Coming to Canada

A family’s immigration story told through the lens of its youngest child

Ipicture siblings growing up close in age, in the same home, with the same parents under the same circumstances. Sometimes they fight with each other and other times they fight for each other. They compete for Dad’s attention, Grandpa’s lap and Grandma’s cookies, and celebrate each other’s birthdays.

My siblings grew up in Norway under the Nazi occupation. My father, a chief engineer in the merchant marines was stationed in England when the war broke out. He could not return home nor communicate with my mama and siblings for six years.

After surviving time at sea and then stranded in South Africa for almost two years, Papa finally managed to find a job as chief engineer on a rickety old ship headed for New York. His urgent prayers and mechani

cal talents kept that ship afloat as they crossed the hazardous Atlantic, ever wary of the enemy’s torpedoes. He hoped the enemy wouldn’t want to waste ammunition on a ship that appeared so unseaworthy. He made it to Baltimore in the United

States, where he supervised thousands of workers during the building of the Liberty ships for the U.S. Navy until the war’s end.

Near Mama’s home in Larvik, 135 kilometres south of Oslo in southern Norway, the Nazis ran a POW camp for captured American soldiers. Even though my mama and siblings su†ered from great hunger and fear, and often witnessed the cruelty of the Nazi soldiers, still they smuggled food through the barbed wire fences to the starving prisoners.

My brother found a bomb left in a field by Nazi soldiers, which exploded in his face. He had a long recovery from the horrific burns to his face and chest. The doctors warned that he may never regain his sight. I can’t imagine his torment and Mama’s worry. Miraculously he recovered with full sight and no scars. What joy must have filled their hearts after all the hardships and pain.

Papa finally returned home and moved the family to Canada. My siblings had to leave their beloved extended family and many friends in Norway.

Crossing the north Atlantic terrified them when a hurricane shook the small ship like an angry dog shakes his prey. They would have been lost at sea if Papa had not o†ered to repair the damaged engine.

I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for my siblings and Mama to make such a long, frightening voyage and then arrive in a strange land, not being able to speak any English.

They bought an old abandoned farmhouse surrounded by an apple orchard, near a tiny community in southern Ontario.

My brother and sister at the vulnerable ages of 11 and 12, faced more obstacles when the school principal told the other children, “Do not play with those foreigners.” They worked hard in the huge vegetable garden and tending to all of the ducks, chickens, goats, pigs and cows, striving to please a harsh father.

Then I arrived. My sister eloped when I was two years old and my brother left home when I was three. So I grew up alone.

I rarely saw my siblings. My brother worked for an international company in Toronto, which soon promoted him to manage their o”ce in Vancouver. I never heard from him or his wife and daughters. He died at a fairly young age.

My sister moved to Florida with her daughters. Only recently we have reconnected by phone. Often she asks, “Do you remember…?” But always I have to remind her that my childhood memories are totally di†erent than any of hers.

I spent my childhood climbing the fragrant old apple trees behind my home, but the best climbing tree, a massive willow lay on its side near the river. A bad storm had pushed it down but it refused to die. In spring the river swelled making it appear as if this tree floated like a ship, its branches reached for the sky like sails and I became a pirate sailing the seas, by myself.

In summer Mama, Papa and I vacationed all over Ontario. Mama taught me how to swim and how to pray.

In fall I would collect nuts from the massive chestnut tree, by myself.

In winter I eagerly ventured out to the silent, cold fields. I pretended that I had flown to the Yukon to hunt for muskox with a camera carved from snow, by myself.

I grew up without having to move to another country, or lose friends and family, or endure the pain of discrimination.

I grew up in a vast country that fired my imagination with its varied beauty. I grew up in a free and peaceful country, my Canada.

How my carefree childhood di†ered from the one my siblings struggled to survive.

Above: Liz’s older siblings, Svendolaf and Brit-helga while in Norway during the war. At left (top): Liz’s father, Arnfinn Dahl-jensen, in his merchant marine uniform; Liz’s mother with Brit and Svend in Norway.

Above: Liz with her older sibling at their Canadian home in 1953 and Liz with her sister, Brit-helga, in front of a small farm in Unionville, Ontario.