This summer I took a trip back to Saskatchewan to visit as much of my family as I could. I met with twenty-three different relatives in only four days – that’s counting just the living ones. I visited a few dead ones too. They were not as talkative.

You know you are hooked on family history when you drag your spouse and child ‘back home’ to visit an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins (including the ‘removed’ kind) and then, when your own family is frolicking on the hotel water slides, you head out to the graveyard to catch up with the expired family members. Yup, I’ve got it bad. After a thought for Granny and Grandpa, whom I remember well, I found myself examining each tombstone in the small town cemetery, looking for others from my family tree. The day was appropriately cold and rainy, despite the August date on the calendar. My beloved Auntie, who had chauffeured me out to the graveyard, was huddled in the vehicle attempting to get the heater to work, so I moved quickly between the stones so as not to keep her waiting.

I found many family members, pioneers of the district. Because I have been studying them intently for the last two years, I was thrilled to find them, but saddened to see their names obscured by lichens, as though these hardy settlers who created the foundation of the modern agricultural era, had been forgotten during the passage of time. I snapped photos to study later and to include in my family history book (oh, so near completion, at last) and then hopped back in the truck.

The other part of the day’s adventures was a trip to the old homestead and the Eaton’s house, of which I wrote in a previous article. This is where I really felt the ghosts of my family’s past. The foggy day gave a haunting appearance to the farmyard. As I fell into the kitchen, amid a disparate pack of yelping hounds, I was suddenly confronted by an altered reality. There before my eyes was today’s version of the kitchen superimposed upon my recollection of it. Somehow it had shrunk over the years. And there was a lot less bustle in it. My cousin, who cares for the house now, toured me through each room, pointing out the alterations made since I had been there last, over 35 years ago. These revisions I did not begrudge her; after all, there are few among us today who would live without indoor plumbing given the choice. My Auntie told stories of what had transpired in those rooms during her childhood: who had slept where and the best spot to eavesdrop from (the heating grate between the bedroom and the kitchen). As we moved through the house, I could envision each of these events, as though they were before me at that moment, misty traces of the past. (I have a very lively imagination.)

While I examined all the little quirks of the home’s construction, my cousin recounted strange happenings that had occurred since her tenure there had begun: lights that turned themselves on and off; papers that were whisked off the table in the absence of a breeze; unlocked doors that refused to budge. A logical explanation for each of these events could probably be found with enough research; old homes do have their own idiosyncrasies like faulty wiring and sticky locks. But it is so much more interesting to have a ghost in the house! One can find meaning in everyday events. In a way, it is a form of honouring one’s ancestors by being conscious of what they have created for us, how a part of them survives in the very structures they built so many years ago.

A century, and four generations, after the house was built, it has come into the hands of a descendant who treasures it, preserving it as best she can. An era of farming has ended, it is true, as the vanished grain elevators down the road attest. Still, as we go forward into a new age we can honour and value what has gone before, each in our own way.

This article was originally printed in the Bergen News and is being reprinted with permission.