My Great Aunt Nell with her husband and her daughter Olive on the day they arrived in Toronto, with Nell's sister and her family, new immigrants. The excitement is clear.

My grandmother emigrated to Montreal as a young woman, escaping the life of service and waitressing here. She went on a special ticket which was tied to a job in service . She loved it - being in service there was an utterly different experience to the miseries of being a skivvy here. Most of her brothers and sisters followed her. One day in Montreal she went to market and came across a pipe band - instant homesickness and a decision to come back to Scotland, with the result that we had 3 relatives on my mother's side here, but 30 and more spread across Canada.