Chance meeting sparks interest in genealogy

The Two Maurices

Posted By Mark Gentili

Posted 4 months ago

The two Maurices - Maurice Guilbeault of Smooth Rock Falls on the left and Maurice of Ottawa on the right - turned out to be distant cousins.

Chance is a funny thing. It tends to rear its head when least expected and at times most inopportune.

And it was at a dance in Fauquier that a couple — he, from Ottawa, she, from Kapuskasing — had an encounter with chance that not only inspired a new hobby, but also the discovery of a new family member.

First, the backstory. Yvette Bedard of Kapuskasing is dating a man from Ottawa by the name of Maurice Guilbeault. The couple was, as mentioned above, at a dance in Fauquier when a friend mentions that there is a man living in Smooth Rock Falls who is also named Maurice Guilbeault.

“I said to [Yvette] wouldn’t it be kind of funny if we were related,” Maurice of Ottawa said. “That’s how it got started.”

They would soon find out the universe has a sense of humour.

The couple arranged to visit Maurice of Smooth Rock Falls at his home. A conversation led to talk of their mutual family trees, and Maurice of Ottawa learned that his Smooth Rock Falls counterpart had actually paid for a family tree to be done. This turned out to be a gold mine of information.

The two Maurice’s had a few things in common. Both had connections to Northern Ontario, and both were in construction, they look and sound a bit alike, but beyond that the biggest commonality appeared to be their names — and one other thing, according to Maurice of Ottawa.

“The only thing we have in common is our good looks,” he joked.

Maurice of Smooth Rock Falls agreed with that assessment.

“I used to have to hide myself or the women were after me steady,” he said, laughing.

Any connection between them would have remained superficial had it not been for that family tree Maurice of Smooth Rock had done.

“It is nice that they had it done because we were able to establish a connection right away,” Ms Bedard said. “We would’ve found out eventually but it would have taken more time.”

With the information from the Guilbeault family tree, which traces the lineage back to their arrival in Canada from France, and the resources of the National Archives in Ottawa (which they visited), they were able to go back five generations to the Feb. 10, 1851 wedding of Adolphe-François Guilbeault to Rosalie Dubé at the church in St-André-d’Argenteuil, Quebec.

Adolphe-François Guilbeault, it turns out, is the great-great-great grandfather of the two Maurices. It turns out the two men who had never met but shared the same name were actually cousins, albeit distant ones.

Although the Two Maurices have not kept in touch, Maurice of Smooth Rock Falls said he was glad to meet his eponymous counterpart.

“I knew for sure that I had relations all over the world,” he said, adding that he has met several Guilbeaults, but none had the “eault” ending to the name until he met Maurice of Ottawa.

Maurice of Ottawa said his foray into genealogy also helped him discover that his family has an aptitude for numbers (he found textbooks on the subject written by now-deceased Guilbeaults), and he also discovered that his grandmother used to bake bread for former Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.

His interest piqued, the Ottawa Maurice is now tracing his English roots.

Interest in genealogy exploded in recent years, and there are several websites offering archive searches and resources for those tracing their family histories. Even a TV show or two, like the History Network’s “Ancestors in the Attic”, is helping sustain the pastime’s popularity.

Several sources can be used to help track down family information, but genealogy websites list birth, death and marriage certificates as vital information to gather and a good first step in beginning the process.