Kael Sharman | His Place in the Greater Historical Narrative

Heather Murphy: [00:00:00] Hi Kael. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today. I'm looking forward to hearing about your stories and experiences. Could you introduce yourself a little bit please?

Kael Sharman: [00:00:11] Yeah, I guess I could rattle off a bunch of social categories and titles here, but that would feel very generic. What I really want people to know about me is that I'm someone who up until a few years ago, I had no idea how or why my ancestors came to Canada. I had always known that both sides of my family had been in Canada for several generations a few hundred years, but I had no details or even a vague overarching narrative.

Now that I'm beginning to piece together some of the migration stories of my ancestors, I'm seeing themes, themes that have given me a sense of place here in Canada, a deeper sense of connection. Now, when I say I'm Canadian, I know exactly how I connect to the larger narrative of Canada. While at the same time, experiencing a stronger connection to myself, I am more comfortable just being me regardless of social categories or titles.

And that has meant a great deal to me. So hello, I'm Kael, a person who is way more comfortable in my own skin. And much of that has to do with understanding my past.

It has also brought a connection between me and some of my immediate and extended family members, because I've been sharing the stories that I've been putting together in a podcast. So I'm a person who is also fast becoming the keeper of the stories in my  family. And that's why I am right now.

Heather Murphy: [00:01:31] Great. how did you start researching your family? What was it  that made you begin that journey?

Kael Sharman: [00:01:37] So I began looking into my family history more intensely. When I came out as transgender, when I was contemplating coming out, one of my worst fears was losing my friends and family who didn't approve. That didn't happen. Thank goodness. but just having that fear made me look at my family in a new way. Family relationships have to be maintained and tended to just like any other relationship. And I can't take that for granted. So I had to carefully navigate my gender transition. So to change my gender presentation involved a drastic change over a long period of time.

So I think I'm into about my 11th year now. And I was assigned female at birth and I came out as transgender at 41 years old. Right. So my family knew me for 41 years. So a bit of a drastic change late in life. So in my case, the process involved, a name, change, a gender marker. Change on all my ID. Taking hormones that would change my appearance and surgeries. So when I was making all these drastic changes, it was important to me to keep a version of my original name, to keep my maternal grandmother's name is my middle name. And to change in a way that kept a connection to my past. And that actually kind of surprised me in the process, but I think it was kind of a way of staying grounded during a social legal and medical marathon.

But I've been on in the past decade. That was something reflected on. And when I was recovering from my first surgery and was on bedrest, I joined Ancestry and a few other sites and I started a family tree and began the research and. That's kind of how it all got started.  But what I did find out when I was doing the research though, was that I found it very fulfilling, not only in terms of keeping me grounded throughout my transition, but also as someone who was struggling with identity issues, just in general for most of my life.

So having a history that made me feel like worthy when I really didn't for a pretty big chunk of my life.  I'm also a high school history teacher and we spend a great deal of time, or at least I see people spending a great deal of time learning about grand narratives of a nation or about heroes who fit a narrow definition,  that we had no part in defining.

And even though what makes it into the history books has changed tremendously in the last several decades. There is  no effort to connect us as individual people, to those cultural narratives that we often read about in history books. So, you know, I think I really needed to do this research , even just as a history teacher, just to connect myself to all of the things I knew, all of the things that, I was exposing my students to.

 And I think even now when I teach history, I think it comes across so much more genuinely. Right, but it also means a lot more to me personally. So it kind of makes me a better teacher and a better person.

Heather Murphy: [00:04:42] Yeah. So, what are some of the things that you've learned about your family history? You mentioned the word grounded and connected. What are some stories that helped you with that?

Kael Sharman: [00:04:54] Yeah. So I guess probably one of the social categories that you know, is probably prevalent in my mind of who I am walking around Canada is a white person. Right. And if you're a white person walking around Canada, whose family has told you that you've been here for several generations a few hundred years,  but you don't know why,  you know, the grand narratives and the grand narratives are either highly romanticized or they're not that good they're horror stories. Right. And you know, that's not something you want to be a part of really. I mean, you don't want to be either one of those things. If you're a historian, you don't want to be romanticized. You don't want to be a horror story. And the thing that I keep coming over in my family stories over and over and over again, is that Colonialism and the effort to build empires really created what we call in history, the push and pull factors that brought my ancestors away from where they were living in Europe and to where they were living here in north America.  It was just such a relief to see this over and over and over again.

I mean, I come from working class people. I come from agricultural workers. I come from people who are destitute and poor. I come from people who came here and worked as house cleaning mates  under servitude contracts. I'm not someone who feels like a white colonialist, like in kind of in the traditional sense that you read about in textbooks then.

So. And that's not how my family walks around either.  I'm pretty proud to be a working class person, but even growing up in my family  and not knowing those narratives, you really had the sense that it was not a proud thing. Like you weren't worthy of a history, you weren't worthy of, you know, a page in the books.

And so, you know, I guess. What I'm reading about in, in my family stories is not only that we're interesting, tough, gritty, resilient people. I know you like that word. And you know, you know, the stories of resilience and surviving. Is just something, you know, you walk away from those stories feeling like I'm a stronger person and I'm a person who belongs here and this is my home and this is why, and it's not a horror story and it's not romanticized.

It's real And there's real people behind those stories. And I have those names. Now I have those people and, and their characters and,  tidbits of their individual lives  and it's now part of me. And, you know, it just feels more real.

Heather Murphy: [00:07:21] You used the word in your description that you felt a sense of relief, relief from what?

 Kael Sharman: [00:07:29] From not knowing, you know, so I guess even just being someone who struggled with identity issues, my whole life, and embarking on this marathon that is legal, social and medical.  Having that ancestry piece is, is a relief in the sense that,  it's just that added identity that, that grounds you.

And it's a relief in the sense that,  there's an end to the marathon and you can stop running and,  you feel good not only in your body, but in your heart and in your mind. And it's not just about gender. It's about just being a good human being, walking around Canada. Who's white fighting the good fight. So.

Heather Murphy: [00:08:07] Yeah. you mentioned in your notes before we met about the migration stories of your families. Can you tell us about those stories?

Kael Sharman: [00:08:17] Yeah. There's a lot of them. And,  I think the one thing that was most surprising to me was how emotionally, draining it wise putting them together, like just, the, emotional work that goes into putting them together. Because most of them are not, you know, like I said, survivors and resilience was the name of the game that they're not pretty stories.

They're pretty gritty. ,  I have several branches on my family tree on my maternal side that are from, , Acadia and I have, real stories of the Canadian expulsion. And I took my family 150 years from some of those branches of families to actually settle in one place and live in, in one town putting down their roots, for one generation, it took 150 years.

Heather Murphy: [00:08:59] who don't know, could you explain what that expulsion was?

Kael Sharman: [00:09:04] okay, so original French settlers who came to Canada under a kind of original, calls for settlement settled in what is called the lack of di in Nova Scotia. What's now Nova Scotia. And they basically. Wanting to remain neutral people, not for Britain, not for France, but obviously we know who the, the narrative of Britain and France, Canada.

And when. They became a threat to the powers that be between the struggles between Britain and France. They were basically,  forced out at gunpoint. They were put on ships with no notice and they were shipped down the coast. And if the towns down the coast didn't want them, they were shipped back to France.

The story in my particular family,  of the Sears, the sear family was that they, they hit for a while and Michela, some of the family members were shipped back to France. They met back here. Some of them settled in Quebec city for a while. One of my,  four grades, grandfather.  lived in the Tash Kwan for a little while.

but my great-grandmother who,  was the product of 150 years of moving around.  and then finally resettling into a town called St. Theophile and she was the first person in 150 years after the expulsion of the Acadians to actually be born in a town and live and die in a town.  between her and the, the first Sierra was expelled from luckily,  they moved and moved and moved and moved.

And even my grandfather,  her grandson who, who I know and spent lots of time with in my childhood was a person who just. Would move around all the time. Even though we were rooted here in Windsor and he brought my mother here looking for work, you know, he was a snowbird, he would travel, he would move here for a year or two and moved there for a year or two.

And I guess it's stories like those that even, you know, so much of what he did and how he did it made no sense to me. And then when you see,  where he comes from and who his people are, you're like, oh, Okay, then it can make sense, you know, so yeah, that's, that's one story. So the expulsion of the Acadians, but also involved in my maternal side is,  several of my great greats, , grandmother's are feed the wa feeder Roy daughters of the king.

So between the years of 1663 to 1673,  in order to populate new France, , most of which was male, , the king of France sent over single women who were, who were tough, smart but poor and could be manipulated and sent over and were of childbearing years were sent over to new France to populate the France.

And so several of my. Grandmothers on my maternal side are feed the wall and, you know, I have real stories and real names of people who, and Roy has one of them who, who came here and she, she married a sailor and they set up shop and she ran a frontier homestead pretty much on her own for most of the year, while he was sailing and raised several children.

You know, and, and did a pretty darn good job of it. And, that's where I'm from, that's where I'm from. But, she's also a good example of those colonial and empire building forces, right? So,  you specifically choose these poor women of a certain age on a certain class in Paris to, to come over here to new France, to populate the new colony and, there's pull factors and there's push factors.

They're promised to this great gallery, you know, with, with money, clothes, supplies, like they've never seen in their entire life. Hey, you can have it all. If you jump on the ship and you go and you marry someone within a year and you have lots of kids with them away, you go. And you know, that's part of who I am.

And that's part of where I come from. And I know that now, And,  it's understanding those push and pull factors that I guess help me walk around today and understand,  people like my grandfather and, just where I came from and how I got here. And it,  not being so romanticized, not being such a horror story, but they're, they're real people and they, belong to me and they're in my history books and they're part of the larger narrative that makes Canada, Canada. Right. And so, and it's nice to sit back and say, okay, I'm part of that. And I know that now.

Heather Murphy: [00:13:34] Yeah. And a lot of times the textbooks, they focus on the politics and the Kings and all the maneuvering that's going on in corporations. And they don't have room for those people who are just trying to improve their lives. They weren't of the political game, or at least they didn't want to be that wasn't their agenda. They were just trying to improve themselves.

Kael Sharman: [00:14:00] Yeah, I have a loyalist in my family and you think, oh, loyalists,  we all know what loyalist means. Loyal is  you're loyal to Britain and you fought for them. And  the limb burner loyalists who are a part of my family tree. Sure. They came here, but they were part of the lowland clearances in Scotland and they basically couldn't afford to live where they were living anymore.

And they came here and fought for the promise of land. So, I mean, you talk about push and pull factors being created by, empire building,  there's nothing like picking someone who has no land and needs land for their family and saying, we'll give you land. As long as you participate in our violence, that's gonna build us an empire and you know, sure.

They do it. Are they loyalists? What I ever applied for, for my loyalist card? Probably not. I don't think they were loyalists. I think there are people who need land and they got it and they got a beautiful piece of land on the Niagara escarpment and five of my. Three grades, grandfather, Lynn burners, daughters, and sons got plots right alongside him. And they got just acres and acres of beautiful, beautiful land. And they made the best of it. And you know, if that makes them a loyalist well, so be it but I know why they came here and it certainly wasn't Hilton.

Heather Murphy: [00:15:11] Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a good thing to keep in mind as we research our family. But then also as we interact with people every day, whether they're related to us or not, we don't know the story behind the label. We just know what label they've been given. But there there's usually so much more that we can't assume or  shouldn't make making judgments on.

Kael Sharman: [00:15:39] Right. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think that it's really inspired me to kind of take control of my own story in my own family tree, just as someone who's transgender, as someone who's pansexual, as someone who's kind of doesn't fit the traditional social categories and molds. And, you know, I want the document's there.

I want my story told the way I want it told, and I don't want, My daughter to be unclear about that story and anyone who comes after her or, people in my extended family who come after me, who, see me on a family tree. However I fit in those branches. I don't even know, but but yeah, I want my story told from my words, and I want to  make sure the documents are there. That, reflect me in who I am and my complications.

Heather Murphy: [00:16:22] and then also the story behind the documents, like those two things have to go together. So often we have the records of our ancestors. Well, we don't have that story. So we make assumptions that we'll probably find out are totally erroneous because we're coming at up from our 21st  century perspective. And it's so important that we preserve our story. So we don't have to worry about somebody making assumptions. They can make their own judgements that's up to them, but we don't have to worry about them interpreting our lives incorrectly.

Kael Sharman: [00:16:58] Right, . And it hasn't all been, you know, I guess that there's been from fun stories in my family passed that I found too, for instance, my great-great-grandfather William Mayer, the second who fell in love with Ellen McKenzie and Scotland. And they eventually migrated here, but separately because their family broke up the relationship, they didn't approve of them getting married.

So Ellen eventually moved on, went into another relationship, but did migrate here and settled in London, Ontario. And a few years later, William Mayer, the second moved here. And he was someone who worked on the canal in New York.

Anyway she found out that he had moved here and she had four children. She lived on a farm set up in her marriage, everything else. She picked up with the youngest baby and walked to New York.  And it's a well-documented story in my family. I found out. So there were some. Archives in  the local London archives there.

And it was published in a local family history book there that I managed to get my hands on through an extended family member. And you know, I come to find out that the exact path that she took to get to New York is a footpath of an Iroqouis trail that had been laid for thousands of years of indigenous people.

And so it's things like that where you, you think to yourself, wow. So you come here to this land under the guise of colonialism, under the guise of empire building. And,  here's this woman who's,  just so. Passionate to get back to her first love and drops everything and walks to New York. And you know, the thing that takes her, there is an Iroquois, foot trail that,  I mean, there weren't even even roads when she was doing this. That's how thin of a thread my ancestry was hanging on is her getting to New York on foot. And even one of her oldest sons walked her to the border and then walked home again.

Heather Murphy: [00:18:58] Hm. So were her children grown or just old take care of themselves.

Kael Sharman: [00:19:05] Yeah.

Two other children were grown. One was called kind of a late childhood. And then the other one was the baby of the one that she took with her to New York was a baby. Yeah. So, and the rest is history. So William mayor's my cricket grandfather because that walk.

Heather Murphy: [00:19:21] One of the things that you mentioned in writing back and forth was you felt that if people knew their family history, that that would be healing for Canada, do you think that?

Kael Sharman: [00:19:36] I just think Canada is a country where we've done something really amazing in the last few years. We're on the tail end of reconciliation. The calls to action are out. We know what we have to do to move forward. We have to change some of our systems on a grand scale, but there's nothing really in the call to action that really pull white people into the mix in terms of being treated people, right? I mean, the huge rallying cry of the truth and reconciliation commission is we are all treaty people.  And they even wrote it into the history curriculum and I have to start teaching it. And I didn't feel like my students were buying it, you know, and I do look out to a sea of considerable white faces of, for most of my day.

And.  I didn't see a lot of vested interest or even genuine interest in, in moving forward with reconciliation or even the recognition that this was a fascinating time that we were living through moving forward and having an opportunity to right wrongs of the past and rewrite a relationship and move forward with some new rules.

And you know, I think. Part of what we have to do as individuals to engage in reconciliation as individuals is know our past. So for instance, the story that I just told you about Ellen McKenzie, getting to William Mayer the second  sure. It's a family story, but if you don't know those Iroquois foot trails and you don't know the path that had been laid  to this day, highway three, I mean, it might.

No, a few people who know that that's, that's part of the Iroquois foot trails that go through Southwestern Ontario, but not a lot. And it's not in history books, but if you have a family story and it's documented in the family story, that that's the path that she took, and this is why, and that's how she got here.

I mean, it makes such a huge difference.  When I say that indigenous people shared the land with me, my ancestors, I know what that means. I know what that means, and it makes me walk differently and engage differently with the land that I live on and how I live on it and the person I think I am.

And, and I'm a guest here and then I should take care of the land and that I should do the best that I can to make it the best home. Not just for me, but yeah, for everybody, because it's all about.  So much could have gone wrong in Ellen Mackenzie's life. And that would have been it for that, my branch of the tree,  it really means something like, it is a real story that kept my family together  or even the treaties that, that gave the Limburger loyalists their land in the Niagara escarpment, those are real treaties.

And there that's real land that, that sustained my family and kept them here. So I think it's healing in that sense.  Prior to knowing these stories, like I told you,  I walked around even as a history teacher. So even as someone who, who really knows our history, even indigenous history, and I just thought, wow, I'm just part of either a romanticized version that most people know, or a horror story that most people know.

And it's,  much more complicated than that. And if you know it, you, you can move forward in a different way. You can. Recognize that the calls to action are something that are real in your life that you have to do that. When we look then when my ancestors looked back on me as a Canadian who was here a few hundred years from now, they'll know that,  I was putting together stories and I was engaging in part of my inspiration was the reconciliation commission and the calls to action that they put out to move forward.

 If there's anything I've learned from my family stories is that no matter how awful the story is, or the circumstances or the push and pull factors that are put in front of you you do the best you can, and you keep your family alive and you keep things going and you move forward in the best way you can. And that's all I'm trying to do. And I think knowing your family stories, especially as white people living in Canada, you need to do it and it's work. you need to do

Heather Murphy: [00:23:25] So it sounds like you're saying the government can try to rectify errors of the past, but really each of us need to acknowledge the things that happened and move forward in a way that serves the future without being belabored by the past.

Kael Sharman: [00:23:47] Yeah. Like, I can't even tell you how many people I know. And, and you know, like I'm in my early fifties and, I'm an educated person. I, I don't feel like I hang around with people who are particularly ignorant, but,  I feel like  people of my age and you you've been around the block a few times and you get kind of sometimes desensitized to it or sometimes just detached from it.  I've literally heard people say, we just got to get over it. And those are the same people don't know how they got here. Those are the same people who don't know their own histories. And I feel like if they knew they wouldn't feel that way, if they knew,  it would be a different story.

Heather Murphy: [00:24:21] Yeah. Looking at the history that we shared, even if we're on opposite sides of the history, we still share that history and that's still impacted different groups in different ways, but the same events happen to both groups.

Kael Sharman: [00:24:38] Yeah. like right outside of London at the same time, my ancestors Elim burner loyalists were, were getting their allotments of land after the war of 1812. There was an indigenous community, the credit first nations, just outside of London who was also getting a plot of land. Because they were loyalists who find New York and were kicked out of the United States and resettled in a purchase pot of land under treaty indigenous people.

And they're still there to this day. Do you know what I mean? Like, like how common is that? And that's indigenous people who fought for Britain And got kicked out of the United States and they live here in Southwestern Ontario to this day, not,  an hour away from my extended family. And,  they're still here and they're still thriving and they,  we're here together and, you know, it's, they're complicated stories.

Heather Murphy: [00:25:30] Yes. And they're, I think They're even more complicated as you break yourself down and  look up families, how we're real people who barely were surviving to begin with affected by the things that history textbooks get. Glossed over because they only have so much time and they just hit the high points or the, things that affected the most people. But don't actually tell you how they affected people.

Kael Sharman: [00:26:01] Right. Yeah. Like some of my most hard to convince history students, the students who don't have the buy-in, you know, and you're always doing a tap dance as a teacher, but those other students, you know, all come up to the end of the year project or the paper that they have to write and they won't want to do the research.  If even if they're in an academic stream, they, they won't want to do the research and I'll send them home with with a family interview to do I'll send them home with a family, a family history project. And it convinces them nine times 10. It convinces them. They come back and they say, I didn't know this. And you know, they bring in family photos and they share stories and it's

Heather Murphy: [00:26:41] It's amazing how having that personal connection, just all of a sudden makes history come alive.

Kael Sharman: [00:26:47] yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Heather Murphy: [00:26:49] If you were to give advice to someone who was just starting to learn about their family history, what advice would you give to them?

Kael Sharman: [00:26:58] Get past the names and the dates on the tree and get to the stories and the stories are going to be emotionally challenging. But they're worth it and share them, share them, share them. Okay.

Heather Murphy: [00:27:10] And how do you handle when you come up with those challenging stories?

Kael Sharman: [00:27:15] I flipped the, victim thing onto its head and make it a survival story.  We're strong people here in Canada for a reason. And I think it's those individual stories that you,  come out of it and  you don't say, oh, poor me, poor my family. No, you're like, wow. They made it through that. I'm here because of that. Wow. That's tough. That's rugged. That's cool. You know, and I think you just have to, you spin it positive? And it's one thing I try to do in my podcast too. A lot of my family members were very leery about me sharing some of the, not so pretty stories in my family.

And,  I said, Hey,  If you own it, if you take control of it, if you spin the story yourself, no one can take that away from you. If you leave it alone and you try to hush, hush it, listen, someone else is going to tell a story and it's not going to be the way you want. Trust me, it's not. And one of the hardest people to convince was my father.

He was like, don't talk about this, don't talk about this. Don't talk about that person. And I said,  Hey, you know what, I'm going to do it. You listen to it. If you don't like it. I won't, I won't post it. I won't put it up there. And he, he loves it. He's the first person to say, oh my gosh, when is your next season starting?

And I said, well, I'm not starting back till October, cause I'm out in the garden and I'm traveling and this, that, and the other we're well not traveling right now, doing other things and taking a break because it is emotionally draining. It is a lot of You probably know this. I don't know how you do one a week. Like it's. Well, doing other, helping people do other stories is probably helping it. But but yeah, it's it's hard, tough work. Like sometimes when I'm done the star, I just feel exhausted. Like I'll sleep for like 12 hours and it's just like, oh my goodness.  I'm someone who's been in the psychologist chair a few times and it's been the best therapy I've ever had in my life. So if that's something I could tell someone, even if you're afraid to be  under the therapist's microscope, Do some family history, spin it good. And,  come out of it owning that story and telling it in a positive way that paints you as, the winner and the hero in your own history book. Why not?

Heather Murphy: [00:29:21] Yeah, that is great. Thank you for that advice. And I will have links in the show notes to your podcast and other ways that people can get in touch with you and follow you if they'd like. So Thank you so much for sharing your stories. This has been a great conversation.

Kael Sharman: [00:29:37] Thank you.