Earlier this year I set out on a journey. I knew going into it that it could be disappointing, and heart wrenching, amazing, exciting and completely worth while. Over the last 6 months I have been searching my family roots. What really prompted the search was the idea that next year when Ryan and I get married I will be joining the Rowell Family Clan. I needed to know who I was, and who the Hanchar’s were. To my knowledge, there were only 2 families of Hanchar’s left and only 3 children of those families. All of which were girls who wouldn’t carry on the Hanchar name. It kind of made me nervous to know that our last name ended with my sister, cousin and myself. I now know and understand the plight of king’s and queens. There had to be more of us!
Over the next few months I searched every corner of the internet, calling museums, historical societies, asking good friends to translate documents for me (Thanks Diana) all to find out even the smallest piece of information like a village name of where my family in Ukraine and Poland had come from. Every little piece of information was treasured and documented and kept safe, copied and pinned to a bulletin board in my office. The more I searched the more I learned about my grandparents and the more I began to miss them. Just two weeks before this photo shoot below, after so much research, I finally connected with long lost family members.
The reason why I am telling this story is not because I want to rant about the value of family, and preserving photos like I normally do on this blog. It’s to thank the Faris’ for choosing us to photograph their family. When they booked I had no idea their family was Polish, so when we met them all on the day of the shoot and I heard all of them speaking to one another in Polish it just reminded me of my grandparents. I haven’t heard my grandparents voices in years, and to listen to these accents and familiar words and phrases was really what I needed to hear after all this research.
Last month we photographed the Faris & Koziorowski families at Sunnidale park in Barrie, Ontario. We had such a fun afternoon getting to know them. If you are from Barrie you probably know some of them too. Mark is a real-estate agent and his photos are up all over town, and Paul is a photographer in Toronto. Thank You again for choosing us to photograph your family portraits.
Cheers & Ryan
