As I'm sitting here at my desk typing this blog to try and keep to the promise that I made myself that what I have to say is relevant to someone somewhere while they travel down the road on their very own genealogical journey, I could not imagine what it would be like for one of my family members to come to America with little to no literacy/education/skills, not being able to speak English (if they came from Quebec), or have any family to fall back on because, personally, my largest move was about 60 miles from the town I grew up in. The distance of my move is a-typical for people in the US. Most don't more more than 100 from the place where they were born.
In Europe, countries are close, so moving to and through one from another seems like it's not that big of a thing. But from Canada to the United States, the move could be thousands of miles.
To be able to come to the decision that leaving the only place you knew to be home is better than staying seems to be quite heroic.
Imagine, you're a teenager and all you knew is what you were taught on the farm or from books in the one room school house you went to when you weren't needed to work the fields to bring the crops to market for sale to feed your family. And then the crops failed.
This is the reality many of my Canadian ancestors faced and this is why many migrated south to the United States.
These migration patterns fascinate me.
I wish I knew the answers my ancestors would say for the question, "When did you know it was time to go?"
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