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The Family - In Search of Ourselves

FTLComm - Kelso - January 27, 1999
Editors Note - This is the first of several articles about a family. Though I will be using my own family the articles are intended to document and chronicle the nature of families and our questions about them. In time I hope to connect this family with those before them and those who have come after. In the back of his mind he no doubt that he was coming to Canada to seek his fortune or at least find for himself a better life. He grew up on an English farm not far from Sherwood forest and tales from his adventurous brother Jack about the opportunities in Canada lead him to send off some money to buy a farm in this great land. The family story is that Jack and the money were not to be found when Bob arrived in the summer of 1912. Be it luck or timing, but Bob was not aboard the White Star line's newest ship the Titanic that spring when it went down, but made his crossing of the Atlantic aboard another of the line's ships two months later and from Halifax made his way West. Little was told about his progress across the country but he arrived in Kelso without funds and spent his first night in the village sleeping in the station.

Andy McVicar lived a couple of miles East of the village and being the community minded guy he was, brought the young Englishman home to work as a hired man. Andy had come to Manitoba with his father and mother from Scotland and the moved into the Northwest Territories in 1883 with Andy homesteading near Kelso and his young brother Jack taking on a farmstead at Vandura. Their parent graves are in the Earlswood cemetery North of Vandura.