My great great grandparents,

the William Ansteads.

(Corning, California, c 1903)

The experience of being raised by a grandmother on her second marriage to a man who’d been married twice before, siring children each time, left me genealogically bewildered, but here’s what I’ve been able to patch together from a box of old photographs passed along by my mother.

My great grandparents

William and Emma Warder.

(Bruce Peninsula, c 1905)

Mom at her

Grampa Warder’s farm

near Lion’s Head.

Carl was the

first of Bert

and Margaret’s

children,  then my

mother, Edna,

then Ross.

(above)

Mom and her

Aunt Elsie Warder near Lion’s Head,

circa 1918

Sisters Ida Jane

and Margaret.

Bert Warder and Margaret. (circa 1910)

Young Margaret (w/necklace) would become my maternal grandmother, the woman who raised me. 

(right top)

My mother,

front and center, in what could

easily be mistaken for an out-take from The Little Rascals.

(right middle)

Mom & Ross

flanked by their

Owen Sound

cousins, 

the Abbots.

(right bottom)

Probably taken in

Wiarton, Ontario,

circa 1928.

Gram’s marriage to Bert

didn’t last and when the children were grown, she trained as a teacher and taught on White Cloud Island

in Georgian Bay.

Among her pupils were Don and Dan Anderson, sons of Hugh and Olive. That’s Hugh with the pipe (above) and Gram at his side. She would remain there.

Hugh & Mom

Ross  Gram  &  Mom

Uncle Ross

(back right) was

working in Northern

Ontario. (The

Dionne Quintuplets

pictures on the

wall suggest this

photo was taken

in the late 30’s

early 40’s)

Around this time,

my mother met my

father, Andrew

Dickson, in Toronto.

He had a Scottish

accent and was

well-mannered.

Young Edna

was impressed.

She introduced

Andrew to her mother

and Hugh who, by

now, had left White

Cloud Island and were

running a small

tourist/ fishing

business

in Meaford.

They married in July 1938 and I would be born two years later, by which time World War II had begun and my father was in England with the Canadian forces.

Mom & Gram

Mom & Gram

Carl & Bert

my mother

Hugh, White Cloud Island

my father

Carl

Edna

Ross

Her mother

liked him, too.