You never know

As I continue to wade through the many photo albums, family trees records, letters and postcards left to me by my late grandmother, I am in awe.

Oma and Claire Palmer at the Millhaven house

Not only did she take use great care and enthusiasm in capturing so many elements of her life, she gifted me with many remarkable memories that I am working to enshrine in the digital world and to preserve her legacy.

One day last month I came across a few albums with old photos and art deco-style photos and postcards. One series depicted a restaurant and chalet complex in old Kingston, Ontario called the Evergreen Tavern and Cabins de Luxe. The chalets were something ripped out of the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive.

Although I didn't have the devotion of my Oma to collect and curate beautiful things like these, I do now have Facebook.

I was able to post the chalet pictures on a Vintage Kingston group I joined, mentioning that my grandmother was a longtime resident of Kingston and later Millhaven/Bath where she lived in the house her father built.

The response to the post was heart-warming and informative. The location and other details were unravelled through numerous posts and replies.

Then the unexpected. A new reply, simple but profound about my grandmother's property in Millhaven. 'I own your that property now...let me know if you can provide a little more info.'

Glancing at the two roughnecks of photo albums and letters, I said to myself...info I do have.

But even more remarkable, I had recently created a photobook chronicaling the relocation of a log cabin from Lindsay, Ontario to the Millhaven property by my step-grandfather in 1963. I sent a copy of the photobook to the new owner, promising to share more info about the property and my Oma's family later. It was thrilling.

Cover of the Millinocket House Photobook

Then came an even more astonishing reply - from a woman whose mother new my grandmother and had spent time as a child at the Millhaven property. The astonishing, breathtaking news came soon after.

In 1949 my grandfather Claire Palmer died unexpectedly, violently in a car crash into the back of a stalled transport truck while my father was a teenage student at Belleville's Albert College.

My new Facebook friend's grandfather was also at Albert College and was the one who woke up my dad to tell him the horrific news.

The Crash article in the Whig-Standard

I was shocked to read this, but I can't imagine the shock my father felt that cold morning. I'm told my dad was never the same after the crash, and never talked about it to me after I arrived in the world years later.

James David Palmer - Albert College, 1949

It is remarkable I would learn of the sequence of events surrounding my grandfather's death from a kind stranger through a seemingly innocuous social media post.

The news was a revelation, but despite the shock and the substance of the tragic death of my grandfather, I am encouraged to delve further in my Oma's treasure of all things past - good and not so.

And I have two new friends who know parts of my family's past intimately.

And so I encourage anyone to slow down, dive into your past through photos and the like.

You never know what awaits.