Butterfly Funeral

Belinda Fairchild, April 16, 2019

“I remember when I was a young girl living in Chalk River I had my grandparents come visit us. I had caught a monarch butterfly and it soon died. Grandpa (Robert Kelm) seen this and helped me put it in a match box and bury it near a location I chose near the crabapple tree in our yard and we did a ceremony before we finished burying it. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” he said . I never heard that before and it was cute. Thx grandpa.”

Do you have a family story to share? Please email me at sarika.l.kelm@gmail.com.

Introduction

Welcome to Little House on the Canadian Prairie, a blog about the Kelm family. This blog was born because I wanted a way to record and share family stories–and because I love history and puzzles. As much as I am interested in birth dates and death dates, I am even more interested in the stories that happened in the middle. The foundation of this blog will be the Kelm family’s journey from Russia (present-day Ukraine) to Canada in 1906, as well as life in Winnipeg and Camper, Manitoba. I will also try to unravel what happened before and memorialize those who reside in today’s collective Kelm memory.

A little about me: My name is Sarika. I started seriously researching family history in 2008, but the seed of my interest was probably a book made for my grandparents’ 50th anniversary. My dad kept it with the family photo albums–a gray binder with photocopied pages telling the story of my grandparents, their children, and their grandchildren. I read it over and over when I was a kid, and sometimes, when I think about why I became an archivist, I think about this book.

I welcome any comments, corrections, suggestions, additions, and takedown requests at my email here: sarika.l.kelm@gmail.com. Are you a Kelm descendant? Tell me your story if you want–tell me about where you grew up, what you love, where you live now (and let me know if it’s ok to share here). Our now stories are just as interesting and worth collecting.