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Dianne Brydon -- Book Launch

Tuesday Jun 06 2017 7:00 pm, Winnipeg, Grant Park in the Atrium
NOTE: This event has already taken place. Please visit this page to see our upcoming events.

Winnipeg launch of The Stalwart Brydons: From Scotland to Galt to Portage la Prairie, A Family History of 100 Years in Canada.

Robert Brydon and Janet Young scraped together the fare for their family to escape poverty in the Scotland Borders and came to Canada in the 1820s in search of a better life. Today Robert and Janet’s descendants number over 1000 in North America. Many of their grandchildren, some of whom came to be known as the stalwart Brydons, heeded the call of rich farmland in Manitoba and began the settlement process once more, in the Beautiful Plains of Neepawa and Portage La Prairie during the 1870s to the 1920s. This is the story of their struggles and their successes.

This is a family history from Dianne Brydon and her father James Brydon, PhD. Jim grew up in Portage La Prairie and attended the U of M before moving to Ottawa to work as a soil chemist. He applied a scientist’s rigour to his family history research. When Dianne retired in 2013, after 25 years overseeing public outreach on Parliament Hill, Jim asked her to put her MA in Historical Geography to use and help him finish the book. Dianne subsequently found documentary evidence that refuted many of the stories in family lore and fleshed out others that were unknown.

At the launch, Dianne will speak about the detective work she and Jim completed to compile some of the more poignant stories across the generations, and read aloud a selection from the book.

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