I recently took a 2-week road trip, an actual vacation, which I haven’t done in years.  I’ll have to go back in my Google Photo Albums, see if I can confirm the last time I visited family in the Okanagan area; it’s been at least 2014.

My dad’s side of the family spent a good part of their lives living in the southern Okanagan, Oliver area to be more exact.  Dad started working various jobs & living in the Skeena Valley area around 1963, married in 1965.  Uncle Don was also working in the Skeena area approximately the same time frame, driving dump trucks for Ron King Trucking.   Uncle Norm, I do have a couple of photos of him around this area about 1966, but he settled more in the lower mainland, married there, and later after his divorce moved back to the Oliver area doing various jobs including working for friends in the orchards.  The man was a fountain of information; my few visits with him included evenings watching Jeopardy! which he enjoyed, and he was pretty good with the answers to the questions himself.

My aunt Ev & her partner moved back to Oliver almost a year ago, having lived in Tulameen for a number of years after early retirement & leaving Whitehorse, Yukon for warmer climate.

As is wont after a move, there’s been a fairly constant stream of visitors to my aunt’s new place – doesn’t hurt that it’s situated in a warmer climate, surrounded by vineyards & wineries, orchards & fruit stands, lakes & beaches.

My visit a few weeks ago, came with a large tote of almost all of grandma Fran’s photo albums. These had been in my care since grandma moved out of her family home and into extended care, a couple decades ago now although it feels more recent.  My northern home was a bit safer than the Tulameen home, with less risk of flooding & wildfire damage.  Plus being the grandchild showing the genealogy bug, even a more natural fit.  Have I scanned all the albums? No. The older black & white photos from 1930s-1940s I did scan thanks to my 11×17 Brother scanner.  But some of the newer, other than the album full of Braniffs & Berreths & other prairie cousins, I do have a fair number of duplicates & similar photos. So if for some reason, these albums do not return to my care in the future when Ev can no longer store them, not all is lost.  With what feels like a growing threat of wildfire and/or floods across BC, getting albums scanned is slowly gaining in priority.  Plus, it’s a great way to share the albums with the cousins that live some distance away and don’t have the opportunity to visit in person.

So, one of my tasks to do this year, hopefully in the next couple of months, is to find a way to share the scans online and have the ability for cousins to view & comment/tag faces of relatives that I don’t recognise and/or never met.