Category Archives: Family Story

A Love Affair with Lovedale

In an earlier post I mentioned Dad’s long journey to school every year (boat from Rangoon to Calcutta, then three days on a train to Lovedale.) He told me that despite the strict discipline he had had the time of his … Continue reading

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School’s Out For Summer

Just like everything connected with my Dad’s childhood, his school experiences were not remotely like mine or anyone else that I knew. First of all, his long ‘summer’ holiday was from December to early March. This was the so called … Continue reading

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The Trek of the Great-Aunts

My family came to Canada when I was very young, so I did not have the usual extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins, although I was lucky to have my maternal grandmother living with us. I think because I … Continue reading

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Being a Minus can be a plus

We have a very unusual family name: Minus. My father always explained it to people, “It used to be Terminussian but no one could pronounce that so they used the two middle syllables. It’s Armenian.” The ancestors dropped the “ian” … Continue reading

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Discovering Coffee Grove

In my last post, Attacked by a Peacock I ended with my desire to see where and how Dad had lived in Rangoon. By the time the opportunity to visit Burma came, he had been in a nursing home for … Continue reading

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Attacked by a Peacock

Photograph by Rina Caffarella Another of my favourite tales from Dad’s childhood was “How I Was Attacked by a Peacock.” My experience of peacocks then was limited to the handful of bedraggled birds in the local park, pinioned so they … Continue reading

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One time we were so poor…

  When I was growing up I liked to hear my Dad tell stories about his childhood in Rangoon, Burma. He was not a natural storyteller, nor an imaginative man, so his stories were always the same, with the same … Continue reading

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