Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for the beautiful riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke in the upper Ottawa valley, it gives me great pleasure to rise in the House to support Motion No. 207 to recognize every May 5 in Canada as Dutch heritage day.
It also gives me great pleasure to congratulate the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington, a southwestern Ontario riding, for putting forth this motion. Parliament will be losing a great member of Parliament, as the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington has announced his intention not to run in the upcoming federal election.
It has been a pleasure serving with such a fine member of Parliament and true gentleman. I can think of no better tribute to make to recognize the contributions of the member opposite to the people of Canada, as we recognize the contribution Dutch people have made to our Canadian heritage, except to pass Motion No. 207.
Before I continue my comments, I must declare a conflict of interest. My roots are in the riding of the member who sponsored the motion.
I was raised in Blenheim, and I worked the fields in Dover and Chatham before leaving to obtain a post-secondary education, eventually following my heart to the upper Ottawa Valley, which I am thankful to call home. Many of my family members reside in the Chatham area to this day.
The motion is about recognizing the Dutch people in our home communities, families like the Van Hoofs, the Rooks, the Jansens, the Vandergragts, the Van der Gallens, the Van Bavels, the Devries, the Van Der Ploegs, the Vandersleens, the Van Gentevoorts and the Stoops, founders of Steqcan, a farm equipment manufacturer in Westmeath. This is just to name a few.
The history of the Dutch in Canada actually starts south of the border, when the Dutch began to settle in the Hudson Valley in the 17th century, as my colleague mentioned earlier. Many of the local, familiar names in southern Ontario today date back to the Dutch united empire loyalists, who emigrated in 1783 and 1784 as refugees from the American Revolution. Names like van Alstine, Van Eck, Van Dusen and Van Ten Brock date from that early period of Dutch migration.
My family was part of the large migration of Dutch people who came to Canada in the aftermath of World War II. The story of my Dutch grandparents is my personal heritage moment, which I intend to share. It is representative of the reason May 5 deserves to be recognized as Dutch heritage day in Canada.
My maternal grandparents, Arnoldus Jacobus Geelen and Elisa Huberdina Geelen-Thiesen, emigrated from Holland, arriving in Quebec City on May 15, 1952, with 10 children, the youngest but a few weeks old. They had heard about life in Canada from friends and relatives who were already here. They said it was good, and my family was not disappointed.
They found the people friendly from the very first as Canada became home to all of them. Family members were understandably nervous about uprooting their growing children and moving to an unknown land with different customs, languages and food. This experience is no different from what the current generation of emigrants to Canada feel today when they arrive in this land.
Our Dutch immigrants made a point of not clinging to old country ways, and their children saw to that. The children in the Geelen family quickly learned English, and more quickly than my grandparents.
Now, most of the people in the Netherlands speak English. Today, the Netherlands ranks second after Switzerland for English proficiency among non-native speaking countries.
Back in the 1950s, when they arrived, they learned from grade-one readers, and my parents and their siblings were quick to correct their parents when they got a word or phrase wrong. My mother said she soon lost the taste for Dutch food too, and my grandmother learned to cook in the Canadian way.
I do not think anyone can really put into words why a family emigrates.
The Netherlands is known for its farming and its special practices. Currently it is the world's second-largest agricultural exporter, with specialty crops like tulips, chicory and sugar beets. Given the Netherlands' small land base and high population density, they have to plan carefully to maximize what they have. For example, if a Dutch farmer cannot easily access a patch of land with machinery to cut hay, he will use that as pasture land for livestock.
Dutch farmers like my family were attracted to Canada because they wished to farm the way this country does it. In Holland, they might have a farm of 20 acres, but it was broken up into many fields far distant from each other, and there was constant moving of machinery from one area to another. Some of the fields were less than an acre in size.
In Holland, the house and stables were all under one roof, with the living quarters quite separate. The animals were not in the house, but the house and barns were connected. The building was 100 feet long and 30 feet wide.
During the Second World War, more than 100 German soldiers and their officers billeted themselves in my grandparents' home. War is always a frightening time. As their home was near the German border, and the allied forces were firing on the German troops just over the border, the family was right in the middle of a war zone. The night one of my aunts was born, grenades and bullets filled the sky, and it was too risky for anyone to bicycle to bring the midwife. Someone went on foot for her, and my Aunt Nellie was born in the basement of the home.
One evening, in early January 1945, the Germans nailed notices on all the doors in Velden, the area of Holland my grandparents were from. It said they were to evacuate their homes in the morning. They walked and rode in carts to a town in Germany and were put on a train. My aunt said there was horse manure in the cars and no seats or windows. No one knew where they were going. In addition to my grandparents and their children, they had been giving shelter to three other families who had lost their homes, and all were evicted from the home.
They were taken to Groningen, in northern Netherlands, where they were billeted in homes. There were seven in the family, too many to be placed with one family, so the family was split up, which was very hard on everyone.
My grandparents returned to their home months later to find it in shambles. It was empty and dirty. Everything had been taken, even the sewing machine. The spirit that carried them through wartime deprivations and worry may well have been the factor contributing to the tremendous feeling of unity in the family and the desire to seek a fresh start in a place like Canada.
My grandparents left Holland for Canada with 10 children and the allowable $200 to their name. The ship the family was piled into was the SS Waterman, a troop transport ship from the war, complete with bunk beds, which they had to share. There were four in one cabin and nine females in another cabin. My grandmother remembered being seasick the whole time.
They landed in Quebec city. My mother remembers, through the eyes of a child, a big glass building and getting on a train. The train took the family from Quebec City to Thamesville. They had no food on the train. My grandfather bought loaves of white sliced bread at a train stop. They had never had sliced bread before.
Their Uncle Ben, who had been in Canada, met the family at the train station in Thamesville, Ontario. He brought the new arrivals to his old two-storey house. His family lived at the back of the house, and my mother's family at the front.
School was hard because they did not know the language, their clothes were different, and they had no money. However, by working industriously together, by 1961 my grandparents were able to purchase a 100-acre farm of their own. The children were expected to help on the farm after school and on holidays, and everyone received an equal education. From there, the family has prospered several generations later.