Am happily digging through a history book about a famous park (Stanley Park) here in Vancouver. Less than 6 kms. away. Just cool...park was originally inhabited by native Indians (of course), a few Hawaiians (there is some history of them here in Vancouver area) and Europeans.

When I swing around my brain to it, just learning about local history is kinda cool. Of course, I have worked in a historic building or 2 when living in Toronto. One of the lst courthouses in Canada. Still has cow gates...to keep herds of cows at bay in days gone by. And stories about ghosts haunting the corridors. There's even a book written about the building.

And I grew up in an Ontario city (Waterloo County) in a predominantly German-Canadian area with a strong Mennonite historic presence.

Do you know/have explored your local historic roots? Another form of adventure...

I have a friend who ran a local walking and biking tour company for over a decade. Over 1/2 of her clientele were locals who had wanted to know/see more.

I have a little lake in my neighborhood which I call "my place". There was big viking settlement here with gravemounds and from which they waged battle. I find this very mystical and energizing. I often go to my lake and listen to Metallica to get into the mood. And it gives me a taste of beauty and lots of energy "to go on" and perhaps not be so wimpy.

They have found remains from the Iron Age here, too. I really feel like I am a notch in the "tree of life" when I sit on the sun warmed stones and look over the beautiful lake surrounded by big rock formations and wooded areas.

There are standing stones near here.And many other sites in Scotland.We also have cave paintings near at the shore.I can see a local hill which was a volcano from my window.
Our church has a Norman tower from 1243.
Mountain ash

Very coooool, hunlan and Mountain Ash! Those ancient local areas.

Not sure of our area. But the aboriginal (in Canada, we call the native Indians, "First Nations" people or aboriginals -to encompass native Indian and Inuit groups all over), is pretty interesting with some sad stories.

There are pockets of Indian reserve land throughout the city.

Where I work is by the Fraser River (20 kms. north of the Canada-U.S. border) near the mouth of the Pacific Ocean where several million salmon swim annually upstream from the ocean into the inland up through the Columbia River. Of course, the salmon is not only important now but historically it is near sacred to the tribes. Canadian federal law prohibits any disruptive human activity that would upset the environmental conditions in the water for the salmon to make their annual journey inland. So it is the fish window time for a few months, where our construction project must cease construction & dredging activity in water.

Recently found out from one of our employees, who is aboriginal, that a local resident found several thousand pieces of Indian artefacts (arrowheads, pottery, etc.). She accumulated this stuff from her combing her property over past 2 decades. Most likely the stuff predates 1800's.

Now she is getting old, she wanted to find a home for her stuff. So she donated the bags and bags of artefact pieces to provincial museum authorities for further archaelogical investigation. About nearly 10,000 pieces.

I do work for construction engineering project that is building a highway bridge, etc., but this project is not just your humdrum construction proejct. It does involve several aspects..of which the archaelogical aspect is one of the more interesting facets. By federal and provincial law in British Columbia, if the construction team discovers something of Indian heritage value, the area must be blocked off for a certain period of time, to assess /excavate the items. Most sensitive situation would be long forgotten burial grounds.

South Carolina is haunted with ghosts! Below I'll past my favorite low country ghost tale (I like to tell my nieces this story in the summer!):

"The Girl who was Buried Alive"
by Nancy Rhyne
Copyright 1984_John F. Blair, Publisher
Winston Salem, NC 27103


This part of Edisto Island ia as gloomy today as it must have been in 1850...Huge oaks, with pendulous masses of Spanish Moss looping from limb to limb hover over the land, and strange things happen here.

Once a white stallion jumped high into the air only to be caught in the fork of a huge oak tree. Every effort to free the animal failed. It was either mercifully put out of its misery by some soft-hearted soul or it was left there to die upon its on will. For many years people came to view the skeletal remains of the once beautiful stallion now in the huge oak.

The Edisto Presbyterian Church was designed and built in the early 1830's by James Curtis, a Charleston architect. It looks today much as it did then. The graveyard that surrounds the church on three sides dates back to the 18th century, and the names on the grave markers are evidence of prominent SC families who have been buried there, many having died of diphtheria. The names include Edings, Mikell, Seabrook, LaRoche, Hopkinson, Legare, and Whaley.

Diphtheria was a common disease during the 1800s. The first effective antitoxin was not developed until 1890. This deadly, highly contagious disease spread throughout the barrier islands of SC in 1850.

In July 1850, a young girl, while visiting the home of a planter family on Edisto Island, awoke feeling ill. When the doctor saw the telltale yellowish-gray patch that was upon her neck, he knew it would not be long before the beautiful young lady drew her last breath. Not long, the girl feel into a coma so deep that word mistakingly came from the physician that she had died. As there were no artificial preservation of dead bodies on Edisto Island before the Civil War, it was the practice to bury the dead as soon as possible after their demise. So word was sent to neighboring plantations that the girls funeral would be held that every afternoon. As the people of Edisto Island prepared to attend the funeral and burial of the girl, loving hands prepared her body and dressed her in the pink dress that had been her favorite.

After the funeral was held in the sanctuary, the body was placed in a marble mausoleum behind the church, under a canopy of oaks and pines. The tomb door was a broad, flat, thick piece of marble, hinged on one side. It was closed and locked. In the amber glaze of the afternoon, the mourners left the cemetery, walking among the marble forms of cherubs, urns, and other symbols of eternal sleep. Just before leaving the burial ground some turned for one last glance at the mausoleum with the family name, J. B. Legare, carved above the door. The sepulcher lacked columns, but it could have doubled for a tiny greek temple.

Some fifteen years later, one of the men of the Legare family was killed in an accident. His body was prepared for burial and taken to the church, where his funeral was held. When the heavy door to the family mausoleum was opened so that the remains of his body could be interred, there, to the horror of the members of the family, was the skeletal frame of the young girl who had been buried earlier. From the position of her remains, it was clear that she had been buried alive, and at the time of her actual death she had been trying to escape from the mausoleum. The family felt the horror the young girl must have felt when she came out of her coma and realized that she was trapped, and the panic that must have driven her to try to escape without hope__to escape. The man was entombed, as were the skeletal remains of the young girl. It was several weeks before any of the family returned to the mausoleum. When they did, they found the door to the vault standing open. The door was closed again and fastened in such a way that it seemed impossible that it could ever be opened again. However, in a few weeks an elder of the church discovered the door standing open again.

For more than a hundred years it was impossible to keep the doors to the mausoleum closed. About thirty years ago the door was once again attached in such a way that it was concluded it would be impossible for it to be opened except with certain heavy equipment. But a few days later, the door was found not only opened but it had been removed from it hinges and lying on the ground. Once more it was replaced and with heavy chains locked into place. Yet still it was found opened. Today vines grow into the cracks of the marble mausoleum. Spider webs and wasp nests festoon the doorframe. And the stubborn marble door lies broken into three pieces on the ground at the vault enterance.

The storys goes...

Word spread throughout the area that the spirit of the young girl who had been buried alive would not allow the door to remain closed so that no one else could ever be buried in the tomb as she was -- Alive!.

Orchid, thats really interesting about the Hawaiian artifacts, its amazing how humans have evolved over the now present continents.

Orchid, our library has a history room, which has books, newspaper clippings and items from our town back to the 1920's. Before then, I've read articles on the history of this area in the late 1880's+ as packing farms for oranges. Before that... I know a little about the area, but not that much.

As a Scot I love my landscape.Its a small country but so familar .I sent calendars with our glens mountains and castles to overseas friends.
What I do realise is how truly beautifu and magnificant each country is.I watch dramas just to see the landscap of middle England.Films....to see Ireland is so good.I fall in love with the mountains plains and jungles.When I see a city I am eaqually spellbound.Once a pyschic told me she "knew" I loved this world.
Its so good to hear of different life styles.I envy no one but want to know about their land and customs.
Even as child I would watch from the bus or train even change seats when I knew a familar place was coming up.Even the coalfields with their mounds of rubble.I would imagine a whole beneath the ground like a cave where the rubble and coal came from.
Any one else as fascinated as I am?
Mountain ash

Since I'm relatively new to the area where I live now (only last 5 yrs. here), there's still a great deal to learn about local history.

What is interesting is how people here are more historically tied to the land, ocean and mountains, compared to where I used to live...in Toronto.

Of course living in a contrasting area of one's own country, sometimes one can see a huge disconnect of regions and why a large country like Canada can be quite regionalized in its politics, history, etc.

I live in the London Borough of Greenwich. My house is a spitting distance from the "the Heath" where the Wat Tyler Rebellion (Peasant Revolt) congregated before they marched off to London. There is also an urban myth that it is where many victims of the Black Plague are buried. On the Heath, is Hamilton House formerly owned by the family who built tea clippers. One of these vessels was amongst those burned at Boston Harbor. To the right of the Heath is Greenwich Park which has the Royal Observatory where the prime meridian line of Greenwich Mean Time is (0 Longtitude). At the bottom of Greenwich Park is The Old Royal Navy and the Queen's House amongst others. The history of the London Borough of Greenwich is steep with historical facts arising out of it's background as Royal Placentia. It used to be the seat of the reigning Monarch long before Buckingham Palace was built. At Greenwich Village is Trafalgar Tavern which is at the bank of the Thames River. It was where Dickens and other literary figures used to gather. It's one of those places that serve good pub food and I love going there with friends spending time chatting and drinking Pimms on lazy summer weekends. Here's a link to it:

www.trafalgartavern.co.uk

These are just a few of the historical land marks where I live...far too many to mention here. I have lived here for 17 years now and I am still captivated and amazed by the sense of history I wake up to everyday. Both with people and facts.