Coming to Canada
Scattered throughout wartorn Europe, this family reunited in Canada a few members at a time
Our story begins in 1943. My dad was in Tallinn, Estonia, studying architecture. It was also the year he turned 20 and was immediately conscripted into the German Army or be shot. The Germans were in control of Estonia at that time. Fortunately for my dad, who did not have it in him to hurt anything, let alone kill someone, he was made a radio operator. He retained his skill in Morse code for decades.
The Russians invaded Estonia in 1944, but the German/estonian Army was able to keep the Russians at bay on Estonia’s eastern boundary for six months. It was during this time that my mother, who was born and lived in Narva, Estonia, just west of the Russian border, was able to escape. She was scheduled to be on one refugee ship—likely destined for Stockholm or Copenhagen—but it was full, so a second one was made available. The second ship was faster than the first and they caught up to the first ship just in time to see it being torpedoed, with all hands lost.
My mother’s brother was also in the German Army, and when the German Army began to retreat, my uncle, his family and my mother escaped to Germany. (My uncle stayed there and eventually became the chief accountant in a shoe factory.)
At the same time, my dad also found himself in Germany and they all ended up in a displaced persons camp in Schwarzenbek, where they met.
In the meantime, my grandmother (my dad’s mother) and my dad’s sister also escaped. First, they left the southeastern border town of Petseri, Estonia, and went westward to our family homestead in Viljandi, located in south central Estonia. As the Russians advanced westward into Estonia, my grandmother and aunt fled to Sweden. During their occupation of Estonia, the Russians moved the Russian border ten kilometres into Estonia, which meant that even Petseri—now called Pechory—became part of Russia.
In Sweden, my aunt met my uncle, who was studying to be an apiarist. Once he graduated, he was offered a job as an instructor of beekeeping at the agriculture college in Truro, N.S. So he and my aunt left Sweden for Canada and arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax in 1948. Our family now had a Canadian contact. (My uncle went on to become the chief provincial apiarist for Nova Scotia and branched out into growing blueberries on hundreds of acres, which are now in the hands of my cousin.)
During this time, my mom and dad left Germany and moved to England, where they were married. After working for a year, my uncle was able to sponsor my grandmother into Canada, and she arrived at Pier 21 in 1949 on the four-boiler Aquitania. After working for another year, my uncle sponsored my dad, mom and their newborn
daughter to Canada. My family arrived at Pier 21 in 1950.
With my dad’s architectural background, though interrupted by the war, he found a job in Truro building counters for businesses. He did this until 1952, when he found a job in Montreal designing windows and doors for a stainless steel company. By 1955, when I was a year old, he had moved up the corporate ladder into management.
They bought a new house in 1957, and purchased a new VW Beetle and a cottage lot in the Laurentians the following year. It was around this time that my grandmother moved in with my parents. The house had four modest bedrooms, so there was enough room for the five of us to live comfortably. My dad soon started developing the cottage lot and began building our three-room cottage located on a beautiful lake. In 1967, we purchased an additional 30 acres on top of our original two acres.
The cottage served us well until 1982, even though it had no electricity or running water. By that year, both my sister Maret and I had gotten married and had children of our own, so the cottage was becoming too small. My dad, who by now had moved up to general manager and head of research and development at work, built a two-storey addition. Finally, in about 1985, we got electricity in the cottage. Thankfully, my days of running down to the lake to fetch water became a thing of the past.
After my parents passed away—mom in 2004 and Dad in 2006—Maret and I sold the house they had purchased in 1957, but we kept the cottage and all its grand memories. Now almost 60 years old, the cottage is my parents’ greatest legacy; my sister and I hope to pass it along to our kids one day. n