Visiting Blanche McCleave in Halifax:

My research on the McCleave family name in Halifax at the Public Archives and the Regional Public Library was almost complete and it turns out that word of mouth came through to the end. I had so far learned that according to the phonebooks there were seven eight separate addresses in mainland Nova Scotia that bared the McCleave family name, one being a medical building in Digby, and another being that of the former Conservative MP of Halifax county Robert J. McCleave which the Nova Scotia Public Archives had plenty of information on.

A man named Spence McCleave had been in contact with me from the beginning of this research after stumbling upon the McCleave Gallery website some months back. Spence had lived in Halifax since he was a child and had recently moved to the mid-western United States with his wife Joan. Spence and I had a few email exchanges, which led to him putting me in touch with his sister Janet who still lived in Halifax. During my research in Halifax I received an email from Janet saying that her brother Spence had told her that I had a gallery named after the McCleave family and that the suitcase that she saw on the website looked like it may have been her mother’s at one point.

I eventually collected the courage to call Janet up to see if this was really true as I couldn’t believe how easily and quickly this was falling into place. Janet and I then set up an appointment for me to visit her mother Blanche in her apartment downtown just a ten-minute walk away from where I lived. I brought the suitcase with me so that she could identify it along with a few other documents about the McCleave Gallery and our previous projects.

The visit was a lovely experience, and we sat down for a cup of tea and a glass of water too discuss family stories and coincidental occurrences in general. It turned out that the suitcase was indeed hers and in fact she had a matching smaller version of it under her bed where she kept all of her most precious old photographs and trinkets as a sort of memory box. She told me that the suitcase had been discarded after a yard sale several years ago by her old house on Vernon Street which is precisely where my brother and his friend Dani had found it shortly after. It was truly an amazing situation and a huge piece of the puzzle had finally been found to piece together the past of the McCleave suitcase, not to mention a pleasure to meet both Janet and Blanche who were so kind and generous to take the time to meet me.