It was a Saturday evening. June 3, 1950. We were crossing a long bridge and entering Prince Edward County. At the wheel was Mr. John VanderVliet, the fieldman for Dutch immigrants. My father, mother, brother and I sat in the back seat, filled with anticipation and apprehension. Our beginnings in Canada thus far had been…
For the past 18 months, I’ve been plugging away at a “writing project” with my mom, recording her memories about every photo in her 25 albums. These conversations are then transcribed – raw material for a family history. It’s a monumental undertaking. Here’s a short list of the stumbling blocks. Mom’s impaired hearing and poor…
“We can only properly do redemptive journalism if our eyes are open to the dangerous times around us.” This statement from Brian Walsh was just one of many profound moments during Christian Courier’s 80th anniversary conference on October 18. Walsh said journalism should center around the act of homemaking, and if the scene in the…
A mother and her daughter stood on the beautifully manicured grounds of the Canadian Cemetery in Holten, the Netherlands, on May 4, 2025. Dutch children laid white and red roses on the more than one thousand graves of the Canadian fallen soldiers. Thousands of poppies fell through the sky from a helicopter above, while the…
At this time of year, many of us turn our thoughts to Europe, and to the tyranny of the German Nazi regime during World War II. Many of us have stories we remember, or that have been told to us, about what our families experienced in the early 1940s. One such story I remember well….
“I made quilts as fast as I could to keep my family warm, and as pretty as I could to keep my heart from breaking,” wrote one pioneer woman in her diary. Pioneer quilts were usually made from scraps – Pa’s britches, empty flour sacks and Meg’s outgrown coat. Many quilts told stories; you could…
“Every day I get to wake up in the best place on earth: Holland, Michigan.” So says Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) at the beginning of Holland*, a new thriller, streaming on Prime, set in the title city in 2000. Nancy’s voiceover accompanies images of children in traditional Dutch costumes and a miniature model of the town….
For me, reading about the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands can bring about a visceral response. Recently, for example, I was seized with waves of terror while listening to an audiobook version of The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It by Nina Siegal. In…
We’re in our corner. There’s a thermos of Douwe Egberts coffee on the table. Today Pete is the server. Instead of Gemberkoek, we have apple pie, which Broekie pulled out of a bag and set beside the thermos. So Broekie brought the pie, though we know Corrie baked it. He hands a plate to each of us and slices the pie into six pieces.
It’s still dark when I wake up. A thought pierces my heart: today is the funeral. Four days ago, on February 22, 1944, an American bombardment tore the heart out of Nijmegen, our city, and shattered our family by killing my eight-year-old brother, Jos. Jos is short for Josef, meaning “God adds.” Yes, God adds,…
My friends said that we should have a name for our coffee club, so we decided to call ourselves the Young People of Yesteryear (YPOY). Douwe, smiling, said, “The Y P bothers me a little. It’s more like how to P today.” We all laughed at that. “In the past, it was a stream . . .” he paused for a few seconds, until Broekie shouted, “of iniquities!” and without missing a beat, Douwe said, “Yes, now it’s more drops of blessing.”
I am the son and grandson of Dutch immigrants to Canada who arrived shortly after the end of the second world war. They took a “kist” across the Atlantic, a large crate containing their modest household possessions. Along with their kist, many Dutch immigrants brought their Reformed Christian tradition. This tradition, sometimes referred to as…
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