Part II
After a brief e-mail exchange during late November and early December, I received another reply from Laura:
'Hello James
It is with a sad heart that I am writing that Nan went to be with her Lord last night. I was with her at that time. She was a very dear friend, more like family. She will be missed but we know for her it is so much better.
On Saturday a friend of Nan's, Audrey, and I had driven to Sherbrooke for the annual Christmas dinner at the Residence where Nan lived. Nan had enjoyed her dinner, walked back to her room with her walker and the nurse got her ready for bed as she was tired after such a busy time. The next morning Audrey and I stopped in for a short visit before heading back to Montreal where I was getting the train back to Toronto where I live. We just arrived in Montreal when I got a call saying that at lunch Nan had choked on some food and couldn't get her breath and was on oxygen. We immediately turned around and went back to see her. By the next night she was in heaven. As you know she was 95 and frail and could only communicate with single words. But It was quite a shock as so unexpected at that particular time.
When I had first arrived on Saturday morning I had showed her your pictures which I had printed out and she studied them so carefully. I was so glad she had seen them. Thank you for sending them. She couldn't add any information for you but was interested in seeing them. She didn't know if she had met your grandmother as as she was only in Scotland as a very young child (ages 1- 6).
I have found out from the Binning side of the family that Nan stayed with her grandparents on her father's side in Scotland, not her mother's. The address on Kent Street was the Binning home. I have received a little information on Annie Hendry at the time she married and came to Canada from a great nephew of Nan on the Binning side of family. Would you like me to ask him if I could forward it to you? He is doing a Binning family tree.
I will be glad to keep in touch and help in any way I can.
Laura'
I was of course very sad to hear of Nan's death, as although I'd never met her I was so happy to have found her against seemingly impossible odds. When I set out to trace Nan, I didn't know her name, when or where she was born, or what happened to her after her mother died. At the time I remember feeling amazed at having finally tracked her down, and then getting in touch with her friend Laura - who was absolutely wonderful in relaying details to Nan and printing off photographs and documents to show her - was a real godsend.
I knew that at such an advanced age Nan would not be able to help me to any great extent, but when Laura told me that Nan did not know she had any family on her mother's side or how she could get in touch with them - her father died in 1953 and communication with his family in Scotland seems to have dried up - I was so happy to have been able to at least reassure her that yes, she did, and we were thinking of her. I later contacted two of Nan's surviving Hendry first cousins and explained to them what had happened, and the message I received from both amounted to
'that's incredible, we had no idea Annie's daughter was still alive!'
Nan died on December 7th, 2015 at her nursing home in Sherbrooke. She would have been 95 years old last month.
Laura sent me a
photo of Nan as a baby, and a scan of the cut-out of the obituary she'd had published:
Laura and I are still in touch - she has even scanned me Nan's birth, marriage & death certificates - and I am also in touch with a great-nephew on the Binning side, and we have been sharing information about Nan's family.
I thought this story may have been of interest to some of you, as I think it does go someway to proving that if you really try digging hard enough you can find people you genuinely never expected to, and in this case,
just in time!
Finally, a big thank you to everyone who helped me on this journey.
James