The Toronto Manleys: Morris Manley, Dolly Sterling, and Mildred “Canada’s Greatest Child Vocalist”
From obscure origins to Vaudeville fame to the Blues — a musical family to remember.
biography
A Portrait of Uncommon Beauty
Beauty need not announce itself to be profound
In the Pursuit of Privet
Russians saying hello in my backyard, the curious link between cilantro haters and privet, and the intrepid Elizabeth Blackwell.
The Shady History of Our Family Tree: Our Norway Maple
Connecting George Washington, Jung, Micro-bursts, Fungal Tar Spots, Slavery, and Germanic Folklore
Maria do Espirito Santo Ferreira Rezendes (1895–1963)
An Azorean Life Remembered
Emalyn Smith Burney: An Endling
can’t go on. I’ll go on. — Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air Emalyn first came to my attention in a sensational newspaper article from the Berlin News Records, April 26, 1913 (now Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): He Died Again but Shock Killed his Grandmother Butte, California, April 26, 1913
When AI is Wrong: An Absorbing History of Paper Towels
There are a few things I would like to cover in this essay: * How alarmingly wrong AI can be * The actual history of the paper towel * Perhaps an unsung and hitherto unknown heroine in the story * Paper towels in the United States vs the rest of the world * Environmental impact
Doll and Ruby Easson: Twin Sisters and Endlings
A Tap on the Shoulder Damnatio Memoriae According to some authorities of history and population studies, about 117 billion people have been born on this earth. How many are forgotten? I would guess almost every single one; yet in my imagination, a few still stand and some still walk. In
John Collier: Florida Pioneer, Cracker and Polygamist
John Collier Sr. was certainly a fascinating man. A true Florida pioneer, he was the personification of a “cracker” — but in the positive historical sense (more on the “cracker” origin story follows). As we shall see, his personal relationships are legion and deeply tangled. Let’s call him “John” from
Biographies of "Ordinary" People
As some of you know, I write biographies and memoirs. Often they are focused on someone's ancestor; other times they are my ghostwriting of an individual’s recollections. Here is why I write this sort of thing and why I truly love memorializing stories of others. And, by
Sophia Holness: An Intrepid Woman, from a British Workhouse to Canada (1850–1922)
Here is another fascinating story of a real person whose story had been lost until now. Sophia is unrelated to me; she is the ancestor of a client. Born on June 2, 1850, in Blean, a village in Canterbury, Kent, England, Sophia Holness lived a long, eventful life. The civil
From Another Time: The Māori Voice of Albania
It was in the late summer of 1974. I had recently come to live in northern Italy, had not yet begun my final year of high school, and could not yet speak Italian. There were no English language television or radio programmes. I was sixteen years old, unhappy about my
Caterina Vizzani (AKA Giovanni Bordoni): A Transgender Life in the 1700s
Transgender issues are nothing new. Ancient Egyptians had gender bending rulers, as did many other ancient cultures. But let us explore an intriguing individual from the 1700s. Born female in Rome in 1719, Caterina Vizzani lived a short life, dying in Siena at the age of 24 years in June
St. Patrick Digging Up a Grave
Sometimes the Saints were… hmmm… jerks? St. Patrick is one of those saints that even non-Roman Catholics know to some extent. Perhaps most recall that he is the Patron Saint of Ireland, and that he drove the snakes out of that country. Some may know that he is the patron
Enheduanna: The First Known Author of All Time
The Triumph of Literature over Violence Enheduanna is the first author to sign her name to works of literature. She signed her name like this:𒂗𒃶𒌌𒀭𒈾 Think on it: The first and most significant literary event in all history — and it is a woman who first had the notion of appending
Eat your Heart Out Castaneda: The Canadian Origin of the Word Psychedelic
Back in what we might consider a more “conservative” decade it was a Canadian who, in 1956, coined the word “psychedelic”. The orthography took some time to settle, and in its early years it was sometimes spelled “psychodelic”. No longer quite so popular a term (see n-gram chart below), the
John Moore Perkins: The History of a Missionary in Liberia
From time to time I research and write histories about the ancestors or family members of various people. I am not personally related to John Moore Perkins, but I did write his biography for an individual who is part of his extended family. Perkins’ background and story is fascinating: John
The Marriage of the Dead and Capitalism at the Altar of Petroleum
Spiritualism and Capitalism certainly make for odd bedfellows. In the United States, both commercial oil interests and spiritualism were born at almost the same time and geographically close to one another. Both dealt with the unseen — the spirits of the departed and the rich resource buried deep in the ground.