The quest for roots

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@Transcontinental.ca

In 1922, bombs shook the Four Courts building in Dublin, Ireland, as Republicans hiding there to fight against the country's Provisional Government were forced to flee. Fire tore through the structure, consuming archives that included the testaments of any Irish person that had written one since the 16th century.

In 2007, it can be hard to imagine how a single fire during Ireland's Civil War affects St. Lazare resident Susan Love Robitaille. Sitting at a desk at the Quebec Family History Society library in Pointe Claire, surrounded by archives and collections of genealogical magazines from across the globe, her energy and enthusiasm for genealogical research can be seen in her bright smile and hands that gesticulate to emphasize the meaning of what she says. "Every piece of paper is a clue," she insists.

"You either have it or you don't," Love Robitaille says of her obsessive hobby to find her family's roots, even though her ancestral files were likely ravaged at Four Courts. After moving to St. Lazare three years ago from Ontario, locating English genealogical resources in Quebec was hard, until she found the QFHS. The society's library boasts databases that allow users to look up shipping records from various Irish ports from the 19th century onwards, for example. "Right now, we're on a project to record protestant cemeteries in Quebec," explains Gary Schroder, president of the society.

As a rule, it is easier to look up francophone, Roman Catholic ancestors in Quebec than it is to look up anglophone ones, Schroder says, since catholic churches kept records of all parishes since colonization.

Love Robitaille can attest. "I did my husband's family tree for him very easily," she says, and adds that she can even go back to 17th century ancestors in France. Though her lineage has not been easy to trace, she has been able to make progress. "I know that my grandparents knew their neighbours from Ireland," she says, so she tracked her neighbours when she had no success with her ancestors. Thanks to an obituary found in the archives of a local newspaper, the Belleville Intelligencer, Love Robitaille discovered they had come from Leitrim County in Ireland. "Now I'm looking for something that says my grandparents were from there as well," she says.

Love Robitaille says that the QFHS library has been helpful. Her family sometimes teases her about her hobby. "You're digging up dead people while you should be spending time with the living," her 93-year old grandmother tells her. However, members of the QFHS all have the obsessive knack for digging up the past that she does, she says. One look around the library can confirm this. Ten, large white volumes labelled "Smith" line a row on a bookshelf, a compilation tracing every single person with that last name that has lived in Quebec. In another room, a microfilm scanner allows one to bend over its magnifying glass for hours to pore over text from 300 year-old documents.

"There is a sea of curious, well-educated baby boomers out there," explains Gary Schroder of genealogy's recent popularity. "And modern technology is making it easier to look up your family," he says.

Love Robitaille, who also has Scottish roots, has had an easier time looking up that side of her family. "There was a will from the first immigrant (that came here)," she says, so she was able to work her way from there. Though she will not be able to do that for the Irish Loves, she will keep searching. Her fiery passion for the subject must burn stronger than the fire that consumed the archives all those years ago.

For information on the society, visit www.qfhs.ca.