Little Amelie or The Character of Rain

We had a fun Saturday last Saturday and watched Little Amelie or The Character of Rain, a French-Japanese co-production at one of the indie theatres. It's a lovely and vibrant story about life for a Belgian family living in Japan in 1969.

I really enjoyed the beautiful colours--it felt like an antidote to all the greige we experience these days--and the simple story of love and friendship almost had me in tears at the end. Amelie exists in a vegetative state as a baby until an earthquake awakens her, and, now with a busy household with three children, Amelie's parents hire a housekeeper and nanny, Nishio.

It's not a traditional Western cartoon with a typical story arc, and the ending felt rather abrupt as such, but I also was so engrossed in the colourful world I didn't want it to end, TBH!

Watch on YouTube

Genealogy--your family's mystery history

The journey continues! I ordered two birth certificates from the Provincial Archives in January. There's a 100-year limit on birth certificates, but fortunately, I was able to order one for my great-grandmother and one of her sisters.

As any genealogy dabbler knows, there were times when records were not kept as accurately as they could be. My great-grandmother was born in 1902, but her birth certificate was issued in 1903 :-D She was the first child born in Canada, and possibly someone in the community said, "Hey, you have to make her official" :-D

Now, her sister's birth certificate was much more interesting--it was a re-issue dated 1965. Both documents have different spellings of the parental names.

Anyway, the 1965 document has a placename on it for both my great-great-grandparents, which today resolves to Dzhurynska Slobidka in the Ukraine.

I can only imagine how many cousins I have out there 😃Such an accidental find! Many of the documents I have reference Galicia, an area that encompasses Poland and the Ukraine. I joined a Galician family history Facebook group, and someone gave me a few more clues, all in Polish. I haven't plunked it into Google Translate yet, but I'm really enjoying the family photos in the group, as they give me an idea of how my ancestors looked and dressed! Apparently, Dzhurynska Slobidka was a Polish colony in the Ukraine, so the flip-flopping on who my family is finally makes sense :-D