Through the Eyes of a Child

Leaving home on a trans-atlantic voyage was a grand adventure and a true family bonding experience

It was the spring of 1952. I was eight and stumbling along through Grade 2. At that age, whether you realize it or not, you stumble through a lot of things. As a kid, you sort of live in a world of your own. And it’s not very big.

My world was the family home, the small canal out front, and the big street and larger canal nearby. Those were on the way to school. The shops and stores on that main street, with all of their window displays, were a constant distraction, especially on the way to school. I knew that we lived in Holland and imagined that it was a big country. We’d taken a few trips to visit relatives. And, if you had to travel by bus or train to get to those places, the country had to be big, right? Wrong!

That spring I learned that my world of “home,” and the country we lived in, were very small. That was the spring of our big family adventure. There had been lots of talk, of course. But when you’re eight, you don’t pay too much attention. The word “emigration” had little meaning. Until it started happening. To us. To me!

There was a flurry of preparation—the packing of some things, the disposal of others—and solving the mysteries of official documents and schedules. I stumbled a lot trying to keep up and understand it all. Oh, my brother and I had been told what would happen. That we would leave Holland and learn to live in a country called Canada. But it all sounded like a big adventure story. Even those tentative lessons in English that our parents attended some evenings sounded more like a comedy of confusion than anything else.

Our emigration from Holland only really began to happen when we got on that big bus amid a welter of tears and hugs, and the only home that I had ever known faded into the background. All the emotions made it clear that this was not like going on a family visit somewhere—emotions that were different from anything I had ever seen before, in my mother especially. I had said goodbye to a few friends, but she had said goodbye to her whole world of family, friends and the only life she had ever known. She was leaving her culture of language and society. And the only two words of English that she had managed to learn in those evening classes she had attended were “yes” and “‘no.” But exactly how, and when she would have to use them, she had no idea. She stoically followed her husband’s lead, however, and became more of a mother in doing the things over which she still had some control—looking after her two boys.

Emigrating was an adventure. There was lots to see. Holland really seemed to be big as I looked out from the bus all the way to Rotterdam. It also looked messy. In 1952, Rotterdam still looked like a war zone in places, especial

ly as we got closer to the harbour where, we had been told, our ship the SS Ryndam would be waiting.

Travelling on an ocean liner was a big adventure. The Ryndam was enormous and new, having been in service for one year. On the four or five decks where we were allowed to go there were restaurants, shops and even a library and a theatre. We went to the theatre once and saw a show about a guy singing in the rain. My brother and I also wondered why things in the dining room were bolted to the floor. When we got out onto the Atlantic, with nothing to see but sea, we found out why.

Suddenly the big Ryndam didn’t seem to be so big anymore as it began to crash through the waves. There were fewer and fewer people in the dining room as the ship pounded its way westward. Mom was among the missing; she did not like ocean travel and stayed below in our cabin, and away from food.

After what seemed like about a week, we woke up and everything was quiet. Through our little porthole on the lowest of the passenger decks, we could see a large bay and a little island. My brother and I raced up to see what there was to see of this place called Halifax—and Canada.

Ashore in a New Land

It was like Rotterdam, but in reverse. This time, we were arriving. The highest point was a hill with a tower and a clock. Mom seemed happy at the prospect of walking on something that wasn’t moving all the time. And we were switching from being emigrants to being immigrants, a process that seemed to take hours in the big, official customs barn that held a lot of people asking a lot of questions. Dad seemed to know a few more words than Mom’s “yes” and “no.” My brother and I just stayed close to whatever seemed to be ours and wondered what would happen next.

A train happened next. A clattering, rickety immigrant train full of other people and families like us, all heading for somewhere in Canada. It was a long ride. Mom saw some white stuff somewhere along the way and wondered what strange country would still have patches of snow in the month of May.

All I remember of that threeday trip to somewhere called North Bay was a man giving me a quarter in one of the stations we stopped at and seeing a big castle-like building in a city across a big river somewhere. Somebody had an atlas and figured that it must have been a place that sounded like “Kwie-bek.”

Canada was not the land of milk and honey that we might have imagined at one time. When we were welcomed by our sponsors and driven to our new home just north of North Bay, it was a land of black flies and mosquitoes. And, if Mom had broadened her English vocabulary and incorporated a word yet to be coined by sociologists, she would have admitted to more than a bit of culture shock. There was a lot to learn, and a lot for which we had not been prepared; however, with only a one-way ticket, and no funds, returning was not an option.

So, we learned to adapt and persevere. Adapting, for my brother and I, meant school. And the option of learning English or French. We learned English in the classrooms of our two-room school and more than a bit of “French” of dubious quality in the schoolyard. Both were useful for various reasons. Hey, when in Rome...you know. Sooner or later in this process of adaptation, you reach the point of acceptance, and life seems to begin again. It’s most noticeable in adults. Kids, like me, just keep stumbling along whatever the circumstance, and sooner or later, grow up.

Feeling at Home

Mom’s point of epiphany, if that’s the right word, happened in church one Sunday. A logical place for such a thing to occur: going to church was a tradition that seemed to be about the same in Canada as it was in Holland. It was what we always did on Sunday, only the language was different. It was in the fall of that first year in Canada when Mom sat upright in church. It wasn’t what the minister said because Mom’s vocabulary hadn’t gotten much beyond her original command of yes and no, and things related to household matters and shopping. It was the music.

“Dat is ‘Wilt heden nu treden,’” she whispered the song’s name to Dad. And it was, a beautiful melody that was as Dutch as anything Mom could remember. A hymn that was part of the long history of the little nation we had left behind.

Mom may not have understood the words of the Canadian version— “We Gather Together to Seek the Lord’s Blessing”—but to her it was the beginning of the realization that home had nothing to do with geography. Home was where you lived. Home was where you were, with your family. It didn’t erase former memories and traditions. Mom would forever hate black flies and mosquitoes. But after that Sunday, Canada started to become home. ■