I said in my last 1911 Journal post that my partner and I would be visiting Ottawa in July. What I couldn’t say was, “As a matter of fact, we’ll be leaving for Ottawa in a few hours.” Unlike Facebook, where I can restrict postings to friends, anyone can surf in here, so I don’t announce when we’ll be away.

Anyway, when we heard that William and Kate would be visiting Ottawa for Canada Day, we decided to go. At the time, I didn’t know that Kate (the 1911 Kate!) and her family were buried at Beechwood Cemetery. As soon as I found that out, we added the cemetery to our Ottawa to-do list.

So, what did we see at the cemetery? Well, from the digital records, I had the section and lot numbers for Kate, C., their daughter, Kate’s parents, and her siblings (all 9 of them). Our first stop was the cemetery office, where we got maps of exactly where the plots were located. With those in hand, we headed to Kate’s location and saw this:

  

Yep, nothing. See that grassy area? That’s C. and Kate’s family plot. No markers. Nothing.

Two possibilities:

1. There were never any markers
2. The markers were flat stones and the grass has overtaken them

It was disappointing—and sad. Kate, C., and their daughter are all buried there, but there’s nothing. It’s as if they never existed.

We suspect that there were never any markers, only because the cemetery is well maintained and there are flat stones from the 1800’s in the same area. But we could be wrong.

Next we went to the main family plot, and that was quite the experience. When I first read Kate’s journal, I didn’t know who all the people were. She’d mention visiting this person and writing to that person, and so-and-so meeting her at the train station, but she never said who they were. Why would she? When you’re writing a journal, you’re not going to write, “Today I went shopping with my third-from-oldest sister Sue and my best friend Jill.” You don’t expect some stranger to read your journal one hundred years later.

I discovered who some of the people were when I was combing through the cemetery records. I’d think, “Oh, so Sue was her sister!” I glimpsed these people’s lives through Kate’s journal, so coming upon a tombstone with all their names was surreal. They existed!

Her mother died first, and that’s when the tombstone was placed. I learned that one of Kate’s brothers died in battle during World War I, sadly just six weeks before the armistice. He’s buried in France, but his name was added to the tombstone.

Kate lost one of her closest sisters in 1920, when the sister was only 42. That I already knew. It was poignant to see the sister’s name.

Two of Kate’s sisters lived into their eighties. One was on the tombstone. The other is also buried there, but her name was absent. She was the last sibling to die, and I guess nobody added her. She never married, and she was a registered nurse. I know this because I found her application to go overseas to serve during the First World War. She was also the sister who went on holiday with Kate in England. So again, someone who’s now dead without a trace, unless you know that she’s there.

Two of Kate’s brothers were buried not far away with their wives (and in one case, the children). Kate’s plot was the only one with no marker whatsoever. There’s probably a story there—but then, the writer in me sees stories everywhere.

I could tell you more about Kate and her family, but I’ll spare you the details. As the years march on, I’ll occasionally check to see if more records have become available, in the hope that I’ll learn more about her. For now, I think I’ve done all I can. I’d hoped to perhaps find other children when we visited the cemetery, but with no markers, the gravesite was silent.

We had a great time in Ottawa. We did see Will and Kate, when they arrived at the War Memorial, and as they travelled in the open carriage to Parliament Hill on Canada Day.

I posted a few photos from our visit on Facebook. If you’re already a friend, you may have seen them. If not and you want to friend me, feel free, but please tell me who you are in your friend request. You don’t have to give me specifics, just something like, “I read your blog,” so I know what the connection is.

Later.

Since Friday is a holiday (Canada Day) and I’ll be busy with my partner, I thought I’d post a couple of days early. If all goes to plan, Threaded Through Time, Book One will be available next week, so it’s time for the last post about Kate’s 1911 journal.

What  happened to Kate?

Canada has strict privacy laws, so finding out about Kate’s life after 1911 was a challenge. Despite that, I can tell you about a few significant events in her life, thanks mainly to death certificates and cemetery records. If those weren’t available, I’d know squat.

Here’s the last entry in Kate’s journal:

A blizzard on but anyway Mother & I went to church. The sherriff walked home with us after. C. & I sat around fire place after dinner. In evening we went over to Edgar’s. Home about 11. “Heard” New Year come in. — Sunday December 31, 1911

Kate was close to her mother. She frequently mentioned her mother in her journal and always spent time with her when she was home in Ottawa. Mother often accompanied Kate and C. when they went out.

Seventeen days after Kate wrote that last journal entry, her mother was dead.

It was sudden and unexpected. None of the entries in Kate’s journal even hinted at her mother being in bad health. According to the death certificate, the cause of death was apoplexy and the length of illness was half an hour. From that, I’m guessing that she had a stroke. What a terrible shock for Kate.

I next found trace of Kate in the passenger list for a ship that docked from Liverpool, England in September of 1912. One of Kate’s sisters was also on the passenger list, so they apparently went over for a holiday together. Kate must have given up her teaching job, but I don’t know if she finished out the 1911-1912 school year, or resigned when her mother died.

Next, a happy event! She married C. in October of 1912, so she returned from England just in time for her wedding (a couple of weeks beforehand, in fact).

After that, it’s a black hole until the sad news…

Kate died in 1932, at the young age of 45. The death certificate lists chronic interstitial nephritis as the cause of death, and the duration of illness as 10 months. Her kidneys failed, and there weren’t many options for treatment back then—no dialysis, no kidney transplants. It was quite sad to see C.’s name in the cemetery record as the one who reported her death.

Apart from teaching for that one year, Kate apparently didn’t use her degree, which wasn’t unusual. Most married women didn’t work. The death certificate lists her occupation as “Housewife.”

C. survived another 7 years until his death in 1939. He fell down a flight of stairs and died of shock. When I read his cemetery record, I discovered that Kate and C. had a daughter! Since pre-1910 birth certificates aren’t available to the public, I couldn’t find any children by searching births. If their daughter hadn’t reported C.’s death, I wouldn’t know of her existence.

I found their daughter’s cemetery record, and from that I can tell you that she was born in 1914. She was only seventeen when Kate passed away, and twenty-five when she buried C. She did marry and have a son (who reported her death). I’ll get back to this in a moment.

As part of my quest to find out what happened to Kate, I signed up for a free 2-week trial at ancestry.ca. Through the site, I was able to find birth and death certificates. I discovered where Kate and C. are buried through a search engine for cemetery records (yes, they exist!), but the search results didn’t tell me anything beyond that. I jotted down that both of them are buried in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa and figured that I’d found out all I could.

About a week into my free trial with ancestry.ca, I downloaded my email and had a bit of a turn when I saw an email with “Beechwood Cemetery” as part of its subject line. To be honest, even though it’s the National Cemetery of Canada, I’d never heard of it until a few days earlier when I’d done the cemetery search. The email was from ancestry.ca, saying that after much planning, etc., it was pleased to announce that the cemetery records for Beechwood Cemetery had all been digitized and were now online and available. I almost fell out of my chair! Talk about coincidence.

I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering cemetery records for Kate’s family. I have to say, it’s one of the more morbid, poignant, and thought-provoking afternoons I’ve spent in recent memory. Seeing members of her family fall one by one by one brought me face to face with my own mortality. It was an overcast, somewhat rainy day, and I remember gazing out the window and thinking about the cycle of life and death.

As I read through the records, I felt for one of Kate’s nephews. There was a period of 3-4 years during which he reported his aunt’s death, his father’s death, his mother’s death, his grandfather’s death…and then the kicker: I reached his cemetery record. I had to take a breather at that point and play with my cats for a while, just to be among the living for a bit.

The experience reminded me of a story that a childhood friend’s mother used to tell. She said, “The good Lord has a giant book that contains the name of everyone who’s alive today. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, what you do, or how much money you have, you’re in that book. The names are in random order, not in the order everyone was born. The good Lord sits in front of that book and runs His finger down the pages. When His finger passes over your name, you die.”

As I “turned” the pages of the Beechwood Cemetery record books, I remembered that story.

Getting back to Kate’s daughter, her son reported her death, and she’s buried with her parents. That made me wonder…was she separated or divorced, or had her husband predeceased her? If the latter, why weren’t they buried together? I couldn’t find a cemetery record for him, but I don’t know his first name.

Her son might still be alive. He has an unusual name, and I located someone of the right age in Canada. Was he the one who ended up with Kate’s journal and gave it to the second-hand bookstore? Or was the daughter’s husband still alive, ended up with her belongings when she died, and decided he didn’t want his mother-in-law’s journal? Probably none of the above, and we’ll never know. All I can say for sure is that I have the journal now.

A little bit of Kate will live on in the character of Margaret in Threaded Through Time. Margaret has a different personality, but some of the words she uses and the pastimes she describes are based on Kate’s journal.

Kate, C., their daughter (and perhaps other children), Kate’s parents, one of her sisters, and some of her other relatives are all buried in Beechwood Cemetery in the same general area. My partner and I will be in Ottawa in July, and we’ll visit their graves to pay our respects.

One day, the good Lord will run His finger over your name. So enjoy today, and don’t sweat the small stuff. Life really is too short.