Ray is found by brother she never knew existed
‘When I saw Jack, we just immediately gelled’
Through a remarkable piece of detective work, an Arran grandmother has been found by a brother she never knew she had.
And last week he and his family flew nearly 4,000 miles to meet Ray Galbraith for the first time in emotional encounter on the island.
Jack Jones, who is now 88, was conceived after a liaison between Ray’s father, Willie Stewart, and a maid visiting Arran with a family from Glasgow. The maid, Sadie Izzat, fled to Canada without telling anyone, even her closest family, that she was pregnant.
Jack was born in Fort William, Ontario, on May 8, 1928, and was brought up by his mother who later married and had more children. It is thought Willie Stewart went to his grave without ever knowing anything about the child.
On Arran, Willie later married his first wife, with whom he had five children. He then married for a second time, to Ray’s mum Grace Latona from Brodick, with whom he had three children. Willie died aged 68 in 1973 and Grace 18 years ago.
Ray, who is 69, and lives with husband Donald at Balmichael, told The Banner of the joy of meeting a brother whom she did not know existed. Ray said: ‘When I saw Jack we just immediately gelled. There are a lot of family resemblances. It’s been wonderful having this experience.
‘Everyone has been so warm. It is as if we have always been a close family.’
The story, which could be straight out of the hit TV show Long Lost Families, starts in Greenock where Willie Stewart was one of a family of 11 who all emigrated to America, except him. Instead he came to Arran in the 1920s to work as an apprentice butcher and would only have been around 18 when he had the liaison with Sadie. He later continued his apprenticeship on Kintyre where he met his first wife and returned to Arran where he worked for butcher Walter Elliot before setting up in business himself.
Last August Ray got a phone call out of the blue from Jack’s daughter, Lorine Petkau, in Canada, telling her that while researching her family tree her dad she found out the man he had called ‘dad’ all his life was not his real father. She had made contact with the Stewarts who lived in the States and, through them, had made contact with Ray.
The family, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, had in fact visited Arran three years ago, but with little to go on they had left the island none the wiser.
The family then came to The Banner, placing an advert in the paper in December 2014 looking for Stewart descendants and using a photograph of Sadie, in what is thought must have been a hired car outside the Trafalgar Guest House in Whiting Bay and a photo of Jack in his younger days. Even then Ray said: ‘At the
time I wondered if it may be something to do with me, but at the time I never thought any more about it. I didn’t have any idea – none of us did. Even when the family were here three years ago they must have driven past my house several times.’
Finally, after making contact and a series of emails and letters and photographs between Scotland and Canada, Ray was asked if she would be willing to provide a DNA sample, which she did. The result was positive and she had a new member of the family. It was then arranged for them to come over and finally meet.
The Canadian family spent a week on Arran and left last Friday having visited the home of Willie Stewart which was at Granite House near Kilpatrick, as well as Roadend in Shiskine, where Sadie the maid had spent the holiday with the family from Glasgow. They also visited Shiskine cemetery where Willie and other family members are buried as well as the Trafalgar Guest House in Whiting Bay, where the search partly began, along with Glenashdale Falls and the distillery.
Ray, who has four children of her own, two of them still on Arran, and eight grandchildren, built the butcher’s shop in Blackwaterfoot with husband Donald which they ran for 37 years before retiring five years ago.
Ray said: ‘It has all been a bit of a whirlwind but I am delighted to have discovered I have a long lost brother, which is all a bit surreal and to have met my new extended family.’
And will she be making a return trip to Canada? ‘We’ll see how it goes this year and maybe head over next year.’