A Cemetery Crawl

I don’t know why, but I just love wandering through cemeteries.  So much history and so many stories behind all those gravestones!  But most of the time, there’s no way to discover what those stories are.

However, at the O’Keefe Ranch a few days ago, the cemetery was mostly of the folk who had lived and died there, so a little internet research (don’t you just love the way we can find almost anything we want to know……)

Cornelius O’Keefe was born in Ontario in 1838, came to British Columbia in 1862 following the Gold Rush trail.  He didn’t make his fortune in gold, and went on to construction work, helping to build the town of 115 Mile House.  In the 1860’s he purchased cattle in Oregon and brought them back to the Okanagan in BC where he preempted land with his partners (Thomas Greenhow stayed with O’Keefe to work the land, establish a general store, post office and stage depot).

O’Keefe established a relationship with a local native woman, Rosie, with whom he had two children.  In 1877, he returned to his hometown of Fallowfield, ON and married Mary Ann McKenna, with whom he had 9 children.  In 1899 Mary Ann died, leaving 8 living children from the ages of 6 through 21.

In 1900, O’Keefe at age 62, married again in his hometown, to Elizabeth Teresa Tierney, who was but 23 years of age.

Elizabeth and Cornelius had 6 children, the youngest born when he was 76 years.  Elizabeth outlived Cornelius by only 10 years, living only to age 52.

Judging by the headstones, only Elizabeth’s children are buried in this cemetery, and I’m unable to discover much about most of them.

Interesting that ‘Mary’ is part of each of the girls names!  All of these gravestones appear to be fairly new, and I assume replaced the original, and possibly not in the original places.

John Joseph ‘Tierney’ was the youngest son, and with his wife (yet another) Mary Elizabeth ‘Betty’ he worked to ensure the preservation of the ranch, and so we can still visit it today.

Cornelius’ partner Thomas Greenhow is also buried here – but I’ve been unable to learn anything of his history or his family if he had any.

Few other graves are marked here, and include some with just a simple cross and no indication of the person buried there.

Happy crawling!    (This is just for you, sis!)                  Blessings, Peg

Blogathon Started

Yesterday!

What a great way to meet other Canadian bloggers!  We got started with BC, and I’m grateful to have been included on the list of BC bloggers!

Today, we move to the Maritimes.  If you want to meet some new quilting bloggers in Canada, click on the link on my right sidebar.  Every day a different region for the week, and lots of give-aways right along with it

Have fun, make new friends!   Happy blogathon!    Blessings, Peg

Breaking the Silence

It’s been over a week since my last post, and I thought it was time I let you all in on what’s been going on since then.

We arrived in Alberta last week Tuesday, and have spent most of our time since then with our children and granddaughter.  We even got a morning of babysitting!

An afternoon BBQ had all of us – Grizz and me, three children and their spouses and our granddaughter all in one place at the same time!  Nothing warms this mother/grandmother heart more!

And here they are:

LV was just about ready to head for bed when we took this picture.

And as you can see little Eli will be joining us soon.  We don’t know yet boy or girl, but one thing we do know for sure, there’s a baby there.

In between our family times, we spent a day at the Calgary Highland Games.  Grizz was judging, I was score-keeping, and DS-J was competing.  The evening before the Games, we were treated to dinner at Big T’s BBQ and Smokehouse.  Huge platters of food

More than we could eat at our end of the table:

But the big guys polished it off for us.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me (a police incident at the hotel precluded us from returning to our room to get our things before heading out to the Games – now that was interesting!), so have no pictures of my own to share.  I pulled a couple of pics from FB of our DS-J competing elsewhere recently.  This first one is just after he’s tossed the hammer (14 or 22 lb.) about 100 feet out into the field.

This next one is as he has ‘picked’ the caber and starting his walk before he tosses it:

I see that Lynn has copyrighted these pictures, so hope I’m not breaking any laws in sharing them with you (they were on FB after all).

Then we had a day for us to do our ‘tourist’ thing, and we headed out to the Bar U ranch – I’ll share pictures and stories from there in a separate post.

Today it’s pouring rain, so we’re having a bit of a lazy day indoors, will probably do some cleaning as we’ll be parking the trailer for the winter when we get home.

It’s been a great vacation time, full of travel, sight-seeing, relaxing, family and fun.

Happy travels!                 Blessings, Peg

Quilting with Love

As all quilters know, quilts are made with love.  Sometimes it’s love for the craft, but I think more often than not, it’s love for the recipient.  For me, personally, as I’ve become a more confident quilter, it’s the love for the person who will use the quilt that drives me more than just creating.  Sometimes a quilt starts ‘just because’ but then I discover a person or a purpose, and the creation is that much more special for me.

Today on FB, this little vignette was posted, from the National Film Board of Canada.  Follow this link to watch it – I’m sure it’ll bring tears (of love) to your eyes as it did mine.

Blessings, Peg

Score!

Our very last stop on the trip home was at my parents’ new place.  There was a few things they needed some help with, including stacking their washer/dryer.  It was good to see them settling in, and getting things sorted out.

We scored big time there as well.  The apricot tree in the back yard was literally dripping with fruit (they had to toss several boxes that had fallen on the ground and started to rot).

The guys picked and handed down their small containers for me to put in the boxes – we brought home about 40 lb, and that made only a small dent in the tree.

And we’ll be eating apricot preserves and jam all winter:

The other score there was another baby quilt that a friend made, this one for little Eli:

Perfect colors for the baby’s room.

Happy pickin’s                           Blessings, Peg

PS – now that we’re home for a while, I plan to spend the time this week catching up on your blog posts, see what I missed while we’ve been away.

We’re Home

Sometimes it feels almost like we haven’t been away, as coming home, we’re plunged right back into the regular busyness of life.

But first, a couple more photos to share.

As we left Bar U Ranch a few days ago, we drove a portion of the Cowboy Trail:

Apparently named because it winds its way through much of Alberta’s ranchlands:

This isn’t the first time we’ve driven parts of this route.  And not the first time that we’ve seen this:

Either cowboys don’t wear cowboy hats anymore, or they so like their cowboy hats that other caps only get to top fence posts!

But the views of the prairies with the mountain backdrop – breathtaking:

And then a few days later, we headed west again, and once again stopped just to enjoy the mountains as they got closer:

As much as we enjoy our road trips, there’s a certain risk in heading out there and we have to stay alert for what other drivers may decide to do.  Over and over again we see drivers passing at risky times, cutting off other drivers, ignoring rules of the road – and then we saw this:

This wasn’t a ‘new’ accident, and there was no evidence of people needing help, but it’s truly a worry on these roads as you can never know what’s around the corner.  Hopefully this trucker came out of this okay!

Since we arrived home 2 1/2 days ago, we’ve hardly stopped.  First there’s the job of emptying and cleaning the trailer, opening up the house again, getting laundry done…..

Then on Saturday morning we joined our DS-K as he opened the door to his new home for the first time:

He knew what we’d find inside, at least some of it, but we didn’t.  This was a bank foreclosure, and the previous owners weren’t the cleanest.  It was a shock to pull out the fridge and stove and washer.  First task – pull out all the carpets.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for her) DDIL-M was unable to be there for this as she’s back at school in Edmonton for her last year.

Sunday we returned to help continue the job of making this house live-able.  It was determined that the stove and dishwasher were not keepers, and they were sitting in the carport when a junkman just happened to drive by.  He took the appliances and a few other small bits of metal, and will return to get the freezer (really, really not useable).  How handy was that?!

There’s a lot of work ahead, and after a morning appointment, we’ll go back again to give some more help.  There’s plumbing and electrical to address, as well as paint and then replace flooring.  First up – make the kitchen and bathrooms use-able, clean up the living room and one bedroom.  Once that’s done, K can move in and they can work on the rest of it one step at a time.  A couple of positives: the roof is good for another 20-25 years, and most of the windows are newer thermo-pane.  Actually once it’s cleaned up, mostly esthetics will make this home very desirable.

So, there’s no just sitting around for us – gotta get busy!!!!

Happy busy times!                          Blessings, Peg 

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