Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington for bringing this motion to the floor of the House. It is a tremendous pleasure for me to speak in favour of the motion to make May 5 Dutch heritage day, every year in Canada, a day that I grew up knowing as Liberation Day.
It is also very fitting that today we are debating this in the House of Commons on the 70th anniversary, to the day, of the founding of NATO, as Canada and the Netherlands were among the first 12 signatories of that treaty.
I am also a daughter of Dutch immigrants. I grew up eating hagelslag and chocoladevlokken on my sandwiches, oliebollen on New Year's Eve and singing Sinterklaasliedjes and Roodborstje tikt. This was part of my identity growing up as a proud Canadian but also with the Dutch traditions and the culture and the food that my parents brought with them. That is the beauty of being Canadian, because we can have both. What immigrants bring with them is something that enriches the Canadian identity and the pluralism that we enjoy as Canadians.
I also grew up with something else. I grew up inheriting from my parents a deep appreciation for our freedom, for our democracy, for everything that Canada stands for, including the history that we have of always being outward-looking in the world and engaging, where necessary, in order to protect democracy and freedom in other parts of the world so that we can protect it here at home as well. I also inherited an incredible appreciation for those Canadian soldiers who went to the Netherlands, who died there and who sacrificed so much, again because my family would be able to live in freedom.
As a daughter of Dutch immigrants I feel both. I am of course Canadian and I am so proud of what Canada has done historically. My father was five years old when World War II ended. He was born in 1940. He grew up for five years in Deventer in the war. The very first time my dad got a chance to eat a candy was during the liberation when the Canadians came through the streets and they were throwing candies to the children. My dad tasted a candy for the first time because it was given to him by a Canadian soldier.
My mom was a kindergarten teacher in the Netherlands in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Every Wednesday afternoon they did not have classes. She would bring all the kindergarten students to the graveyards where the Canadian soldiers were buried and every four- and five-year-old child would lay flowers on the graves of the Canadian soldiers once a week. This is the deep appreciation that I grew up with, and Canadian children today should have that same deep appreciation because that is why we are all living in the world that we are living in today and in the country that we are living in.
When I was growing up, there was our next-door neighbour. His name was Ernie. He was a curmudgeonly old man. He was very grumpy and if we went on his lawn, he barked at us a bit. We were 10 or 12 years old and we did not like him very much, but my parents told us to always treat Ernie with the greatest respect. We were not allowed to say one bad word about Ernie because Ernie was at D-Day, and Ernie was a scout with the Canadian forces. He was the first Canadian soldier who crossed over the bridge and entered the city, Deventer, where my father was living with his family at the time.
My father's father and his grandfather were in the Dutch resistance. Ernie was the first Allied soldier to make contact with the resistance to prepare the ground for the liberation of Deventer, so my parents taught me that, no matter what happens, I have to honour and respect Ernie and all the other soldiers who did so much for us as a family but also for our country and for the Netherlands.
There are over one million Canadians today, including several in this House whom we have heard from, who are of Dutch heritage. I am very proud to be one of them. A hundred and forty thousand of them came after World War II, like my parents. My dad was the oldest of four children. When he was 20 years old, as a young piano tuner in the Netherlands, his parents decided to make that change, to get on a boat.
They arrived at Pier 21 with all their furniture, including the bed that my mom and dad still sleep in today. The furniture that came on the boat in April 1960 is still in the family today. Five years later, my mom, a 19-year-old kindergarten teacher, travelled to Canada on her own. Young 19- or 20-year-old girls of Dutch heritage could not live by themselves in Calgary at that time, so she boarded with a Dutch family by the name of Vandenbeld.
Three years later, my mom and dad were married. It was my dad's family that she was boarding with for those years. I am so proud that both of my parents come from the Netherlands, that they are part of that proud tradition and that they passed that along to me.
In my riding, there are many people of Dutch heritage. There is even, I am so proud to say, a Dutch grocery store on Merivale Road in my riding, where people can buy snoepjes and all kinds of Dutch treats. That is very special, but it is even more special because we know that Dutch Canadians have contributed so much to this country.
Today is about celebrating Liberation Day and what Canada has done for the Netherlands, but also the contributions of Dutch Canadians, and not just Dutch Canadians but all immigrants, to the fabric of our society. From the beginning, when indigenous peoples taught the settlers how to survive in this land, this country has been made by wave after wave of successive immigrants. All have opened their arms and welcomed the groups that have come after, and my family is no exception.
I talk about the liberation of the Netherlands. I am the chair of the human rights subcommittee, and when we look at what is happening in the world today, the human rights abuses, the genocides and the horrible things that are happening in the world, I am so proud that Canada is a country that is contributing to ending those kinds of things.
My mom used to tell this story. Just before she was born, when her older sister was a little girl, their farm was a safe house for Jewish families during the war. One day, German soldiers expropriated the home. There was a family in the barn, and her older sister had to climb through the attic to the barn so she could warn the family that the place had been taken over by the German soldiers. My great-grandfather and his brother were both put into concentration camps because they were union leaders and part of the Dutch underground, the Dutch resistance. They were political prisoners at that time.
I grew up reading Anne Frank and understanding that this is an incredible part of Canadian history. We have always stood up for what is right and what is just, against the atrocities of Hitler and the atrocities that are still happening in the world today, because human rights, democracy, freedom and equality are Canadian values. They are also Dutch values. These are the values my mom and dad, Herman and Maria Vandenbeld, instilled in me when I was growing up.
I am so proud I am the daughter of Dutch immigrants. I am proud of the deep friendship between Canada and the Netherlands, and I am very proud to support this motion today to make May 5, every single year in Canada, Dutch heritage day.