Who are you the past whispered? I wasn't sure. Born in Montreal to French - Irish parents and moved to America at age 4, I wasn't able to connect with my roots. The past whispered again and I began my search. The search for my elusive great-grandparents took me to County Cavan, Ireland, northern France and Belgium. The Past Whispers...
Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday," (or actually Fatty Tuesday if you translate directly). It celebrates the last day of "sinful living" before the Lent period begins for Christians. The tradition of partying before Lent is nothing new. It actually has its roots in Medieval France where alcohol and gluttony were considered sinful so in order to prepare for the lent period people would go all out and binge- kinda like pigging out before you go on a diet right before the diet actually begins. Mardi Gras festivities started in North America when French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his crew sailed to present day Louisiana under the orders of King Louis XIV. Iberville entered the mouth of the Mississippi river on the evening of March 2, 1699. Meanwhile another French explorer, La Salle, claimed all the land along the Mississippi river for France and called it Louisiana. d'Iberville went on to found Mobile, Alabama in 1702 and declared it the capital of French Louisiana (comprising numerous present day states). The first Mardi Gras celebration (one could say party) was organized in 1703. The celebrations took place each year without fail and the first informal mystic society, or krewe, was formed in Mobile in 1711 (the Boeuf Gras Society). More French settlers arrived from France AND other French possessions e.g. the Acadiens (say it fast and you get 'cajun') from Canada and French from Saint Domingue (modern day Haiti) and they all brought their own brand of Mardi Gras to La Louisiane. It has definitely evolved over the years! -courtesy Americans of French Descent
Researchers drawing from a vast data set of Quebec church records from the 17th and 18th centuries say the steep population jump in New France may have been prompted by an unlikely category of people: grandmothers. The data shows that the closer in geographic proximity a woman lived to her daughter, the more children her daughter was likely to have — and the more likely those children were to survive...more
The Census of the Prairie Provinces, 1926 (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta). Other Census years of the Prairie Provinces include the 1906 and 1916. The national government of Canada has taken censuses every ten years since 1871 and every five years since 1971. The 1871 census covers the four original provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. The first coast-to-coast census was taken in 1881. Newfoundland was not part of Canada until 1949. For Newfoundland, there are few, found 19th-century censuses that list names. They mostly contain statistical summaries. These censuses list a large quantity of the population in the areas surveyed. However, portions of some have been lost, and some areas within the provinces were missed by the census takers. To Browse This Collection You can browse through images in this collection by visiting the browse page for Canada Census. 1926.
