Chapter 9: ‘Breaking ranks and blending cultures’

A wedding celebration which took place in the Campania Room of Delta, Regina, Saskatchewan, on August 9 2003 recognised the coming together of Theresa-Marie Coxen and Brian L Grocholski.

In a gentle epilogue to what is humourously described as ‘a one night performance’ the pair tell their celebrant guests, ‘As of yet we do not know where our heroes will end up in life, or what life will bring to them. As they travel down that road, they hope that every person they invited here today will be part of creating the story of their lives together.’

Neither Theresa-Marie nor Brian, a descendent of a Polish count, is well known to other than a few of the Bickerstaff connection on this side of the ‘pond’ but they are part of an ever-increasing and world-wide family whose diversity of lifestyles and beliefs reflects today’s multi-culturalism.

When John Joseph Bickerstaff the youngest member of the Bickerstaff family emigrated to Boston he joined the Church of Christian Science, exponents of a healing and educational system, for whom he became a publications editor.

He became one of the first of a staunchly Protestant clan to ‘break rank’ when he met, courted and married Deborah, a Roman Catholic.

Both he and his elder brother, Andrew, who had left earlier for Montana, never to return, helped pioneer the Bickerstaff name in the North American continent.
Community relations

Neither the early Bickerstaffs nor McQuoids would have had much thought of cross-community relations.

Theirs was a society built upon a cultural protectionism thought to be necessary to protect their seed, their jobs and their prospects in the society that surrounded them.

Later members would learn to visit, work with and embrace in marriage other cultures, enriching each tribe as they did so.

In Canada, for example, one Bickerstaff was appointed to look after an Indian reservation.


‘Hail to the king’

Among the McQuoids, Leslie Bell, who spent many years in the English constabulary, is married to Eirene Quita, a native of the Channel Islands.

They have a son living in California as well as two daughters. Jenny was born in 1971 but died in 1985.

The second daughter, Sylvia, married Barry Witham whose family roots were in South London

Granddaughter Jennie came first and Angie who was born in 1973 married ‘TJ’ in the summer of 2000: his parents came from Nigeria and moved to London in the 60's.

Angie’s married name is Obasa which means ‘Hail to the King’ as ‘Oba’ means ‘King’.

They now have two boys; Remi born 2001 and Tayo born 2004.

Angie and TJ live in Walton on Thames, near enough to ‘loving grandparents’ to see them regularly.

Japanese connection

Nigel Duffield’s Japanese wife, Ayumi, and the Singaporean children of his cousin, Alastair, and wife, Pamela, have been mentioned in an earlier chapter.

The grandmother of Brian L Grocholski whose name is in the first paragraph of the present chapter is cousin to Alice Leslie, the joint author of these pages who still lives in Crumlin, a short distance from the Bickerstaff family home at Upper Ballinderry.

She was delighted when Theresa-Marie and Brian came to visit her shortly after their marriage in Regina and were travelling down that road of life to which the epilogue referred.

And the Royal ‘connection’ – again!

Both the Bickerstaff and the McQuoid connections were represented in a photograph of Andrew Duffield which graced the screen of UTV during the recent celebration of Her Majesty the Queen’s eightieth birthday.

He was seen being presented to her when as Princess Elizabeth she came to Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1946 to launch the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle.

But now we’re into the rewards of a ‘work culture’ dear to the heart of both clans and that’s another story!