Today I am returning to Vancouver, five years on from my first visit, following in the footsteps of my Canadian cousin Jessie. This is not a holiday – it is the completion of my mission to honour the memory of this Victorian woman, the story of whose ordinary – and yet extraordinary- life I recounted in my book, SECRETS NEVER TO BE TOLD.
I expect the weather to be nearly as hot as it was on September 6, 2017, when I stood -in tourist mode- on Capilano Bridge in North Vancouver (as I describe in Chapter Nine of the book).
A few days previously, I had found Jessie’s first recorded home in Canada, in New Westminster, B.C. where she was working as a domestic servant in 1913.
On this second visit, I will meet up again with a few of those people who helped me with my quest. I will also be returning to Langley where Jessie made her home one hundred years ago and where she lived a quiet but hard life in a rural township, a world away from where she was born in Cambridge.
I will also be returning to the historic cemetery of Fort Langley, where Jessie was laid to rest in 1970. I was saddened by her unmarked grave, and it spurred me to rectify this disrespect to a woman who I did not realise until recently was a member of my family, and an illegitimate child like I was. I will be the first to inspect a new memorial to her.
Follow me day by day as I recount my journey, and post some photographs, both new and old.
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