Winnipeg Family Reunion
August 12, 2011 by admin
Filed under Reunion Destinations
Starting in about 1905, Amanda Spencer suffered four straight miscarriages.The miscarriages were as painful and heartbreaking as they would be today. She and husband, Ernest, were of Irish stock and had moved to the Morden area from South Gower, in the Ottawa Valley, the day after their marriage in August 1897.
It shows the mettle of Ernest that on the same day he married, he worked in the field threshing, purchased the train tickets to Morden, obtained a marriage licence and bought an ostrich fan as a gift to his bride — it’s still in the family — and still made it to the wedding on time.
In other words, there was no quit in the Spencer family and not just when it came to making babies. The 120 descendants, who gathered recently for a family reunion on the original Spencer farm, are a testament to that. Amanda and Ernest would go on to have 10 children — six more after the string of miscarriages.
The family reunion. “It’s better than only meeting at funerals,” said Adrian Phair, a grandchild.
Every five years, Spencer descendants from five different provinces — and parts elsewhere, such as California — gather in Manitoba to celebrate the fact that so-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so and so on, resulting in the miracle of each and every one of their births. They are certainly not alone.
“We get a lot of visiting friends and relatives VFRs. That’s a big part of our tourist market,” said Cathy Senecal, Travel Manitoba’s manager of media relations.One could expect Manitoba might get even more than other provinces, considering the size of out-migration from this province. However, Travel Manitoba could not produce comparative figures.
Visiting friends and family account for 39 per cent of visitors to Manitoba. They aren’t as big spenders — 28 per cent of tourist expenditures $333 million out of a total $1.19 billion in 2009, the latest figures — partly because they often stay with family instead of in hotels.The other tourism categories are pleasure, business and “other.” Pleasure accounts for the most visits, 46 per cent. Those visitors are also the bigger spenders at 51 per cent of the total.
