I am inclined to blame the university more than the ancestry. (Forget Canada; blame Yale.) On the other hand, I had a similar shock last week when I picked Elizabeth Goudge's historical romance The Child from the Sea off the shelf downstairs and discovered Theobald Taaffe (pre-Carlingford) as a main character, several chapters in. Now I want to find out if there's any historical substantiation for one of her major plot points . . .