Of Potatoes and Perseverance

He’s been Dad to me for more than 40 years. Our family patriarch just turned 90. I want to dedicate a few words to his character. Believe me – he is a character.

Dad was born in Willemstad, Holland, the youngest of six boys in the VanderSlikke family. Three of those boys died in infancy, a sadly common occurrence in those days. Apparently two of them had been named Job. According to a custom of the times, Dad was named after his deceased brothers, but they modified the name into Joop.

He grew up on the family farm – milking cows and working the fields with horses. They grew sugar beets, wheat and the mainstay – potatoes. His mother’s health was fragile, so Dad learned early how to cook and garden.

Willemstad was 80 percent destroyed after WWII. Most people had left the town. The VanderSlikkes stayed because of the farm. At 16, Dad went to trade school in Rotterdam, where he learned to be a mechanic. A couple of years later his mandatory conscription into the Dutch army began. Rumours of war abounded, but Dad had no desire for a military career.

The night he met Maria Matze, he drove both her and her friend home on his motorcycle. (Picture my dignified father-in-law riding around with not one, but two women on his motorbike.) After he dropped off the friend, he mustered the nerve to ask Maria for a date. How could she resist?

On the move
They married in 1951, on February 14. (Oh, the romance!) One week later, Dad boarded a ship bound for Canada. His Uncle John had immigrated to the Prairies several years earlier. Dad began work for a farmer near Fertile, Saskatchewan. His new bride followed that spring.

Fertile lived up to its name. Within a short time their first child was on the way. Isolation and homesickness took their toll. They returned to Holland well ahead of Nellie’s birth. After the Netherlands flood in 1953, they came back to Canada, this time settling in Ontario.

They lived in the Guelph area and Dad worked as an auto mechanic. Jack was born in 1956, on the hottest day of the year, according to Dad, while he spent a couple of sweltering days moving the family household by himself. (Mom was lounging around in the hospital.) Eventually they bought a house in Stoney Creek, where Dad spent his spare time coaxing the hard red clay to yield fruits, vegetables and yes – potatoes.

Dad served faithfully as an elder in the Reformed Church. He always loved music, singing in choirs. Jack has fond childhood memories of his dad playing the accordion at parties, and as a teenager, of being roused out of bed by Dad cranking out hymns full blast on the organ early Sunday mornings.

Eventually Mom and Dad helped Jack buy a poultry farm near Harriston. Dad happily discovered that nothing grows better potatoes than Harriston loam and chicken manure.

They moved to Harriston themselves in 1984. Dad planted a garden at his own home and kept the one on the farm as well. We had potatoes for the nation! He kept busy fixing cars in our shed and helping Jack with machinery and fieldwork. When we moved to our current location a few years ago, Dad was delighted to learn that potatoes also grow well in the soil here.

On his ninetieth birthday, Dad got up in the morning, made his bed, set the table for breakfast and went out to clean the driveway. I fully expect to see him in his garden (and probably ours) this coming spring, Lord willing. He’s no quitter. You don’t get to four-score and ten without perseverance. And perseverance builds character. And like I said – he’s quite a character!