Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your heads up and Yes, the elder Joe Smith and Jane Pruden are my Great Grandparents, their son Joe is my Grandpa Joe I'm asking about.

Family line goes back through a number of these Hudson's Bay Company folks come over for the HBC and settled in and around Red River Settlement and areas, and many took Native Indian wives. Joe and Jane only had two kids together, my Grandpa Joe and Lille Jane. He married Granny Joe ... and through her come my French-Cree line and the Viznaugh/Vezina (whatever spelling variations) side

A lot of people (HBC Family descendents) have been searching through the HBC and local Native Indian lines going after "proof" of their Metis blood etc for a few years now, so I've benefited by finding information via some of these trees online plus archives and history sites and such because many family's were kinds "up there" in the HBC early days and therefore documented in records in lotsa places ... crossreferencing archives records and cencus records accessible online is something I'm always doing (or trying to)

I'm after our family lines/tree, not the Metis Status or card, though could get a card easily enough if I wanted one for some reason. Can't believe it says on my birth registration of 1954, under "what's your nationality" section "Scotch halfbreed". Makes me want to run out and buy some bagpipes and a fiddle! Granny Joe - Married to youngest Joe was also a French-Cree "breed" and with her comes the French/Native. Amazing times and terminology, those ... Tis.

Some old cencuses are interesting when they did the "reservations or disorganized territories" and the native communities ... no names were entered for the individuals but under religeon area is written HEATHEN ... just numbers and Heathen to identify the individuals.

Actually, speaking of family trees, I've been finding a little on Geoff's lines and what a helluva an interesting line it is ... no wonder he can be such a Royal Pain in the Arse (just kidding )I'll leave it to him to namedrop some in his own ancestral lines if he's so inclined

Now ... back to Grandpa Joe ... I just really want to find a newspaper obituary if it exists. The closest places where I can access microfiches of the Wpg free Press are Calgary and Vancouver and that's not possible for me. So ... I ask in here in case anyone happens to be doing their own research and would be into checking for an obit just after Sept 17th, 1945 while they are there doing their own thing

Karmen