The Sea, The Bridge, The War

My dad's grandfather, Ned, was a fisherman and so was his father.  The fishermen of Looe and Polperro were all known by their nicknames. Ned's was Scruffer, my grandfather's was Barrier and his two brother's were Sir Nick and Moosh.  Their boat was The Gleaner.  My grandfather started fishing at a very young age when fishing was lucrative but then, like today, the fishing died and men were forced to sell their boats and find other ways of supporting their families. 

Ned, who had been a tin miner, had already decided that mining wasn't for him and, moved the family to Calgary, Alberta in 1913  where he went to work in construction.  When the Great War broke up my grandfather and his brother's joined the British Army and were ready to head back to England. 

But that year, Calgary had been hit with big rain falls and the Bow River was flooded.  My great grandfather was working on the new bridge that crossed the river.  Somehow he fell off the bridge  into river and was drowned. All his years at sea and he had never learned to swim.  My grandfather and his brothers got special leave to stay in  Canada until their father's body was recovered.  But soon they were back in England where they served in the Great War.

My Grandfather was gassed during the war and while recuperating in the south of England he met my grandmother.  They were married in 1919, right after the war ended, and immediately moved back to Calgary where my dad was born and shortly after that his sister. 

My grandparents were very steady, they were settled and happy in their home in Calgary.  Little did they know that some gypsy blood was flowing in the veins of their son.

Smugglers, Rogues and maybe a Gypsy

My father's father's father was a tin miner from a small town in Northern Cornwall.  His name was Ned.  He moved to Looe, Cornwall to find work as a young man where luck would have it he met Mary Wilcox who would eventually become his wife and my father's Grandmother. Interesting, true, but so far, none of that has anything to do with gypsy blood.

Except that Mary's father was William Wilcox of Polperro, Cornwall. William was a river pilot from Polperro and he was also a smuggler and a rogue of some renown who was also known as Willy Wilcox.  He was drowned in a cave close to their family home and according to the legend which exists to this day his ghost continues to haunt the cave and the family home. 

The Wilcox family had long ties to Cornwall.  The rumour in our family is that they were, in fact, ancestors of Spanish soldiers washed ashore during the Spanish Armada.  The operative word here is rumour, but it could be true, and there are gypsies in Spain and some of those gypsies could have been soldiers and so, some of that gypsy blood could have made it's way into the Wilcox family.

That's my thinking anyway.

Just to make it very clear, there is no Spanish or Gypsey blood in my mother's heritage.  At least none that I know of.  Maybe a drop or two of Scottish rebel blood on my grandfather's side, but that is another story.

Well, that title isn't exactly true.

While the title of this blog isn't exactly true, it's not exactly false either.  I am going to compromise and say it is a little white lie.  And, if we are to believe Hope Hicks, little white lies are OK.  So, I'm going with the title because it is, sort of, partially true that my parents were gypsy.

Although, they didn't have any traditional gypsy blood in their heritage.    My dad's parents were British through and through.  Grandpa was a Cornishman and Grandma was a Londoner.   My mom's mom was Irish, she was Protestant so I wonder if that makes her really Irish?  My Grandfather was Scottish.  So, no gypsy blood there at all.

But I am their daughter.  That part is true.

I also have two sisters and a brother all older than me.  That, as you can tell, makes me the youngest.
The baby, the brat, the tag-a-long.

Now, for the gypsy part.