Welcome to my new blog, and domain! Please excuse the dust, and general mess as I fix the place up. You may be wondering.....Why The Name Change? Read on.....

Most of the people who will surf through here, at least initially, will have known me as a Darroch. And for two decades my married name was Darroch. When my first marriage ended amicably in 2000 I decide to hang onto the Darroch name for a time so that my children, and I would share a surname, and because it would be a hassle to have all of my ID changed back to my maiden name.

So here we are 9+ years later....two of my kids are adults, and the baby of the family is a teenager. Time for a name change!

I was considering going back to my maiden surname, which is Demeter, but realised a few years ago that when Matthew and I decided to make our relationship "official" I would probably change my name again anyway. It was at this point that I decided that what I really wanted was a "name" for my own... one that I loved, had meaning, and one I could live and die with.

So over the last year, and after much discussion with both Matthew, and my daughters I decided to legally change my last name to St. Clair which, oddly enough, is and is not Matthew's mother's maiden name.

Matthew's Mom was born to her father, James St. Clair-Hughes, and while working at Bell Canada many, many years ago, she was approached by the RCMP and questioned as to why she was using an "assumed name!" Apparently this shocked her greatly as she had no idea why the police were questioning her last name, but after a couple of phone calls and some in-depth family discussion the truth was finally revealed.

It ends up her father was using an "assumed" name ... but only because HIS father did......

To make a somewhat long story short Matthew's Great Grandfather (maternal) was actually just a "Hughes"... but after becoming a sailor, and going off to sea, and apparently learning to do magic, and joining a Masonic lodge, he came back from his journeys and promptly became a "St. Clair."

He advertised himself in his magic act as "Professor St. Clair".

The Professor did quite well as a professional magician... even performing for royalty.

He later married a woman with a flair for business and of all things bicycles, and he settled down. Their children were all "St. Clairs" until The Professor's parents passed away... then, in what was probably a bit of guilt, he started hyphenating the kids to "St. Clair-Hughes"... but it really wasn't legal (his children had no knowledge of this until much later on in their lives) and Matthew's mother was "called out" so to speak on it by the Mounties. It was soon explained and understood... and (I assume) she was no longer deemed a threat to society because she was allowed to return to her job.

Matthew and I learned the whole story through his sister Jody's fantastic genealogy research that led her to the The St. Clair Story as remembered by Ernest St Clair circa 1978, and later transcribed during the 1990's by L.W. St Clair. Click on the link to The St Clair Story to read the story, and view an ad including testimonials of Professor St. Clair's work.

Anyway the whole "Professor St. Clair" odyssey stirred my imagination and I became quite enamoured of his story, and that is how I decided that it was the name for me... a little adventuresome, a little "comfortable family", a little magic, and has a strong if not odd connection to my husband, and it can be all mine... much like The Professor's only properly legal.

And that is the story behind Susan St. Clair......and it does have a nice ring to it if I do say so myself!