There is an old packet type thing on my grandfather's shelf. Its yellow pages are usually dusty. I asked him what it was and he told me it was his family. Immigrated from Ireland about a hundred years ago, my family escaped to Canada to seek a better life than that they had before. My grandfather went on to tell me lots of stories that he kept remembering throughout the rest of the day. It reminded me of how much information can be hidden away before it is re-sparked in the mind of someone who experienced it first-hand. Knowing that my family immigrated because of issues in Ireland gave me a personal connection to history for the first time. I had never been much of a history enthusiast, but now I had found myself doing research on Irish history. I learned the reasons for my family's departure, with the British oppressing the Irish for hundreds of years. On the other side of my family, there is another story of immigration; when my grandmother was 16, she moved to the US as a lost teenager. Knowing that both sides of my family come from such different parts of the world makes learning about it so much more personal.

– Noel Cleary

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant