Digging deep and leaning in ♥️
Reflections on a month-long trip to revisit my roots. 🌳
By going home, I understood I was returning to my roots. But I didn’t anticipate just how deep I’d be digging, that by touching those roots I would come to a new understanding of my own existence.
A summertime visit home had been on the calendar for months. By “home” I mean the places where my husband and I were raised — Alma/Québec City and Ottawa, respectively — where our parents and some siblings still live.
But that trip evolved into one I couldn’t have pictured or scripted from the outset. That visit “home” would stretch me in directions I’d never gone before.
Back in May, a month prior to leaving, I was out for a bike ride with my husband and the wheels in motion sprang the idea of me meeting my mother in Winnipeg before meeting him and the kids in Ottawa. My mother was travelling there to the roots of her own life, where she and my dad were born and raised, to celebrate her sister’s 80th. I felt like I was supposed to be there, to share the experience with her, visit the Ward family cottage, and see aunts, uncles and cousins from both sides. I had this sense that one day I would know why.
I also had some genealogical research in mind that would one day require me to go to Winnipeg, so this was the perfect opportunity. Much of this centres around my mother’s father, Herbert William Moore. Herbert was tragically orphaned as a baby. His very existence, from what we could tell, had been a miracle. My great grandfather, Herbert Sr., had battled cancer (and the draconian treatments of the day) and died six months before his son was born. His mother, Jeannie, died of a perforated ulcer in the year after. This is about as much as I was ever told about his origins and ancestry.
But it dawned on me one day that with all of my other genealogical research, as well as the work I’ve been putting into my documentary film, I could use the same tools to find information about Herbert and his parents. What this has looked like is asking questions of family members, searching through census reports and immigrant ship manifests, digging through archival material and reading from contemporary sources. My research on Herbert has begun to pay off by way of a story that has crystallized into the seed of a much bigger idea — one I’m excited to share with you as it progresses.
What brought me to Winnipeg was the opportunity to “visit” Herbert’s parents at Brookside Cemetery (he is also buried there) and retrieve some of their handwritten letters from my aunt. I asked my mother if she’d ever visited their graves, and she said she didn’t even know where they were buried. With their plot numbers safely stowed in my phone, I took the bus from Banff to Calgary where I was speaking at an event the evening before I flew to Winnipeg. I would reunite with my mother at the airport and from there we’d drive to Brookside Cemetery before setting off for the cottage in Gimli.
And so it was, there in Calgary, that the music suddenly changed, that everything I would encounter in the month to come (and beyond) would be met with a layer of profundity and surreality I never, in a million years, saw coming.
A friend picked me up in Calgary and we drove for a few minutes, chatting about my bus ride before she pulled over to make a quick stop on the way to her house. When she returned to the car, her face told me something was wrong. The moment she closed the car door she didn’t stall in telling me why.
“Something awful has happened,” she said. “It affects me and it will affect you, too.” I appreciated her forthrightness and steeled myself for whatever came next. “Nat died in a plane crash yesterday. I found out just minutes before I picked you up.”
Natalie Gillis, a good friend, and for those of you who have been following Wildflowers, a key cast member and our expedition photographer on the Maligne River Valley trip. This was a devastating personal loss and tremendously impactful for all who knew her — including the strangers impacted by her actions when it seems she piloted the failing plane towards a wooded area to avoid residential homes and other busy areas. (An investigation is underway as to the cause of the crash.) With the film in its final stages in the editing room, with just one month on the clock before it was due for its first festival entry, the timing was incredulous.
She and I had planned to hike backcountry trails from Lake Louise to Banff next month.
The next morning I flew to Winnipeg, tears rolling down my cheeks as we took off and I absorbed the horrifying reality of Nat’s final moments. I shook with more tears as my mother and I embraced at the airport. With the turn of events, I considered not going to Brookside — did I really feel like going to a cemetery today? — but then realized I likely wouldn’t have time during the rest of my stay in Winnipeg. So, as shaky as I felt, off we went in search of Herbert Sr. and Jeannie.
Entering Brookside, one of the largest cemeteries in Canada, we consulted the map to find the historic Section D, where we could look for Herbert and Jeannie’s plot numbers. We made our way around the various loops until we found a place to park nearby. Approaching on foot, we noticed how wet the section was, more flooded than all the sections around it. We began our search around the perimeter where we didn’t need to step into the mosquito-infested and submerged areas. Nothing. I began scanning dates more closely hoping that Herbert and Jeannie might be found alongside grave stones laid at a similar time, but this section of the cemetery all seemed quite random. None of the graves were laid out in rows as I’d seen in other historic cemeteries. Instead, there were clusters of family members scattered all over, tree roots hiding grave markers, other markers sinking so low in the grass they would require a spade to uncover them. Many headstones had fallen over.
I methodically worked my way through the submerged sections, plunging my flip flops into the water and parting leaves to see what lay beneath. Mosquitoes ate at my arms and ankles as I worked my way side to side and around trees, and back again when I felt like I had missed something.
I had never considered I wouldn’t be able to find Herbert and Jeannie. But with the state of this part of the cemetery and the recent rainfall, I never did. Here I was, so close to my forgotten family for the very first time and I couldn’t pinpoint where they lay.
Before I officially gave up, I took a moment to gaze at Section D from the road, to take in the area where they were buried. I thought of how, without them and the miracle that was my granddad, I never would have existed. I thought of Natalie and how she had joined them in the realm of the dead. I thought about our origins, of the tragedies that befall us and how these shape our lives. Later, through the collection of letters my aunt had acquired, I would read my great grandfather’s words about the ordeal to treat his cancer through serums and surgeries and bone transplants — many of them scrawled illegibly while his writing hand was bound up in a sling.
Standing there in that flooded cemetery, on the heels of receiving some of the most tragic news my life has ever brought me, I asked some of the most pressing existential questions a human can come up with.
I pulled out a strand of hair and let the light breeze carry it into the flooded gravesites before me. That way, a small part of me could join them there.
The next month saw me returning to the land where my own roots went deep: the Ward family cottage in Gimli, where a quick sniff upon entry brings a cascade of some of my most formative memories, and my childhood home in Kanata with the hardwood forest and pathways that surround it. My husband and I spent time in Québec City, just the two of us, and I reminisced about the many times we had met there while we were dating long distance. (We were also married there back in 2010.) Returning to his folk’s place in Alma, Québec, where I’ve visited them the past 19 years, brought about its own collection of memories. As many parents know, returning to our roots with our children adds a whole other layer of nostalgia and meaning.
In yet another progression of this story, my time in Quebec City also brought me to the Port of Québec, where my great grandfather Herbert had arrived after sailing from Britain to a new life in Canada aboard the Tunisian in 1903.
In every place, we reunited with family and friends, all near and dear to us, interweaving with their lives while my internal climate adjusted hourly to an emotional rollercoaster. Visits with loved ones brought tremendous joy while sorrow lurked beneath. Daily work on the documentary film brought me face-to-face with Natalie’s early departure from this planet.
Like my great grandparents, she was taken much too soon.
I enter back into my life back here in the mountains with a mental load that needs some sorting and filing. It will take a long time to process everything that has transpired in the last 33 days. But I do know that these experiences have brought me closer with my kin, both present and past. By going home, I understood I was returning to my roots. But I didn’t anticipate just how deep I’d be digging, that by touching those roots I would come to a new understanding of my own existence.
Truthfully, I haven’t yet fully grasped what that looks like or what it means. I just know there is value in the digging. That by knowing where I come from I can take a better path forward. That I have no idea how much time I have on this planet, but as Nat once put it to me, every day I can be a little bit better.
A big part of this has been leaning into the experiences that come into my path, as uncomfortable, sad or odd, as they might be. Or joyful. Brené Brown talks about a kind of vulnerability we feel in joy, when we fear leaning into it lest the other shoe should drop and something bad happens.
Perhaps that’s what living is — the leaning in to whatever confronts us, even just a little bit, even when we’re uncertain of what we’ll encounter there. Leaning in and feeling the edges, for they will shape us and remind us of who we are.
Meghan J. Ward is an outdoor, travel and adventure writer based in Banff, Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the author of Lights to Guide Me Home. Meghan has written several books, as well as produced content for films, anthologies, blogs and some of North America’s top outdoor, fitness and adventure publications.
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What’s caught my attention lately… ✨
IF (2024), written, produced and directed by John Krasinski, is a heart-warming fantasy/comedy film about imaginary friends, which I probably wouldn’t have seen in a theatre if it hadn’t been pouring rain and I didn’t have young kids. But I’m glad I did. I appreciated how it touched on the emotional needs of adults (not only the children) within a family movie context — something I think we need more of in this world.
Wiser Than Me is a new podcast I’m tapping into these days. In it, host Julia Louis-Dreyfus taps the wisdom of older women (again, something we need more of in this world). Recent episodes I’ve listened to feature Billie Jean King, Anne Lamott, and Jane Fonda. A highlight is when Julia calls her own mother at the end of the episode to unpack what she heard.
A Poem, for Natalie Gillis
Steady as she goes, she walks, each step the same as the last, never lagging, she gazes mindfully, smiles large, speaks softly. She is the wind, the wild. She moves through others, uplifting. If anyone could stretch their arms and fly for real it was her. A composer of life, she writes. Her music is a constant crescendo. And when the music stops all who have been moved by her will make their own. -Meghan J. Ward
Check these out too… 🙌
Lights to Guide Me Home - my memoir (reviews welcome on Amazon and Goodreads)
The Wonders That I Find - my children’s book
My Email Newsletter - updates about my books, projects, and 1:1 coaching
I am an eight-generation Canadian and a descendent of British, Scottish and German settlers living, working, and recreating outdoors in Treaty 7 Territory — the homelands and gathering place for the Niitsitapi from the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani First Nations; the Îyârhe Nakoda of the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations; the Tsuut’ina First Nation; the homeland of the Métis and Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation of Alberta, and many others. I am doing my utmost, both personally and professionally, to deepen my understanding of the history of Indigenous peoples and the impacts of colonialism — past and present.
Megan, thank you for this poignant beauty today. In reading it, and the climb over mossy, hidden buried ancestors, I'm reminded of what I have learned about trauma fields in the past, how their being uncovered also reshapes the entire field. You entering into this story will shift so much. I love you, Sonya
Beautiful piece Meg.