Niagara Falls - Page 9

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: North America; Published: 14 October 2023; Hits: 4229

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Niagara Falls is a short excursion from Toronto, an easy day trip.

Unfortunately, we got caught up in an interminable traffic queue, waiting to cross the US border, one car every ten minutes, or so it seemed. If I hadn't left the road and taken off over the grass we'd be there still (it was a fully insured rental).

We've both been to Niagara before, in pervious lives, and as we've just been to Victoria Falls (see here...) and earlier been to Iguassu (see here...), we knew what to expect. But we like big waterfalls, they still impress us, up close and personal.

In this case, it's a great lake pouring over a cliff. Spectacular. If you haven't been - go.

What didn't impress was the crush of people, pushing in front and waving an arm across the lens, pointing, just as you took a photo. The world is definitely getting ridiculously overcrowded. In the end, we didn't stay long and set out for Kingston, well before dark, ready for our drive to Ottawa the next day.

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The McKie Family

Introduction

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing. Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred. Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow.

The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world. This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.

I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's. Yet I can't name half a dozen of them. But I do know one was called McKie. So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.

In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors. Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne. Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.

My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website.

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