Nancy Dale Conroy, for 15 years, was a trainer and writer in the field of retirement planning, as well as the creator and owner of the commercial website, LifeScape. She has also been the Editor of Reflections/Réflexions, an email newsletter put out by the Retirement Planning Institute since 1998. Once retired, she shifted her focus to the history of her father’s family, the Dales of Clarendon. Over the past six years, she has researched and written up their story as they travelled from Derry to the Pontiac. This included a trip to Northern Ireland to meet distant Dale relatives and to do research at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.
She currently lives in Ottawa with her husband, Peter Conroy, and their dachshund, Max.
How the Dales Journeyed to the Canadas and Helped to Found the Village of Shawville, Quebec
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Dales left County Derry, Ulster to pursue a new life in the Canadas in about 1820. Here, author Nancy Dale Conroy traces the story of their journey. Having undertaken this adventure at an opportune time – when land was still up for grabs – the Dales would go on to play a foundational role in the establishment of a vibrant community at the centre of Clarendon Township that would one day become Shawville, Quebec.
In this engrossing work of family history, the author takes us through more than a hundred years of her family’s place at the centre of this growing community, outlining her research process and encounters with distant relatives along the way. Ultimately, the story of the Dales provides a refreshingly intimate lens through which to view the history of early settlement in the Canadas, and a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone curious about this formative era.