

Government resources are free and also helpful:

Library and Archives Canada (LAC): Free access to Canadian census records, military records, immigration records, and land grants. Access the records here.

Provincial Archives: Each province has its own archives with historical birth, marriage, and death records. Find Ontario here.

Pier 21 Canadian Immigration Museum: Immigration records for those who arrived in Canada by sea. Learn more here.

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