Oh yeah? Well my granddaddy's Martin Luther!

I was invited to go to my cousin Les' birthday yesterday, so that was where I was. Did you know that I had a cousin Les? That makes two of us.

He was 60 years old yesterday, and we all celebrated with his kids and grandkids, none of which I had previously met. I must say that I'm so glad to finally know that I have some people in my extended family that I think I might actually like.

The real reason why I was there though was because my father's cousin said that she had written a book about our family and had traced the "matrilateral" line all the way back to 1066 and Admiral Nelson. Frankly I think it's all bullshit because first of all, there's no such thing as a "matrilateral line" and second of all, the matrilineal line is almost impossible to trace because women get married and change their names.

Not to mention, just because someone's last name was Nelson doesn't mean that we're all related to the one that's famous, as much as it would be nice to think that I'm related to Admiral Nelson, Nelson Mandella and Horatio Hornblower (who happens to be a fictional character). The sad and often ignored truth is that all we've ever been is nobodies, but cousin Bernice likes to exaggerate a lot.

Thus, she's a 'school psychologist' even though schools in BC don't have them, she's travelled the world even though really she was a snowbird for three years and she wrote a book about the 'matrilateral line'.

In her world book means four pages of poorly formatted text, photos and convoluted descriptions, including some random people who I'm not sure we're related to.

If anyone is actually interested in my family history, my grandparents wrote a 300 page book on it and it's in both the Burnaby Public Library and the National Archive of Canada. It's called Up the Creek Without and it's red. Skip the chapters my grandma wrote. They're boring.

But not all was lost. We have pictures now, including the famous picture of Pappy:



He sailed the Great Lakes, and then the Great Slave, and then all around BC. Either he was born under a wandering star or he used to piss people off all the time. Either way, it's a great picture, I think.