At first glance there was nothing to foretell that he had a story to tell, a unique story, a Canadian story, a story about a heritage that few, if any, can rival.

He was alone in the waiting room of an Ottawa hospital when I arrived at 7.20 a.m. for a scheduled appointment at eight o'clock. He seemed too young, too healthy looking to be there at that time of the morning. What could he and I have in common?

"Why are you here?" I asked.

He seemed glad of the opportunity to talk. Maybe it was an outlet to share his worry with another human being.

"Seizures", he said.

"You're too young for that, far too young!"

"I'm thirty-three, and I'm going to be married in thirty-two days!"

The seizures, it transpired, started a few weeks previously on a visit to his fiancée's house. The first one was a complete mystery. He was a healthy young man. There was no reason for it. But it was followed by another, and another.

Local physicians were baffled. He was sent to have tests and see specialists in the Ottawa hospital. During one test he suffered a massive seizure, and had to be strapped down to prevent him harming himself as his arms and legs flailed wildly about.

Is this another hospital story? No.

It's what he told me as our conversation continued. As is often the case when I meet strangers, I asked had his family been long in Canada. His voice gave nothing away. There was no discernable accent to reveal his origins. And it was rare that I met someone who could claim five generations back.

His story came tumbling out.

Four hundred years! To be exact, 1608, when Thomas Huot arrived with sons and daughters from the vineyard region of France to start a new life in infant Quebéc City.

It was an amazing story. Family aunts and professional archivists were able to trace the young man's genealogy in an unbroken line back to the original Thomas. The surname had undergone some changes over the course of those four hundred years, in the young man's case from Huot to Ayotte.

What is more, they were all recorded in a 463-page volume.

Where were his relatives and relations now? Well, the short answer was far flung, from Halifax to Yukon, from Montana to Australia, the eastern United States, and, of course, great clusters in Quebéc and neighbouring Ontario.

In fact, he reeled of a list of French surnames of families throughout Canada that could come from any telephone directory, families linked by marriage through four hundred years of the French presence in Canada.

He could detail which families became loggers, fishers, and miners, and to this day how many were still associated with the environment as park rangers, wood workers, and a host of other occupations. His father had died when he was a youngster, and his mother had worked in the Sudbury nickel mines to raise her young family.

Four hundred years is a long heritage, but the young man's Canadian lineage extended thousands of years further back. Two of Thomas Huot's sons had married native Indian women and the young man could list Algonquin, Micmac, and Sioux relatives, people of Canada's First Nations to whom a mere four hundred years is less than the time it takes for one giant forest tree to reach maturity.

Unfortunately, at that point in his story our names were called to undergo our respective tests, and I only had time to thank him for sharing his wonderful history, and wish him well.

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