We haven't seen our old ravine friends Barry and Sheila for ages. But we knew where they were. Late last summer, they had bought a rustic cottage on a remote lake in Quebec, a fixer-upper that Barry intended to spend time working on. They have three border collies, and we knew from the stories they told us about their three charges before summer's arrival and their absence that the three dogs would be enjoying their summer there, and reluctantly return in late October.

We'd been keeping an eye peeled for them in late fall, expecting now and again to see Carter, the more adventurous of the three, prowling around in the forest before his litter-mates showed up, as usually occurs. And then either Barry or Sheila, and sometimes both together would come along, but hadn't seen either or any of them until today, when we left for our daily afternoon walk through the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie.

Jillie was first spotting Carter, then Jackie joined in the rousing yelps of welcome, and then the other two came along, and finally Barry. He told us he had been around to our house but we hadn't been at home. He'd tried knocking at our neighbour's door to the right of us, and again no one answered, but then knocked at our left-hand neighbour's door, and there gained the information that we were alive and well. He was, he said, really glad to see us. And we felt good seeing him as well.

Sheila, he told us, was in Florida for a few weeks, accompanying their daughter's mother-in-law, who has a condominium there. So he was in charge of the household and their three border collies. He was excited to tell us about the birthday gift Sheila had given him, a genealogy test. He showed us the results on his smartphone. Surprising him, no less than us. He'd always assumed he had a British background, even though surname connects with Eastern Europe.

When he was a year old, his biological father had left him and his mother to fend for themselves. This was in Saskatchewan, and because his mother's parents lived in the same city, she moved in with them, and he was partially raised by his grandparents, who had indeed come to Canada from Poland.
Years ago, he told us, he was curious about his father, and tried to find out details that his mother would never divulge.

What he discovered was that his father was known to be a violent man, a man with a police record, considered to be a danger to others, and who was known to use lethal weapons. His father's parents once when he was still under ten years of age, had happened to run into his mother and asked her how their grandson was. Fine, she told them, he's doing just fine. They wanted to know if they could see him, and she told them they weren't interested in seeing him when he was two, three, four or five, so she saw no utility in putting them together at that juncture.

She had remarried when her son was three, and the man she married became the real, functional and loving father that our friend had been deprived of when he was a baby, an infant, and a young boy. He had never wanted to contact  his biological father and now that he is himself in his mid-50s and knows  his father is still alive, he has no interest in seeing him at this stage of their absent relationship.

The results of his genealogy was 17% English, 55% East European, 14% Baltic and 14% Asian. He was nonplussed, but there it was. But that's not all, he started receiving communications from other people he had no idea shared any of his genealogical background. And those contacts were really intriguing, giving him more information about himself and his family background than he might ever have imagined.

We might never have imagined that Barry had an Eastern European background. Barry is the quintessential Canadian. He was a tactical unit member of the RCMP, and has always focused on strength training, running, bicycling, extremely action-oriented until a series of direly threatening medical conditions, some relating to the physical and psychological stress of his work hit him.

But now that we do know that, it seems strange in a way that we have that in common, since my father and my husband's parents also originated in Poland. The world is becoming smaller as we age.