Canada – Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Queenstown personal connection

Cobh Heritage Center

April 5, 2021April 2, 2021 MichaelStephenWills12 Comments

The Irish Free State was four months old when my then 35 year old Grandfather and Grandmother boarded the S.S. Montnairn out of Belfast. My mother, two months short of three years of age, accompanied them on this voyage to a new life as Canadian citizens. This slideshow is a mix of images from the Cobh Heritage center and my personal genealogy materials.

Call for Irish Emigration, this for Idaho. My grandfather answered a similar call, returning in 1926 for his wife and daughter.

Bullet Dodge Series 7

Oh Canada!!

May 6, 2020April 25, 2020 MichaelStephenWills7 Comments

Several times in the “aughts” (2000 – 2009) Pam and I visited Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for work. We’d leave on a weekend to enjoy some personal time before the appointments.

It is sad, I could find no photographs of Ottawa to share with this post. We loved the European feel of the city.

Our exposure to the Canada pavilion was a walk by at sunset on the way to our Japan dinner reservation.

Click photograph for larger image. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

This building is very much like the Chateaus of Ottawa on the river Rideau and Ottawa rivers.

Christmas Ornaments 2018 VI

December 23, 2018December 20, 2018 MichaelStephenWills12 Comments

The past summer, the first of my retirement, my early morning hours were spent on Ancestry.com researching our family histories to bring this process, started 2013 in preparation for our tour of Ireland, to a point where I can start to consolidate it into a document shared with other family members.

It is a wonderful feeling when the pieces come together. For example the passenger manifest when Grandfather McArdle brought Grandmother and then three year old Mom to Quebec, Canada from the port of Belfast April 1926.

Outside the exhibits there was this collection of authentic emigration trunks on a hand cart.

My father’s trunk from the war was stenciled with his name. A. Lett. took such care marking this suitcase, blocking out the black ground for the carefully hand written white letters.

Their belongings are gathered together in just such a manner. My parents marked all my belongings that left the home with me with my name and address.

Our thought were on this when we selected this suitcase marked with the shamrock from a “Christmas Store” along the streets of the Pennsylvania town of Jim Thorpe, as the memory of our ancestors our exploration of Ireland.

Click this photograph for my Fine Art Photography gallery

Click this link for the first “Christmas Ornaments 2018” post.

Click this link for another post about Cobh, Ireland, “Annie Moore and her Brothers.”