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"Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to   get back to.” 

- John Ed Pierce 

Chloe Straw

Chloe is the daughter of Margaret Rose Gilmour,  the granddaughter of John Gordon Gilmour, and the great-granddaughter of James Gilmour. 

I was actually searching for the announcement of Chloe's recent engagement (to Jules Molloy) but instead found this article published in the University of Victoria's "Ring" newspaper.)  

April 2005 · Vol 31 · No 4

Chloe’s excellent adventure

 

A co-op student fundraises her way to a work term in Costa Rica

 by Lynda Hills

 

Straw

Funding your own trip to work overseas and bringing money to a project can be a challenge, but UVic arts and writing co-op student Chloe Straw found a way to do it.

 

Straw wanted to work and travel, so she conducted research on organizations that were involved in overseas community development, and settled on one in Costa Rica called Youth Challenge International (YCI). Then she set to work.

 

The fee for three months in Costa Rica was $3,535, which covered building materials for the project. Straw took a multi-faceted approach to fundraising. Starting off with family assistance, she branched off to canvassing local businesses for support. Next, she networked with friends and contacts on campus and hosted a ‘Battle of the DJ’s’ event at Felicitas, which included a dance team performance. She then undertook a campus-wide bottle drive.

 

To help with her travel expenses Straw applied for, and won, the Graham Branton Endowment Fund. The $750 award supports co-op students who volunteer for placements overseas.

 

During her first five weeks in Costa Rica, Straw helped re-locate a retaining wall at a children’s rescue centre in Vista Azul. “It was pretty intense,” she says. “I’d never had such a physical task, but the kids who lived there were our continued motivation.”

 

Straw’s second project took her near the Panamanian border and an eco-lodge called Casa Calateas in the small town of Carbon Dos. The group built a green filter to clean grey water coming from the kitchen and filter it into the jungle. They also built roads to improve the lodge’s accessibility and painted the lodge buildings.

 

As part of both projects Straw taught English to local communities, and while at Casa Calateas, she organized a conference for women and youth.
Straw believes the experience was important for her career goals and is now looking into a postgraduate program in international management.

 

“I learned not to put limits on my own expectations because I did things on this project that I didn’t think I would even attempt to do,” she says. “It was easily the best thing that I’ve done.”

Jan and Dad, Summer 2009

Here's Janet (named after our grandmother, Janet, wife to James) and Dad out for dinner in Vancouver, August, 2009. 

We were visiting with Tom and Laurie Henry (Tom's grandfather, William, was our grandfather James' brother; Tom's Mom was Dad's cousin - which makes Tom Dad's first cousin once removed (because they are from different generations) and makes Tom our second cousin (because we share great-grandparents but not grandparents). 

Got that? Whatever the relationship, it's been very nice for all of us getting to know another branch of the Gilmour family - Tom is responsible for most of the genealogical digging and many of the photos I've posted so far. 

Cath [sister to Elizabeth, John Callaghan's wife (John is also Dad's cousin; his Mom, Helen, was James' younger sister)] was visiting from England and also came out to eat - will ask Jan for a photo of all of us together. 

Sometimes a Great Notion - Canadian Style

James and John Gilmour trained as foresters at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1950 thanks to the free university education that the Canadian government offered to WW II veterans. 

While the twins were lucky enough not to have shipped overseas, they both took advantage of the free post-secondary education.  

This picture shows James Gilmour (left front wearing a floppy hat) and several other forestry students working somewhere near Cranbrook, BC, in about 1948 (presumably a summer job before they graduated in 1950). 

The young men were cruising Christmas trees for various operators wanting to harvest them. 

(Postscript - to James' left, you can just see  the head and shoulders of Roy Flannigan - he went on to become a Park Superintendent for Parks Canada; many, many years later, I worked in the Northwest Territories and became friends with his son, Brian - small world, eh?).

Imagine - A Stirling Streetscape

Blink once and imagine away all the cars. 

Blink again - make the road into a cobblestone street and the streetlights into gas lamps. 

Blink a final time and see the Gilmour boys, James, George and William, strolling home from school through Stirling-town.  

The Wallace Monument

During Tom Henry's March 2008 visit to Scotland, he took some photos in Stirling.  One of them (see photo above) is a view across the valley to the Wallace monument - if you "click" on the photo to enlarge it, you will see the Wallace monument on the hill known as Abbey Craig. 

The photo at the end of this post clearly shows the details of the monument to William Wallace. 

Just this evening, Dad told me that his father, James (our grandfather) told him that our great-grandfather William worked as a mason on the monument - it may have been the reason William moved to the Stirling area (the monument was mostly finished by 1869 but perhaps there was still work to do around the site?  So, Tom Henry's hunch seems to be correct. (Some time ago, Tom sent a letter to the Masons Grand Lodge in Stirling to ask if they have records of the names of the masons who worked on the monument.  They don't, but they told Tom that if William was a mason, there is a very good chance he did work there as hundreds of masons were employed in building it.) 

The Wallace Monument is situated on the top of Abbey Craig, a volcanic crag, overlooking the river Forth and the Forth Valley. This Craig at one time was the site of a hill fort, and in 1297, William Wallace camped there to watch the gathering of the army of English king Edward 1, just before Wallace defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.  

The design of the monument is in the Scottish "Baronial" style and represented a Scottish medieval tower, rising from a courtyard, with a representation on the top of the Crown Royal of Scotland. 

The monument is 220 feet high, 54 square feet at its base, with the tower 36 square feet. The walls are 16-18 feet at their thickest; more than 30,000 tons of stones used in the construction. The monument is open to the public - visitors climb the spiral staircase (246 stairs, so be prepared) to the viewing gallery inside the monument's crown -  the prize? A spectacular view of the Ochil Hills and the Forth Valley. 

To see more pictures and learn a little bit about the history of the monument, you can visit this website: 

 

http://www.nationalwallacemonument.com/

Riversdale, Saskatoon

The Gilmour family home in Saskatoon (see posts under 428 Avenue E South) was located in the district of Riversdale - here is a brief history of the community:  

Saskatoon’s earliest Euro Canadian settlement, a pioneer temperance colony, developed on both the east and west side of the South Saskatchewan riverbank.

In 1890, the railway established a depot on the west side of the river; soon after the Saskatoon settlement split off into two separate villages. The west side was incorporated as the Village of Saskatoon in 1901 and the east side of the river changed its name to Nutana. The name Nutana, many say, is a result of reversing the spelling of Saskatoon.

A third settlement, Riversdale Village, located just west of the railway tracks, was incorporated on January 16, 1905 after people residing across the tracks from of the Village of Saskatoon petitioned the Commissioner of Public Works to have the area incorporated.

In 1906, with the promise of a Traffic Bridge, the Village of Saskatoon amalgamated with the Villages of Nutana and Riversdale to become what is now known to be the City of Saskatoon. Soon after Saskatoon became the fastest growing city in the west.

In Riversdale, many of the buildings built during the Saskatoon’s Boom period of 1900-1912 remain, adding unique character to today’s main business and shopping district.

The multi-cultural quality of Riversdale was established early; during the boom, immigrants of British, Ukrainian, German, and Chinese decent settled in the Village of Riversdale. Today, as in the past, Riversdale is host to a mosaic of cultures.

There are some wonderful old pictures of Riversdale posted on the website where I found this historical information - visit the site below to get some taste of what the community must have been like during the early years when the family had just arrived from Scotland.

http://www.riversdale.ca/walkingtours.php