missed connections

I'm reading a book called The Puck Stars Here: The Origin of Canada's Great Winter Game Ice Hockey by Garth Vaughan. It's pretty neat- he chronicles the start of ice hockey- not indoor organized hockey (which was more or less introduced to Canada by James Creighton in Montreal in 1885), but what came before. And it all started (like many things in Canada) in Nova Scotia in the early and middle 1800s.

Now that makes for a cool story and it's interesting in itself but what is really fascinating to me is the fact that I had ancestors in Nova Scotia just prior to that time. My something-times great Grandfather, Michael (not Michel, interestingly enough) Dupuis, went from France to NS (for reasons unknown to us) in the 1640s or so- we dont know exactly when but his son Martin was born in Port Royal, NS in 1665 so they were there then.

The Dupius lived in Nova Scotia in the area of Grande Pre and Port Royal (close to Wolfville and Windsor) until 1785 when the British gained occupation of Nova Scotia and expelled the Acadians. The Dupuis (at least the ones in my line of ancestry- don't know about others, though if I ever visit, and I want to, I want to try and trace them too) left for Louisiana and the rest is history (that's where my Mom (and Dad) are from).

And where was hockey (or hurley as it was initially called, after an Irish game) being played? In Halifax, Dartmouth, Windsor and Wolfville, primarily. Right where my people (had they not been French) would have been living.

So I can't help but imagine how life would be had the French not been expelled from Acadia. (Obviously I wouldn't be here and be me, since my Dad's fam came straight from France but that is not the point.) It's all about decisions made or not made, turns taken and not taken, and the paths we choose or are sent on. How close we can come to history and yet miss it entirely.

Just something that made me think...