A new home in Canada

A New Home

Val and I spent a month in Berlin in the camp run by the Mennonite Central Committee for refugees hoping to emigrate. There we were able to get the necessary papers to travel to the British Zone, where Lina and Woldemar lived in the village of Baden, Lower Saxony. We lived with them for two years (1946-1948), until we came to this wonderful country Canada. The MCC helped us and many other Mennonites.

Since April 26, we have been in Fallingbostel (transit camp for those emigrants having a Canadian sponsor), and today is June 25, 1948. For two years now we have been thinking about emigrating to Canada and now our departure is just a matter of days away. We will cross the ocean by ship, then travel by train (from Quebec City to Ontario). Then I will be reunited with my two sisters (Margaret and Maria) in New Hamburg, Ontario. It will be a new chapter in my life and in the lives of my children and my grandchildren. First of all, we will have to learn English and adjust to our new home. It will not be easy, for starting anew is always difficult.

We have burned our bridges behind us. We cannot stay in Germany because Lina’s family is also moving to Canada, to Winnipeg). Robert Artes (Woldemar’s brother) is sponsoring them. Also my sister Maria Dirks joined our sister Margarete Klassen in Ontario a year ago. All my other children and relatives, if they are still alive, are behind the iron curtain, except for my dear Frieda and her children, who now live in far-away Paraguay.

My days in Follingbostel are wonderfully peaceful, without worries about food or having to do hard work. I can sleep in, can visit my acquaintances, and I have time to read and write. My thoughts go back again and again to the past. I notice that I have outlived many others and that people see me as an old grandma. Thus my time is running out. Also my beloved children are probably thinking that I am no longer living after all the heavy blows that have hit us.The heart of your old mother is still burning with unchanging love for you, my two sons and six daughters. My good wishes and prayers accompany you still.

Arrival in Canada, July 1948

We crossed the ocean on the Tabinta, a Dutch ship. Seagulls followed the ship and we watched them. Once, when Val held out her hand with a piece of bread, a gull would have taken it if she had not quickly pulled her hand away.

On the 10th day of our voyage, we reached Quebec City, and then we traveled by train as far as Toronto, Ontario. Friendly Red Cross nurses helped us onto the right train for New Hamburg where my sisters Margarete and Maria live. We stayed with them for a month.

Val had to go to school, and so we traveled to Culross in Manitoba to the farm of David and Agneta Klassen, who had sponsored us. We lived with the Klassen family for almost a year. In school, everything was in English and soon Val was able to understand it. When the next school year came, we moved to Winnipeg. I lived with Lina and Woldemar, who were renting a small apartment on Redwood Avenue. Woldemar was working at Monarch Machinery and was learning English. He was not able to practice medicine until he had written the required Canadian medical exams.

Thus, I am now living with my own daughter as a member of the family and we share our joys and sorrows. I thank God that I am healthy and robust and can still help with household chores.

But I have lost Val, who has been given a home with foster parents. May God guide and protect her. We were together for a whole nine years. Together we survived the trek and crossed the ocean, and I have shown her grandmotherly love. On August 4th, she went to live with John and Mary Pauls, who will take her to school and to church. I place her under God’s almighty protection. I miss her sunny disposition, her singing and her merry laughter, which will now cheer others.

Once there was a tree. Almost all of its branches were cut off, last of all the fresh new growth. Now there are only four branches left and, for which I thank God, they cover the weak trunk with much love, so that it can continue to exist in the midst of storm, rain and thunder.

John and Mary Pauls took Val in as their foster daughter, and for ten years she received from them parental love and education. Her report cards were good and she even won prizes in skating and swimming. When she was seventeen, she worked in Concordia Hospital, first as a helper in the kitchen and later in the operating room. On September 12, 1959, she married Abraham Janzen in the First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.