The "cousin delegations" started arriving at my Sofia apartment a few weeks ago. My father's second cousin Lydia, a chemist in Sofia, read an article about me in Trud and came for tea with her nephew Mihail.

"Do you know how we got the name `Jonov?'" she asked, smiling. "No," I said. "In fact, all my Bulgarian friends tell me `Jonov' is not a Bulgarian name at all!"

Legend has it that the Jonovs are descended from a Canadian named John who, for some reason, was living in a Bulgarian village in the 19th century. He fell in love with a beautiful Bulgarian woman betrothed to a Turk. John killed the Turk and was sentenced to serve 101 years in the prison in Rousse. After a few years he was released and returned to the village - where he married a Bulgarian woman, had many children, and lived happily ever after. My mind was racing: if this was true, there were books and screenplays waiting to be written.

"Did he marry the woman he killed for?" I asked. "What was he doing in Bulgaria in the first place? What was his last name?"

"This is all my grandfather told me," Lydia said. "Who knows whether this is true?"In July, Mihail volunteered to drive me to a family reunion in Belotintsi, near Montana, a village my grandfather Ivan left in 1912. We drove to Vidin, where I spent the night with my second cousin Aneta and her husband Sasho, a policeman. While sightseeing along the Danube, I saw a monument commemorating the heroes of the 1923 communist uprising - which included my great-great-uncle, Peter Jonov. The statue was spattered with red paint. My relatives clucked their tongues with embarrassment when I took a picture.

That evening we were in Belotentsi at the house of Tsanka, my grandfather's only surviving niece. Although she is old and unable to walk much, she enjoyed sitting with me while her two daughters, Siika and Maria - who come from Lom and Vidin every weekend to care for her - whipped up a meal for twenty people using a woodstove and two tiny gas burners.

"This is winter food," Siika explained, as she served me a plate of peppers and cabbage leaves stuffed with meat, rice and beans. "But this is the Bulgarian food your father and grandfather made for you when you grew up in Canada."

We sat around the table and told stories until late into the night. In 1958, the police came to my great-uncle Stefan's house. They claimed he had written a letter in which he threatened to kill somebody, and accused him of being a capitalist because his brother lived in Canada. Stefan was sentenced to three years in prison. Fortunately, he was transferred from a labour camp to a pig farm, where at least he had enough to eat.

Aneta's mother, Milka - who had met my grandfather during his visits to Bulgaria in the 1960s - gave me a shawl she had crocheted for my mother. Everyone had a funny story about Uncle Jimmy, the Canadian-born uncle who never lost his Bulgarian and who studied Slavic languages at Sofia University in the 1970s. Although the authorities limited Jimmy's travel, he visited Vidin and Belotintsi a couple of times.

"He had long hair and wore ragged cut-off jeans," Milka said disapprovingly. "When we met him at the hotel he looked like a caveman!"

The next morning, the husbands of Siika and Maria crawled out of the barn behind Tsanka's house, brushing hay out of their hair. It seemed like Belotintsi hadn't changed since my grandfather left in 1912: horse-drawn carts rolled down the street while old people bent over their hoes, digging up potatoes. The smell of goat and sheep manure blended with more human smells emanating from the outhouse. And everywhere were flies, flies, flies.

After Maria served us banitsa and coffee, we piled into my second cousin Stefan's car and drove high into the Balkans. Around one corner, a hundred goats suddenly appeared, in no apparent hurry to let us by. When the road became impassable we walked to our final destination: the mountain huts still owned by the Jonov family. A crumbling shack stuffed with hay was perched beneath a peach tree on the side of a bluff. After 10 weeks of searching, I finally felt serene and realized I had come home.

"This is where your grandfather came as a boy, tending his family's sheep and goats," explained our guide.

Grandpa told me once that after his first day of school at the age of six his parents decided to take him out of education. Ivan was the eldest son: who would take care of them? One hundred years ago, on this very spot, Ivan milked goats to feed his family and dreamed of places faraway. On the way back to Belotintsi, I wondered whether a Canadian ancestor named John had stoked Ivan's desire or whether Canada was just a coincidence. In either case, my life was indelibly changed.

Siika's son arrived from Lom to attend my farewell lunch. I went to my room to get the gift for Tsanka from our family. As they all waited patiently for me to bring down my bags and say goodbye, I sat on the bed and sobbed: what could I offer these people? They have nothing, I thought, but have offered me all that they have: presents, food and love. "Hoobava," Tsanka said again and again as I showed her my family photos. "Very pretty."

Here was my mother - with all her teeth - in front of her swimming pool, and there was my sister in a kitchen the size of Tsanka's house. I was presented with a family tree that included the names of my nieces and nephews in Canada: Megan, Ryan, Sonja and Evan - named for the man who began the saga a century ago. I put on a brave face and said my goodbyes. A dozen people circled the car, waving frantically.

"Next summer, you must bring your nieces and nephews," they said. "Your family will always be welcome in Bulgaria."

Victor Janoff is a Canadian who has been in Bulgaria working as a consultant for a Canadian NGO. Since his arrival he has been searching for his long-lost relatives. This column is the last part in his four-part series on his search.