About Us

We are three sisters, who, in an insane moment years ago, decided to write the family history. Decades later, we got down to doing it and so here we are. But just who are we?

Rounding up the usual suspects, we start with:

Bette Smith, a spinster of the parish, enjoys reading mysteries and snooping in other people’s ancestral trees. Her other passions are her cat Tiggy and shetland sheepdog Lucy. Bette is always delighted to answer inquiries about possible genealogical connections or conundrums, as long as they’re not connected to the Dale and Lough families of Russell County (a genealogist’s nightmare and way too much inbreeding for genteel researchers).

Dorothy J. Smith is a late-blooming historian. After what felt like several lifetimes in the Ottawa public service she left early to ensure she had the energy to remake herself. Because her favorite jobs had always involved research to solve a puzzle and she had always loved history she went back for a 2nd BA in history. But she found she could not stop and now has her PhD. Her research to date has been on cemeteries and memorization, the rural history of the lower Ottawa Valley and anything that her current bosses at the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum ask her to look into. Oh – and she too has a furry creature around but, for her, Brittany Spaniels rule.

Margaret Goldik is a wife, mother, and devoted caregiver to her elderly Shelties – one oversized, and one a Sheltie-Corgi mix. Her work life has been centered on books: she volunteered in her children’s school library, joined a writers’ group which morphed into a small publishing company, edited the Montreal Review of Books as part of her job as director of the English-language Publishers of Quebec, acted as Executive Secretary for the Quebec Library Association, and even had a stint as a bookseller. Now retired, she reviews great western books for Prairie Books Now.