When I was a little girl, my mother told me endless stories about her brother Felix Conrad. He was, in my child’s mind, a mysterious character who left his native Nova Scotia as a young man for a life of adventure in Canada’s north. Although he came from sea faring stock, it was clear that Felix was of the land. He joined the Hudson’s Bay Company and traveled to Baffin Island, where he embarked on a career as a fur trapper and trader.
My mother had few details of his life there although he had gifted her with a photo album. I remember leafing through the pictures and examining the round faces of his Inuit companions. A few knickknacks could be found on the corner hutch in our living room passed on to my mother from Felix. The one I most remember was a cribbage board carved from Ivory, brass inlay denoting the necessary markings and pin holes. I played with this as a child and can still feel the slippery smoothness in my hands.
All these memories seemed to have slipped away following my mother’s death although I suspect the album and the ivory are tucked away somewhere in my brother’s basement waiting to be re-discovered. What I do have is the remnant of a fox fur collar also gifted to my mother. She had this attached to every dress-up coat she ever owned even when that coat became worn and tattered. The fur that framed her face gave my mother an air of aristocracy and I suspect she derived some hidden connection to Felix from its softness.
Felix died long before I was born, simply disappeared. Rumor was he had been murdered. No one knew for sure as he died in the north. There is little indication that he even existed except for an inscription in St. Mathew’s Lutheran Church in Upper Lahave, NS, where he is listed in the first confirmation class.
Recently however, his name has come to light once again. Due to the curiosity of one of my nephews, who decided a few years ago to begin a genealogical dig of our family tree, we have discovered the details of Felix’s life in the north and his mysterious death. I have now learned that Felix is buried in Cape Dorset and that he died from alcohol poisoning, drinking brew from his own home-made still. I can only assume that alcohol became a necessary companion during the never ending nights of the Arctic North.
I have learned these details from William Tagoona, my Uncle Felix’s grandson. Felix had a son named Armand, who went on to father eleven children, all of whom are my second cousins. As I share this, the truth of Felix’s life, and the generations which followed him, continues to unfold in a delightfully curious way. This part of Felix’s life was completely unknown to my mother, my brother and to me; we had no idea that he had fathered a son.
This unfolding has been a significant roadSIGN for me. Following my mother’s death I had this great sense of loss, not only at loosing my mother, but at not having a family. As far as I knew, I was alone except for my brother and his two sons. I thought what a tragedy that my grandparents, Ida and Aden bore four children, two of whom died in infancy and one of whom disappeared as a young adult. While my mother lived until her sixties, she too was gone and this part of the Conrad clan had simply vanished.
I knew nothing of the generations before me. Nothing was recorded, as far as I was aware. And then everything changed. Through a website, GenForum, my nephew met Melanie, Felix’s great granddaughter, and the rest as we say, is history. The Conrad family tree has been traced back to the late seventeen hundreds in Germany, to the original members who immigrated to Canada. I am enjoying the discovery and excited about what is to come as William and I continue to share and I peel away the layers of my lost family which was never truly lost, simply unknown to me. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know about the past and about history and how, each member of my family tree contributed to the person I am, the genes in one great genetic pool.
I am not sure why this seems so important although it feels like that missing puzzle piece that you search for at the completion of a jigsaw puzzle and that somehow got misplaced. The puzzle has been sitting there for years waiting, holding the space for someone to find the missing piece and to drop it in. The mystery of Felix Conrad, his disappearance, his life in the north, his legacy, has been solved. I am deriving great comfort from the knowing and immense curiosity about what continues to unfold.
I invite you to be curious. Be prepared to be surprised!
Until next time….
Betty
