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also_not_a_pipe
2007-04-27 01:49 pm UTC (link)

Oh, but sometimes you get really fun squabbles over it if you discuss it within the family.

My dad's side of the family emigrated to Canada and somehow ended up in North Dakota. The relatives who still live up there are about two hundred feet from Canada, and the story is that they never actually immigrated to the US, they just ended up there after some international border straightening. Supposedly Mt. Douglas in Banff National Park is named after some ancestor on that side. The other dubious story about the daring Canadian plainsfolk in our family is that one of them played a big part in keeping the American bison from going extinct by essentially stealing the US's buffalo. When the buffalo herds were almost gone, he and some guys he knew went down across the border, rounded up all the bison they could find, and somehow got them back into Canada. Then once the US government realized that yes, buffalo ought to be protected, he sent the bison back.

So Dad starts telling his buffalo story at my sister's college graduation dinner for some reason. He's one of those people who is always right. Mom's stepmother is also always right and an evil witch to boot. Well, she knows someone in Missoula, Montana and has been to visit this person a few times. Somehow this means she knows that Dad's story is all wrong and tells him so. Cue big "how dare you malign my family history!" "your family's all a bunch of liars and probably don't even have a mountain!" fight in the middle of this fancy Washington DC restaurant right near Capitol Hill.

It was hilarious. My sister said she thought she saw Bob Dole at another table giving us all the "WTF?" look.

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	eilisliana 2007-04-27 09:13 pm UTC (link)
	snerk Most my close family (aunts, uncles, cousins) really aren't interested in the family history. So no brawls, just shrugs and "yeah so?" (Reply to this)(Parent)

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