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As we end this century, this is a good time to consider who and what we are. I wrote this piece because I stumbled across that family picture and realise that my sons do not know about Bob and his story needed to be told. One day they will have sons and daughters and they will need to know just how is that we have this odd English name and how did this family get started here in Canada. Our children and their children are the way we live on, our lives are remarkably short yet through our families we and what we have been continues in one form or another. Not only is it genetics as we wonder why our nose is this shape, but it is culture that is passed on, it is a whole legacy of behaviours, attitudes and the complex combination that makes each individual unique. Robert Shire (Bob) died in 1948 but his stubborn resolve is alive in some way in each of his great grandchildren just as it will be in their great grand children. The tenacity to leave home and family for ever and seek a new life in a new world must have been an enormous step to undertake. Henry and Jack, his two brothers did make contact with him here in Canada, and his younger brother Frank came to Wawota before the war. Though I had met Frank and know his only son Don, the other Canadian members of the family are only names and reputations. The English roots to the family remain obscure for me, but are a challenge to find out more about them so that we can connect the line that stretches back to 1688. We have the names, a lineage, but the stories are needed to make that part of us come to life. Our name "Shire" was an adopted name in 1688 when England was having a few domestic problems and did not exist prior to that time. But that's another story. July 29, 1995 Bert remarried, the picture at right is his family. Two sons and a daughter with their spouses and his grandchildren, taken fifty seven years after the picture that begins this article. Would Bob ever have thought about the scene at right, perhaps, definitely Edith would have, for she played an important part in all of their lives. She loved family pictures and with her in one you often had to take several shots, because she had a bad habit of fooling around at such times. A Saskatchewan family.