Solving a mystery of postwar kindness
Canadian agency, UNESCO helped schoolchildren in devastated countries
It was a mystery almost 70 years old until a Star reader uncovered the story behind the gift that had delighted little Sigrid Morrison. The German grandmother was a schoolgirl in Pforzheim after the Second World War when her teacher arrived one day with a box of fresh notebooks and pencils from Canada — a treat for students in postwar Europe who had few school supplies.
Last summer, Morrison had a belated surge of gratitude for those gifts, but she had no idea whom to thank. In August, the Star wrote about how Morrison wanted to learn more about the postwar gesture.
“It occurred to me I should contact someone in Canada and say thank you,” said Morrison, who moved to Scotland after the war. “They made an impression on me, these gifts from children to children.”
Here in Canada, Star reader Willi Schwiering spotted the story.
Not only did Schwiering believe he knew what kind of notebook Morrison was talking about, but he still had the notebook from Canada he had been given as a schoolboy living in the German town of Marl, and he dug it out at his home in Bobcaygeon, Ont.
“They were the only notebooks we had because there was nothing left after the war — we were writing in the margins of newspapers,” said the former toolmaker, who moved to Canada after the war and worked for General Motors in Oshawa before retiring to cottage country.
On the cover of Schwiering’s notebook read: “From the Children of Canada, the Canadian Council for Reconstruction through UNESCO.” It seems the CCRU was created in 1947 at the request of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to help countries devastated by war rebuild their depleted resources. Canada decided to send some 20,000 school box kits to European classrooms ravaged by war.
Areport from Library and Archives Canada states each box contained 40 “ink notebooks,” 40 “pencil notebooks,” 1,000 sheets of foolscap for ink and 1,000 sheets of newsprint paper for pencil, 48 pencils, 12 boxes of crayons, one package of ink, 144 pens, 144 pieces of chalk (24 sticks coloured), 36 erasers, six rulers, one pound of cold water paste and 100 sheets of construction paper (in 10 colours).
There were also samples of stories from Canadian authors, a Tom Thomson calendar, a map and some fact sheets about Canada.
The report describes the Montreal warehouse where they were assembled as a “hive of activity.
A standard packing case was provided of corrugated paper, waterproof lined, bound with steel straps. Before any of the 650 tons of supplies — enough to fill 28 railroad freight cars — were packed into these indi- vidual boxes, extensive tests were made for waterproofing, boxes were dropped from a height and generally banged around. Boxes arriving overseas . . . were delivered in uniformly good condition.”
The retail value of the contents of a school box would have been about $26, but with donations and discounts was less than $12. But the true value of these simple materials may have been hard to pin down.
At the time, the committee hoped that “the links of friendship represented by these gifts of basic school supplies . . . may be the basis for a lasting and understanding friendship on a very personal basis.”
Nearly seven decades later, a German schoolgirl would prove them right.