AC Early career in Canada

So then I got a job in the vicinity of where my parents lived. My parents had rented a small house on the Bruceu farm close to the Christ Weidman’s farm.. I helped at the Weidman’s for three days and for three days at Meets. On Sunday, I had a day off and went to my parents. On my first job I had earned $10 per month and now I was getting $15 a month. We still had to pay the transportation costs to the C.P.R. who had brought us to Canada.

When Alex and Nick were finished with the harvest and the farmer wanted to keep them for $5 a month, they decided to leave there. Alex went to Kitchener where his fiancee, Martha Unruh, had work and where her family lived. He got a job at Kaufman’s shoe factory where he stayed until he was pensioned off. During this time father wrote to Mr. Swift asked him if his grown-up children could find work in his business. He replied immediately that we would all get jobs in his company. Nick took the letter and with his friend, Hans Neufeld (instead of Alex), went to Toronto. Both of them got immediate employment in the Swift Meat Packing Plant. They stayed there until 1931 when Hans Neufeld married my sister Luise and moved to Kitchener.Nic stayed on until father became older and work became difficult for him. Then he went to Manitoba to our parents on the farm where he helped our two younger brothers to operate the farm. In 1954, he suffered a stroke. In the first two years he was able to be at home. But later he had to be in institutions and in the end he was in Bethania, where an operation on his foot precipitated his death in 1967.

Our father was an optimist. He had a happy nature and was healthy. In 1939, he had his first heart attack but didn’t get completely better. On December 24, 1941, guests had come to celebrate mother’s birthday. He and uncle David Klassen had a close relationship and enjoyed good communication. Uncle David and aunt Luise lived with their daughter and son-in-law, Marie and Hans Dick and their four children: Irma, Edgar, Karin and Harry, on a farm six miles away. Father had fallen asleep in his chair after the meal. The guests went home. Then mother and Nick noticed that he was unconscious. He died on December 30, 1941 at the age of 78.

Alex wrote to us before Christmas 1925, telling us that we should come to Kitchener, that Kaufman’s were hiring workers, so Luise and I went there and were immediately hired. We had worked for two months and then, shortly before Christmas, they laid off all of us who had been hired to complete the Christmas orders.

We went back to our parents for Christmas. We had a nice Christmas. Nick had also come home. Right after the holidays, Luise and I went back to Kitchener in order to look for jobs. Unemployment was high and jobs were few. We went to one factory after another. Everywhere we got rejections. Then we came to the Goodrich Tire factory. The man said to us, “Today I cannot hire anyone but if you should come on Thursday, then some workers will be hired!” “Until Thursday,” said Puise, “we can't wait that long.” So then he laughed aloud and said to Luise that if she were to come on Thursday, she might be taken on, but I was too weak for their work! Well we went and thought we’d find work somewhere else. Unfortunately, we went away and looked and looked but were unable to find employment. On Thursday, Luise went again to the Goodrich factory and was hired. It was difficult work but it paid well and she worked there until 1931 when she married Hans Neufeld and they made their home in Kitchener.

I was told by some  girls who worked at Forsythe’s shirt factory that I should apply there, but that I wasn’t to accept the rejection from the girls in the office and that I should insist on speaking to the forelady. They said, “Our forelady likes the girls who come from Russia and she would accept you.” I got the answer that there was no work, but I insisted on seeing the forelady. Finally, she took me to her. The forelady accepted me in a friendly manner, gave me a machine, and immediately I began to sew collars for men’s shirts and to attach them to the shirts. It was difficult work in that the factory was considered to be the best in its field and the work had to be flawless. We were paid for each piece that we sewed. It took time but I learned to do it well and I enjoyed it. We had rented living quarters, Luise and I and our cousin Gretel (Margaret)  Klassen, who also had a job in a factory. Then our life was not so lonely anymore. There were many acquaintances living in Kitchener and Waterloo. And we went every Sunday to the church. One day, Gretel’s brothers, Nick and Con, came and said to Gretel that if she wanted to become a nurse they would loan her the money to further her education for that purpose. She was a lot younger than we. So, off she went to school and became a good nurse.

At that time, Anna Becker came to Kitchener and we took her into our flat. That was good too. We became friends with her.

Then in 1926, uncle David and his son-in-law Hans Dick went to Manitoba to see if they could rent a farm. They were able to do this and that family moved to Manitoba. Then my father went there too and he was able to rent a farm with implements and horses so that the farm could be operative immediately. He stayed with the David Klassens, and they wanted me to go to Manitoba in the spring to keep house for father and to make a garden, and mother with the two younger brothers would come in the fall when traveling was cheaper. In the fall, at that time, young men from the east would travel west to help with the harvest and travel was cheaper on trains.