i had unexpected east slavic ancestry pop up in my dna test. it was only 2%, but there's a large error bar and it could be a lot higher. i initially put the 2% east slavic and 3% jewish together to deduce that my dad might have had some ashkenazi jewish ancestry, which is something that seems intuitive because he does have some noticeable sicilian (1% in the test) and my grandfather was fairly dark skinned, but i couldn't find it in the genealogical records, which i found were fairly detailed. according to the genealogy, the parent family i'm from can be traced from ottawa to eastern ontario (from ottawa to montebello to hawkesbury and the farms around rigaud. i have genetic mutations that developed recently in that region.) to the island of montreal and up the st lawerence river to the gaspe peninsula and the town of perce, where there is a documented marriage between the first parent on record with a mikmaq female on a small island off the gaspe peninsula called bonadventure island, which is now a wildlife sanctuary. the house they lived in is actually still there and is a heritage site. these parents were fishermen for generations and seem to have had some relation with a large british empire corporate entity from the channel islands between britain and france that rented out locals to fish for them in order to take control of the catch from them. it was the channel islands corporation that owned the boats and rented them out for subsistence wages, and the employees had to hand everything over. this is a shitty existence. it is unknown where this parent came from, which indicates they were probably either a military person of navy ancestry or some kind of basque or welsh fisherman that showed up undocumented, and was maybe even imported by the channel islands entity. there is a larger 5% welsh ancestry that i also cannot clearly pinpoint, which is similar to basque ancestry. i believe i am challenging academic consensus by pointing out that the welsh origin myths indicate they migrated from spain, as a celtic speaking population, with apparent basque admixture, rather than the "continuation model" that anthropologists keep holding to, despite the dna continually proving it wrong, and won't let go of. it's apparently difficult to genetically distinguish the welsh from the basque. conversely, there were parents that migrated to canada from the united states after the american revolution, there were parents in the acadian region and there were parents in the british navy, including ones of high rank that held positions in india. in the 18th century, there were a large number of parents living in britain that were of original francophone ancestry, and there were still parents in france, but it was actually mostly a franco-norman british surname and not a french surname, at that time. the r1b mutation i have does trace back to austrian celts in the halstatt about 3000 years ago, but it likely came to me directly from welsh or basque ancestry, probably via spain in the distant past.
while this is what the geneaology says, i couldn't connect my dna to any other parents in the ancestry.com database. rather, my dna test indicated i'm related to a trudeau family from the montreal area, and presented all kinds of connections to all kinds of family members nobody in my immediate family had ever heard of. i looked into it a little further, and there may have been an adoption a few generations back around the area of montebello that was kept hush hush and not properly documented. the adopted individual was my paternal great grandfather, who seems to have been descended from the parents on the
female side and not on the male side. the person that my paternal great grandfather called his father was probably actually his uncle, while his real mother was his uncle's sister, who died young, and his genetic father isn't documented.
i did pick up substantive clovis ancestry, and that does seem to be the answer to my grandfather's skin tone and curly hair, not something middle eastern. this could be explained by the linkage to perce through the female side.
i was rather able to tie the 3% jewish to an apparent sephardic ancestor on my mother's side that migrated from spain to philadephia in the 18th century, moved to new orleans and married a french woman, then ran away to california to join the gold rush and eventually ended up in the gold rush in the yukon and bc. there may be other jewish ancestors picked up along the path from philadelphia to vancouver, but the one is abundantly clear, as there's actually a jewish legal opinion against him for treating his wife poorly. my mother is very scandinavian on both sides, but looks pretty jewish for a scandinavian. she's dark haired, but her sisters are blonde; both her and her sisters have these gigantic noses, which are noticeable and stand out in what are otherwise very good looking swedish women. they had no idea, and would probably not accept it, but that seems to be where the 3% actually comes from. i don't have dna from my mother, but i have dna from her half-sister that my maternal grandfather fathered out of wedlock, and it is about 20% jewish, apparently mostly or entirely from my maternal grandfather, who may have been as much as half to a quarter jewish. i'd suspect my mother would test at least 10% jewish, but the error bars on these test are very wide and the results cannot be determined with clear accuracy. they will give you a percent, but you should read it in binary computer logic - as yes or no.
so, if the 3% jewish is sephardic, what about the 2% east slavic? the answer is i don't know. it's not clear.
my mother has finnish ancestry, but it's from the part of finland that was developed as a swedish colony. she doesn't have continental finnish or russian ancestry. my mostly finnish grandmother actually looked startlingly like ursula von der leyen, who wears her hair the same way my grandmother did. it's uncanny. trying to establish some kind of russian ancestry there is tentative and probably dubious.
rather, my father's grandfather's name was stanislav parent. i don't know if he liked chopin, but that is a name common in the franco-polish community. it seems more likely that my east slavic comes from the poorly documented adoption and that stanislav's undocumented father seems to be where the links to the montreal area trudeau family originate and the link to the russian or east slavic ancestor.
i did not see any connections to the canadian political dynasty and do not know if there's any relation, but doubt it. i actually don't think justin trudeau is descended from pierre trudeau anyways. i actually suspect his real father was the british aga khan that died this year.
all of this is to say that i'm not russian and am not quite a russophile. i'm perhaps a pseudo-russophile. it is more accurate to state i am a pan-slavist, and that i recognize that moscow is the most logical vehicle to implement pan-slavism.
i find the premise of both polish and ukrainian nationalism to be petty and trivial and wouldn't have a lot of patience for it if i were a citizen of eastern europe. i wouldn't see where that gets anybody.