Saving Dutch-Canadian History

There are more than one million people of Dutch heritage living in Canada today. While this makes people of Dutch heritage one of the largest minority groups in this country, Dutch Canadians have tended to rapidly assimilate into mainstream Canadian culture. Yet the Dutch have made significant contributions to Canadian society in the areas of religion, education, agriculture, labour, political action, journalism and sports, to name just a few.

The first wave of Dutch immigrants to arrive in Canada were Dutch Americans who came with United Empire Loyalists (1783) who did not want to participate in the American War of Independence against the British. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of Dutch helped to settle the Canadian west. They created settlements such as New Nijverdal (now Monarch), Alberta, Neerlandia, Alberta and Edam, Saskatchewan. These immigrants soon owned their farms and ranches. Many others settled in and around the larger cities of Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg. 

The third and last large wave of Dutch immigration began in 1947 following WWII. Again, many of the migrants were farmers, but there were also large numbers of skilled labourers and professionals, as well as war brides. (Officially, 1,226 Dutch war brides came to Canada, ranking second  in number only to British war brides.) Many of these Dutch immigrants settled in southern Ontario as well as adding to those who had come earlier to the prairie provinces and British Columbia.

But not only families made the arduous immigration journey. Young men looking for adventure or job opportunities also set sail for the new world. Among them was 18-year-old Gerrit Jan (Gerry) Segger from the German county of Bentheim, (bordering on the Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Overijssel), who left his home in 1958 for Edmonton where his brother Henry had preceded him by six months. Gerry joined the Second Christian Reformed Church (CRC) where his sponsoring brother worshipped. 

FROM FARM BOY TO BUSINESSMAN
Gerry grew up on a farm but wanted to explore city life. He had few skills suited to urban living, but he was willing to work hard. In his first two years in Edmonton, he held a succession of jobs including that of construction labourer, waiter at the prestigious MacDonald Hotel, tombstone labourer and electrician’s helper. Being a gregarious person and having improved his English at night school, he embarked on a series of sales jobs that included selling portraits, jewelry, stainless steal cookware and bakery goods. In 1962 he was offered a job as an insurance salesman at the newly formed Edmonton office of the Holland Life Insurance Society. Initially, he attempted to sell policies to CRC folk, but his German background did not endear him to the Dutch congregants (even though his father had been imprisoned in Germany for anti-Nazi sentiments). So, he struck out to sell insurance to the broader Edmonton community. To say that he was successful is an understatement. Soon he formed his own insurance brokerage firm which, in the late 1990s, employed 1,500 associates selling life insurance from Thunder Bay, Ont., to Victoria, B.C. In 1999 he sold his firm for a fine sum to a larger international company. 

Gerry and his wife, Hilda have two sons, both of whom attended The King’s University College (now The King’s University). In 2005, Gerry funded an endowment to create the Gerry Segger Music Scholarship in Performance Excellence at King’s. Later, as Segger told me, “because the Lord loves a cheerful giver” he approached King’s with an offer to do more. Then-King’s president, Harry Fernhout suggested the establishment of an archive dedicated to the preservation of reformed Dutch/German documents primarily from WWII and the immigration following it. Segger was all-in. The Gerry Segger Heritage Collection (GSHC) was founded on Oct. 2, 2013.  

A HERITAGE COLLECTION IS CREATED
This heritage collection is the first and only Canadian research collection/archive devoted to the subject of Dutch and German Reformed immigration and the Dutch experience in Canada. The collection is housed within King’s Simona Maaskant Library. The space has a separate HVAC system that keeps the temperature consistently between 19-20 degrees Celsius and the humidity between 35 and 36 percent. Currently it has just under 500 meters of compact shelving. While it is not the mandate of the center to collect rare books, it does house a 1602 Dutch language edition of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, as well as a Dutch Staten Bijbel from 1718.  

Bonita Schalk-Bjornson, King’s Senior Library Technician/Archivist, is hopeful that the collection will soon be designated as an official Alberta archive. She told me that the collection will become a valuable resource not only for King’s students, but also for current and future scholars who wish to investigate the history of Dutch immigration to Canada. As she said, “We’re building a collection for the future when historians will need this resource to tell the story of the Dutch Reformed contribution to Canada’s social, religious and educational life.” She especially mentioned the urgency of collecting valuable documents now. The immediate post-WWII generation is aging, and their children often just toss out Mom and Dad’s old letters and photos.  

A HISTORY OF WOMEN
Bjornson is particularly interested in Dutch women’s immigration history. “But so often,” she states, “the older women I talk with about donating material for our collection are too humble to think their records have any value.”  “I was just an ordinary housewife,” is a common response. “Why would anyone care about the letters I sent home to Holland or received in return?” It is, of course, just these kinds of documents that form the basis of a social historian’s work.

The GSHC has collected many letters that were sent back to Holland by immigrants and their families. It also houses an extensive collection of postcards sent to Holland by travelers and immigrants to Canada. The oldest postcard is dated 1876. The images on the postcards provide snapshots of Canada over the years, and the messages, often short and sweet, give insight into people’s impressions of Canada. The Reading Room houses secondary sources of published materials, including church anniversary books and yearbooks from Christian schools.

Thanks to the foresight and generosity of a German/Dutch boy who made good, the Gerry Segger Heritage Collection at the Simona Maaskant Library at The King’s University is a testament to contributions that, through God’s grace, Dutch immigrants have made to Canada.