Ancestry Magazine

In the spring of 1951, my family rode the great crest of post-war immigration from the Netherlands to Canada. My parents were in their mid-forties at the time; their seven children ranged in age from eleven to twenty.

After several fits and starts at trying to find our place in the new country, we finally settled in Clinton, Ontario. In due time, the children married and began families of their own. My father passed away in 1984.

It wasn’t until more than a decade ago that I began researching my family history. But by then it was too late to ask my father anything about his family; I did ask my mother about her parents and grandparents, and duly noted whatever family stories she remembered. I also queried her about my father’s side of the family. She did the best she could to fill me in. Since she was very lucid in her later years, I thought I had done well by asking her plenty of questions before it was too late. She passed away in 1996.

But when the fiftieth anniversary of our immigration neared in 2001, it occurred to me that I knew very little about the ins and o uts of our family’s immigration experience. I was the youngest child and, therefore, was left out of most of the decision-making process.

I remember my own experiences of leaving school in the Netherlands, the boat trip, and beginning school in Canada without knowing a word of English. But what about my older siblings? What did they remember? We had never really talked about our experiences.

I composed a questionnaire asking my siblings to share such things as their reaction at first hearing the news that we would be emigrating, and their feelings about leaving their friends. I told them I would compile the answers and create some kind of family report. As I reviewed the completed questionnaires, it struck me how different each of my siblings’ experiences had been. We shared the same parents, the same journey, the same home, and yet each of us had our own unique tale to tell.

How I wished that I could talk to my mother about her immigration experience. How had she felt during those first years in Canada? How had she felt leaving behind her family–her parents and siblings? A couple of her brothers had emigrated, but her parents, her only sister, and her brother that was closest to her in age, had stayed in the Netherlands. How had she coped with the new language? Had she been lonely without neighbors with whom she could converse freely in her native language? I realized that I had been so busy asking her about the distant past, I had failed to ask her about the recent past.

After mother’s death, our family decided to get together at least once annually so we wouldn’t lose touch with each other. Recently, at such a gathering, my eldest sister announced that she had received a collection of letters written by our mother to her brother in the Netherlands. Her brother had faithfully kept the letters and, upon his death, his family had returned the letters to my sister.

I couldn’t believe our good fortune. We now had the actual let ters our mother had written describing her feelings about her immigration experiences. These experiences were not written from memory, they were written at the time she was actually living them.

When I sat down to read and transcribe the letters into my word processor, I was overcome with emotion as I read about her struggles in the new land. Yet she was always full of hope and good cheer. There was never a word of self-pity or “if only” in all the letters.

In 1970, almost twenty years after emigrating, my parents took a trip back to the old country. In the last letter I have of my mother, she informs her brother of their travel arrangements. Written in large letters, her last words on the final page are Tot Ziens, a Dutch phrase meaning “until we see each other.”

Besides a deep religious faith, my mother had a sense of humor. I would sometimes tease her and say, “When you get to heaven, let me know that you’ve arrived and are doing fine.” Those last words “Tot Ziens” now have special meaning to me. Bless her heart–and pen.

Janet Sjaarda Sheeres enjoys researching and writing about family history. She is a member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America’s Historical Committee that focuses on the church and emigration history of the Dutch in Canada and the United States.