Stepping back through time

One thing's for sure is that I love my family, no matter how overbearing my parents can be sometimes, no matter how of many times my sister annoys me. I love them. I was watching TV one time and the commercial for ancestry.com came up. This sparked an interest in me. I wanted to know the reason for my grandfather's death. My dad never told me how he died. My sister and I just thought it was of old age. Boy, was I told different.

When I was 14, my mom told me to do the laundry and I shot back "Why don't you do it?" my mom got really upset, maybe even angry. She asked. "How dare you talk back like that?"

What was told me that day came as a shock to me and my sister. My mom explained the difficulties of my grandfather adjusting to life in the Western culture. In Chinese culture, you could say that the oldest amongst the family was the one who had the "power". So if you had an older brother, well you better listen to him. But apparently in my grandfather's eyes, his grandchildren were not listening to him and weren't doing "proper" Chinese etiquette. It seems as so my grandfather didn't understand or didn't like the fact that his grandchildren were Canadianized.

During the summer I was curious, I decided to go to The Archives of Manitoba building located in downtown and typed in my grandfather's name in the Winnipeg Free Press archives search. There I found my grandfather's obituary. It didn't provide me the information I really wanted to know but it was still something.

However, it's amazing what you can find about people you hardly know and suddenly emerge with massive amounts of information. Although I think it's also sort of creepy in a way, but intriguing at the same time to find information about your family.