Evelyn Dreiling may be the quintessential Canadian.
Born in 1942 in Montreal to a Québécois mother and an English Canadian father, she is at home in both cultures.
Donald Cohoon was from Toronto, a Protestant and an only child. His family on the Cohoon side came from Scotland, members of the Colquhoun clan. Fleurette Larin was of French and Irish extraction, Roman Catholic, and one of 13 children. Just how deep both family's roots go, Evelyn was to learn later in life.
The union of an English Canadian with a French Canadian, of a Protestant and a Roman Catholic, was unusual back then. When Donald and Fleurette married, with the reluctant
approval of their parents, a dispensation was required so that they could be married in the Catholic church - and not the main church, Evelyn notes, but a small chapel.
Both parents were determined that Evelyn and her brother Robert would be bilingual. They attended English schools, lived in French and English neighbourhoods and were at home in the French milieu thanks to their mother's extended family. "I was known as 'the Catholic kid' at one school but it never bothered me," recalls Evelyn. "School was for learning and for having fun, and that's what I did."
Evelyn trained in commercial and fine arts, married and moved to Halifax where she bore two children and divorced. She worked in Ottawa in the civil service until she retired in 2002 and moved west, settling in North Vancouver to be near her children.
Retirement suited Evelyn. She concentrated on her painting, joining the North Shore Artists' Guild, teaching art at Mollie Nye House and at Silver Harbour Seniors' Activity Centre.
There was also time to pursue her interest in history. "I wanted to write a story about my family for my own kids," Evelyn remembers. Starting with information collected by her father, Evelyn's research led to an interest in the story of Canada. "I realized that to understand my family's history, I had to know the context, the time they lived, for it to make sense."
In 1650, William Colquhoun (or Cahoon, Calhoun and eventually Cohoon) was a Scot indentured in North America. Eventually, he purchased his freedom, married a woman named Deliverance Peck and fathered six children, only to be ambushed and slain in 1675 at the onset of King Philip's War. The Cohoon descendants were United Empire Loyalists, leaving America for Nova Scotia in 1760. By the 1830s, the family had taken up available land in Upper Canada, at the Talbot Settlement on Lake Erie.
At the same time that William Colquhoun was making his way to Massachusetts in 1760, the Lorain family departed from La Rochelle, France. Evelyn knows they were bound for Canada but knows little more than the name changed to Larin. "I keep running into a stone wall."
The Irish branch of the family, the Traceys, was in Newfoundland in 1815, Montreal in 1825 and in St. Columban, an Irish community outside the city by the time of the rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada in 1837. "We Canadians have been trained to believe our history is boring. I don't agree at all. The rebellion forced reforms that led to confederation," says Evelyn of that period in Canada's history.
Like all good genealogists and family historians, Evelyn takes dead ends and multiple spellings of family names in stride. Evelyn's ancestor Daniel Tracey, for example, is not to be confused with Dr. Daniel Tracey whose legacy as a journalist and a politician was a factor in the rebellions.
"I kept coming across his name in my research but Dr. Daniel Tracey was never married and had no children," says Evelyn. "In my story, just to keep it interesting, I had the two Daniels meet and become friends."
Evelyn had already written one historical novel based on her family history, The Colquhouns in Canada, published as an e-book in 2012. Her next, A Rebellious Spirit: Daniel Tracey, came out earlier this year with a cover illustration by Evelyn. She's presently working on the story of Michael Tracey, Daniel's son. Although five generations separate Michael Tracey and Evelyn Dreiling, they're still family.
Evelyn's novels can be found at smashwords.com.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
