Vancouver's NS koffie club: 2015

Toen Hans zyn verhaal opstuurede waren alle photo's netjes geplaatsd en ik dacht, makkelyk ik hoef daar niets aan te veranderen. Spoedig vond ik uit dat het blogspot programma zyn eigen regels heeft om fotos toe te voegen, Hans heeft de fotos apart gestuurd en nu heb ik die vlak by het onerschrift kunnen plaatsen

Well, I guess it’s time I sat down gave an account of my (and my immediate family’s) arrival and experience here in Canada.

I was a mere stripling when we left the old country. Born in Utrecht (Dollardstraat 27bis) in 1950, I was just over 4 years of age when we left our native shores and made our way west to find our fortune in the New World. I have very few memories of my time in the Netherlands: vague memories of Katwijk, Zwaarte Piet, falling down the stairs at home and crashing headfirst into a bicycle parked at the bottom. I also recall having my tonsils out and being in the hospital for a short while. Oh, yes, I also vaguely recall giving a 3 year old a haircut: a friend of my mom’s had come over with her son in tow. They were talking about the “kapper” so naturally I took it upon myself to give the lad free trim. I guess we were too quiet, because they came looking for us. My mom was shocked but also quite proud: I had taken care enough to lay out some newspaper beforehand and then had my client sit on it thereby facilitating cleanup. I’ve always disliked disorder. Maybe I should have been a hairdresser or a janitor.

As did so many others (not just Dutchman) we (my mom, dad, and brother) came over on a ship called the Waterman (see Leo’s entry for a picture of same). I should mention that my brother was 11 years older than I. He was born in ’38 just before the war, and I was born after dad had spent some two years “dienst” in Indonesia, after the war. Dad would have liked to have been a musician (a violinist) but his own family situation was such that this was just not possible. (In his twenties he did learn to play well enough to be part of a string orchestra.) His own mother passed away when he was 2 and his father when he was about 12 or 13. He had a very challenging childhood. Overtime he managed to both work and finish school. He became a machinist (a tool and die maker), a trade he eventually resumed here in Canada where he worked for the Schlage Lock Company here on the North Shore for some 20 to 25 years. The company was located on the site of the present Save-on Foods on Marine drive. Prior to this he worked making rubber stamps, and as a steward on the railway (CN or CP) from Vancouver to Winnipeg.

Mom and Dad op de fiets (me on the left)

It must have taken a fair bit of courage for a couple in their mid thirties to sell all they had (which wasn’t much, apparently, or they’d likely have stayed) and set off to explore a strange frontier. I believe they left the sale of some of their belongings to a “friend” who was supposed to forward proceeds from the sale of the goods and, you guessed it, never did. This was very hard on my father, because he was himself a very honest man. Such blatant dishonesty upset him deeply and shook his faith in humanity, especially when it came at the hands of a fellow countryman.

Dad and his violin. He’s immediately to the left of the woman standing in front. He was 24.

In any case, we arrived at Halifax sometime in late March or early April and rode the rails to Vancouver. I think I remember seeing mountain sheep on our way through the Rockies, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t false memory syndrome, and I was recalling a picture I saw later somewhere else.

Life was very difficult at first. But, being only 4, I thought it was pretty adventurous. I never recall being hungry, cold or bored. You see, once the family got to Vancouver, I believe we spent some weeks at an immigration centre, and then we moved into OUR first home in Canada. I believe this was the first non-rental place my parents had ever enjoyed. It cost $350.00. (I have no idea whether dad paid cash or bought it in installments). It was situated in what is today very valuable real estate as we lived on the shore of False Creek, almost under the Burrard Street Bridge, about 200 – 300 metres east of the present site of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre.

Our “house” lacked ANY of the modern amenities such as light, heat or plumbing. Also, it was a pretty dodgy part of town, populated as it was by any number of immigrant families and, as I learned some years later, by local low-life’s including the occasional prostitute. Houses such as these were fairly common in the Lower Mainland at the time. Many also lined the southern shore of Burrard Inlet between the Second Narrows Bridge and the refinery to the east. (Malcolm Lowry, an author of some note - He wrote Under the Volcano – later made into a film starring Albert Finney and Jacqueline Bisset, and October Ferry to Gabriola) also lived in one of these seaside shacks in Cates Park, Deep Cove. One never lacked for stuff to do on the water’s edge.

Dad worked at whatever he could find, and Mom got a job – late at night – cleaning up at the Johann Strauss, a nightclub which was on Robsonstrasse as Robson Street was the called. I’m not sure how she felt working in a German club given what the Germans had put them through during the war, but you had to eat.

My brother (sometimes with me in tow) had to row across the inlet to a floating marine gas station near what is now Granville Island to get white gas for cooking and for the lanterns.

We lived there for roughly a year when a series of incidents occurred involving the locals and the police. One of the officers spoke to my parents and suggested we move as soon as possible as things were getting worse, and it wasn’t a great place to raise kids. I walked to Kindergarten at a school that I think was called Aubrey Elementary. It was situated across the street from the YMCA on Burrard, which was nearly across the street from the B.C. Hydro building.

Mom and Dad took the hint and somehow managed to buy a place in Kerrisdale (for $11,000.) What a move up. The house was old, but there were kids my age and a bit older everywhere. I had friends. We played Monopoly, baseball, cards, baseball, in the sandbox, baseball, in the nearby ravine, and more baseball. I remember getting 2 Double Bubble bubblegum for a penny at the store which was about 2 blocks away. I also remember taking the bus downtown (6 cents) on my own to go and see movies. I would have been 6 or 7 at the time and never felt unsafe. (I loved Tarzan and Hercules movies as well as westerns.) I don’t think kids do that kind of thing today.

About a year after we moved to Kerrisdale, my grandmother Theodora (van de Leur) came to live with us, as her husband (apparently a very nasty, abusive man who drank too much, and whom I don`t remember at all) had passed away the year before. Shortly after this my mom`s sister (Annie) and her husband Gerard, and my cousins Jan, Thea and Adrian (Adje) came to town. (Jan and Thea were pre-war kids, and Adje, like me was a post-war child born in 1947, 3 years before me.) Adje and I generally got along well until he got a car... and a girlfriend. The Dendaas family stayed with us for a while, eventually settling in Richmond – a lot of Dutchies there at the time. My uncle and his son Jan were house painters and did quite well. My aunt – a wonderful person – always worked and eventually, the family became the caretakers at the Steveston hotel. My aunt helped run the kitchen there. I often stayed overnight in the hotel, and I`ve probably slept in half the rooms at the inn. (In Utrecht, my aunt and uncle lived quite close by, and I often went there to have my bath after my youngest cousin had his. I like to think they changed the water, which had to be heated on the stove first. My aunt used to say ``Adje zit met zijn gatje in het badje. I thought this was hilarious. I still do. Adrian, who also trained as a house painter / decorator became, I believe, the maintenance supervisor for the Richmond School District. Thea worked for years at Molly’s Reach in Gibson’s Landing. (The setting for the TV show “The Beachcombers”.)

Mom was always a very hard worker and a good mother and cook. To make some extra money she worked for Children’s Aid taking in foster babies, and from about 1957 to 1964 -65 we always had an average of 3 - 4 babies of all types and colours in the house. Some of the children were negro, some indigenous, some half and half. Occasionally we got a child who was disadvantaged: retardation, water on the brain (hydrocephalus), etc. Many, of course, were given up for adoption by addicted and/or teen mothers. Mom always found it hard to let them go after they’d been with us for some months, and Children’s Aid found it hard to let Mom go when she decided she’d done it long enough – you can’t imagine the number of diapers that woman washed in her lifetime; there were no Huggies in those days. And I must say, I’ve bounced more than a few young’uns on my knees. I can still remember the smell of the nursery in the morning after the littluns had done their thing in the night.

Sadly the Kerrisdale house was old (it even featured an old sawdust burner) and expensive to maintain, so after about three years there we moved to North Burnaby. I think the house sold for $14,000 and I believe Dad paid $8, 000 for the “new” place. I’m guessing we were almost mortgage free. I cried a lot because I just loved the Kerrisdale area and had made so many good friends there.

By this time Dad was working at Schlage Lock in North Vancouver and he took the old second narrows bridge to and from work every day. Meanwhile I managed to make some new friends in the area, and when we weren’t going to school, we played for hours on end in the woods just across the street from our house. These woods led down to the railroad tracks and to the inlet between the 2^nd Narrows and the oil refinery. We had swinging ropes, camp fires, secret hideouts and lots of fun. Trains in the area often went fairly slowly and we were known to hop one to ride it to the bridge and the wheat pool just to the west of the bridge where we’d fish. We also fished off the old 2^nd Narrows Bridge (I can still recall the centre span going up when a ship had to pass through) and off the little rail bridge in North Vancouver just east of the bridge. Interestingly, some of the old shore shanties (such as my family had lived in when we immigrated) still lined the inlet in the early to mid-sixties, and occasionally my friends and I would make the acquaintance of one or two of the down-and-outers who were generally pretty nice people, never threatening.

That’s about it. Life was sure less structured in those days. There was no political correctness and a kid could be a kid. I hear today that there’s a movement afoot to make kids’ play areas more challenging and LESS safe. There’s a real feeling that children don’t use some of the playground equipment as it’s just TOO safe and not challenging enough. Indeed, I recall my son coming home from school one day telling me that the bat, ball and glove he had brought to school to get some pickup baseball going had been confiscated by staff as it was “too dangerous”.

My aunt and uncle were always fun to be around.Mom and Dad sometimes talked about life in Holland, and lamented the loss of friends and Dutch traditions and foods. They felt they lost touch with their oldest son, my brother Antoon (Tony) because he” Canadianised” pretty quickly. It was much harder for them to learn the language and new customs. I had no real trouble as little expected of a 4 year old. I picked up the new language easily, and managed to maintain whatever Dutch was spoken around the kitchen. However, my Dutch, such as it is, is stuck somewhat of a time warp, new vocabulary, concepts, ideas, from the Netherlands having stopped dead about 1954

My brother on skates – around 1950-51. Mooie broek. Eh?

Mom and Dad (the couple on the right) in their everyday attire.

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