52 Ancestors: Food and Drink - Henrik Bergithon Bordewick

So I struggled a little with this one, and thought I needed to do this about the Jones branch, then realized I didn't have anything planned this month for the Parks or Bordewicks, and this thought came to me. It's perfect, so I had to go with it.

My grandfather owned a fishing boat for much of my early childhood, and used to go fishing and bring home salmon for the family to eat at our gatherings together. It's a past-time he inherited from his father, who inherited it from his. The Bordewick clan originally came from the Lafoten Islands in Norway. One of the commercial industries there is fishing. But when my great-grandfather was young, the fishing dried up for a time. Less of a haul for those making a living off the fish. So my great-great grandfather Henrik and his brother Eivind (I believe) decided to try to make more money off the small amount of fish they could catch by setting up a concern outside of Norway. Eivind chose to stay in Norway to do the fishing, while my great-great grandfather and his family left to head to Belgium in an attempt to set up business there.

So my family left Norway, along with a few girls to help my great-great grandmother around the house, one of whom was her elder sister's daughter. I'm not sure if the other two were related to the family or not, but I have determined that much, at least. Unfortunately, this was about the same time as the Boer war, and unfortunately, the Belgians saw the family name, and thought they were English. We have distinct stories of the family being spat upon on the street. So they moved to England, near where my great-great grandmother's younger brother lived. 

At that point, my great-great grandfather got out of the shipping industry, and became part of the shipping industry with his brother-in-law, who was already well established in the trade. We believe that it was sometime around this move (either right before or right after they moved here) that the name changed from Bordewich to Bordewick. They stayed in England for around ten years or so. Long enough for the family to become citizens of the UK before moving again, this time to Canada, to be close to another of Henrick's wife's siblings, her younger sister. They stayed there, settling in Vancouver BC, and living there for another twenty years before Henrik died at the age of 68.

Of their three sons, only one had children, my great grandfather, Bjarne. He and his wife had two boys, one who was lost at the beginning of World War II, and the other who was my grandfather. So he is the one who carried on the family legacy, and had a series of boats he used to fish from, and provide our family with fresh caught fish during fishing season. It's a legacy that has been gone since my uncle sold his boat several years ago, and with neither myself or my sister interested in carrying on that legacy, as we are the only two grandkids in our family. Still, it's a fascinating family history that I treasure, even if it's a skill now lost to us, unless one of my sister's kids chooses to take it up one day. You never know.