It can be extraordinary who and what you will find when digging into family history. In an article for Legion Magazine last year, CBC journalist Murray Brewster wrote about the Battle of Ridgeway and the eyewitness account of his great-great-grandfather, a doctor and United States Civil War veteran, who in June 1866 tended wounded and dying Canadian soldiers and Fenian raiders (May/June 2018). His research opened the door to an even more intriguing story about his ancestor’s war service, the thousands of Canadians who served on both sides of that cruel and bloody conflict, and how the divided loyalties among our southern neighbours spilled across the border. The Confederate soldiers on the riverbank opened up with a violent stream of fire that poured through the gun ports of the Union g...