My parents arrived in Canada 70 years ago. There was always enough to eat and there was peace.
They lived in this peaceful country the rest of their lives.
Although I was too young to remember that day, my Canada started at Union Station on the first day of August. That summer in Toronto was sweltering. I remember the asphalt getting soft and bubbling up between the sidewalks. We started out in one room on the third floor. Apparently, the higher up the stairs you went, the rent decreased and the temperature increased. Who had air conditioning?
My mother, Helene, got work first, as a cleaning lady, and continued for many years. She was held in high regard by the well-to-do families she worked for. My dad, Werner, went into technical fields, eventually helping to develop a machine that used gravity to clean pollution from water.
That first October in their new country was memorable: Hurricane Hazel blew in. I heard the grown-ups talking about the Humber River overflowing its banks. Houses, bridges and other infrastructure were washed out. It was a devastation unheard of in Toronto. By the time it was over 81 people had lost their lives here.
But to a little kid, life is more immediate. There was always ample food: I remember the piles of fresh vegetables, meat, fruit and German delicatessen goodies my mom and dad stacked on the kitchen table after grocery shopping. Then we pulled up our kitchen chairs, sat down and admired this bounty. They couldn’t stop marvelling at such abundance and the fact that they could afford it.
For me, Sunbeam Bread was the biggest hit. A picture of a little girl with curly blonde hair munching a slice of this extremely white, soft bread was on the wrapper. I think it was first served to us at the home of one of my dad’s work colleagues. My God, it went well with baloney. My mother wasn’t sure about white bread at first. My parents were used to sturdy rye bread, the darker the better. It had to make your jaws ache after you had a sandwich, preferably filled with lots of salami and mustard. But they got used to white bread sooner than I expected. And I can’t forget the little tins of Millionaires Sardines bought from Kensington Market. I think my dad got a kick out of the name; it was nice to dream.
All of us little kids in the neighbourhood played together mainly in the back alleys. I’m not sure how many different mother tongues we spoke at the time, before English became our first language—much more quickly than our parents. Then came the time when I wanted to speak English only. This created a healthy amount of tension. I suspect this may have happened in many immigrant households. Solution: German classes every Saturday morning. In our first year here, I couldn’t understand why my parents couldn’t read signs and newspapers in English. But they were no slouches either. Every one of them, including aunts and uncles, mastered their English, although the accents lingered.
Even though our parents, like so many other immigrants, had expected the streets to be paved with gold, they adjusted to their fortunes and disappointments, advancing from one room, to two rooms, to a whole flat, until they bought their first house.
In Grade 13, a friend and I were talking in the library.
“How long have you been in Canada?”, we asked each other. At that point, it was about 15 years for us. For my friend from Quebec, more than 400 years! We sat quietly for awhile looking at each other in amazement.
I was privileged to cover Canadian citizenship ceremonies for the Stouffville Sun, our former town newspaper. The people becoming new Canadians were proud and excited to be part of their new country. But for some, who had escaped oppression in their homeland, old fears—looking over your shoulder to see who or what was coming after you—didn’t fade away automatically.
Because of my parents’ decision, I grew up in Canada, the only country I know as home. Last summer, almost 70 years to the day that we arrived in Canada, we were standing in front of the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill in Ottawa with our children and grandchildren. Although they are no longer with us, I am thankful that the parents of both my husband and myself made that important decision to choose Canada.
And it has been good for us all, down to the grandchildren in our extended families. All told, we have backgrounds from a dozen different countries. But we are Canadian!
