My New Cousin
Originally Posted on July 19 2010:
It’s been a while since I wrote anything. I will try to change that from now on and write as much as I can. When I started researching my family history and my wife’s family history, the only thing that she told me was “Don’t get us related!” Since we both come from large French Canadian families from the Essex County area of Ontario, I was kind of surprised that I hadn’t yet. There were a couple of marriages that connected the families, but that’s it.
Last week I was researching my 4 times great-grandparents – Alexis Rivet & Marguerite Turcot. I decided to start following the Turcot line. Marguerite’s parents were Jean Baptiste Turcot and Marie Dorothe Gagnon. Then I found Jean Baptiste’s parents, Louis Gabriel Turcot and Angelique Pigeon. I then went to enter Angelique’s parents (Louis Pigeon & Agnes Caron) into my software and realized that I already had them. Before I connected them I check how they were related to me. It came back to say that they were my wife’s 7 times great-grandparents.
Whoops!
When I connected Louis Pigeon & Agnes Caron to Angelique Pigeon I found out that they are my 7 times great-grandparents as well! So now I’ve discovered that I’m 8th cousins to my wife. 
Sorry, honey! Love you!
Where did Rivait come from?
Originally Posted on January 23 2010:
As I have mentioned, before I started looking, I knew nothing about the Rivait’s. I did not know how large of a family it was or how long we had been in Canada for. My dad gave me a name of another Rivait that he said we were related to. I contacted him and found out that we were second cousins. With his father’s help I was able to piece together my grandfather’s brothers and sisters. I now knew who my great-grandparents were, William Rivait & Alexina Guilbeault. After further research, I found out that my great-grandfather was born Guillaume Rivet. When I searched for Rivait, there was never very much. My line of Rivait’s was only 3 generations old. When I started investigating the Rivet name, I found a lot more historic documents. After e-mailing another Rivait, she shared her research that took the Rivet’s back to Maurice Rivet (b. 1642 in La Rochelle, France). Maurice is my 7 times great-grandfather. He came to Canada around 1664 and settle in Cap-de-la-Madeleine. Maurice married Marie Cusson, who was born around 1657 in Cap-de-la-Madeleine. They had 12 children and being good French Catholics, they all had large families. Now the fun begins finding all the connections.
Discovering My Father’s Side
Originally Posted on December 7 2009:
My father’s side was a little more mysterious. I’ve only ever known my grandmother, and my aunts and uncles. That’s it. My grandparents got divorced when my father was young. The family moved away from the Leamington, Ontario area and ended up in Toronto. They never had any contact with their father’s family since.
Before I started looking, I didn’t know very much about my grandmother, Katharine Mary Klingler. I knew that she was German and born somewhere in Europe. Her and her family came to Canada while she was young. I remember one Christmas around 1993, my grandmother brought a magazine article about the war in the Balkan states. She showed us the map from the article. She pointed at an area north of Belgrade in Serbia and told us that was where she was born. I thought that was weird, because I thought she was German and Serbia was not part of Germany.
My father and his siblings were born in the Leamington area of Essex county and that was where their father, Harold Rivait’s family was. While I was growing up, the only Rivait’s in the Toronto area phone books were my uncles and us. However, I heard there would be at least a full page of Rivait’s in the phone book in Essex County. Rivait is a French name, but that’s all I know about our family.
When I visited my parents after they came home from Arizona, I looked for any information that they had. Luckily, my dad had given my grandmother a Family Tree book to write down all that she could about her family. My grandmother had written down all about how her family came from a little German village in Yugoslavia called Backi Jarak. With a quick Google search I found DVHH – Remembering Our Donauschwaben Ancestors . It was a wealth of information on the German migration into the Balkan states. I had no idea that there were any German villages there. Now the story my grandmother told us made sense. She was born in 1920 in Yugoslavia and came to Canada in 1930 with her parents, sister and brother. They settled in Kamloops, British Columbia for about 15 years and then moved to South-eastern Ontario.
This was my introduction to my father’s side of the family. I had no idea what a rich and interesting heritage we belonged to on my German side, but little did I know, there was more amazing information to come…
Resume
CHRIS RIVAIT
SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS
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Ability to spearhead projects with high-level supervisory skills and a proven capacity to consistently deliver high-quality work;
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Proven ability to analyze business processes to improve efficiencies through increased revenues and decreased costs;
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Results-oriented individual who performs well under pressure to achieve excellence at the highest levels;
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Demonstrated leadership and problem solving skills.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
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2009 - 2010 |
Trimac Transportation Services – Burlington, ON Customer Service & Pricing Analyst
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Accomplishments |
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2006 - 2009 |
Trimac Transportation Services – Burlington, ON Business Analyst
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Accomplishments |
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2003 – 2006 |
Trimac Transportation Services – Burlington, ON Load Planner
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Accomplishments |
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EDUCATION
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2000-2002
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Brock University – St. Catharines, ON Bachelor of Arts – Popular Culture |
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Relevant Courses |
Mass Media, Communication Research, Communication Theory, Film Studies, Television Studies, Popular Music. |
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1996 - 2001
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Brock University – St. Catharines, ON Bachelor of Business Administration – Marketing |
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Relevant Courses |
Marketing Management, Advertising, Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Research, Marketing Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy. |
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIAL SKILLS
- Advanced working knowledge of Microsoft Office – Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Access; Cognos Impromptu and Crystal Reports;
- Intermediate knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Inkscape, WordPress, Joomla and other internet programming and applications;
- Successfully completed workshops and seminars in Customer Perspective Selling, Proposing To Win, Managing Key Accounts – Facilitative Selling, and Consultative Negotiations.
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