100 Yaar: ‘I never saw my parents again after leaving for Canada’

In September, Marjon Bolwijn — an author and journalist from the Dutch national daily newspaper de Volkskrant — sat down with two Elim Village resident centenarians as part of her project 100 Yaar (100 Years). Ms. Bolwijn has spent the last three years interviewing over 135 centenarians from across the Netherlands. These stories are published weekly in de Volkskrant, with a selection included in Ms. Bolwijn’s book, Life Lessons from 100-Year-Olds, published in 2022.

During her visit to Canada, Ms. Bolwijn interviewed six centenarians who were born in the Netherlands and emigrated to Canada between 1948 and 1962 — including Elim Village residents Susan Dotinga and Neeltje (Nel) Diepeveen.

This is the second of two interviews conducted at Elim Village; you can read the first interview here.

By Marjon Bolwijn

Susan Dotinga-Kooistra lives ‘in the best place in the world’, she says. That is Elim Village, in fact a village for almost 700 seniors in Surrey, a city in western Canada. Susan, born in Friesland, lives there completely independently in a spacious apartment. If something were to happen to her, she could move into an apartment complex with light care and meals on site.

And if she really couldn’t do it anymore, there is a nursing home. Elim Village with its wide avenues has a restaurant, recreation room, shop, pharmacy, church hall, a doctor, vicar and a hairdresser.

On the table next to the armchair of the sprightly 100-year-old immigrant lies a Bible and a large magnifying glass.

Susan Dotinga pictured in her residence at Elim Village Fleetwood. (Photo courtesy of Kyrani Kanavaros)

Do you want to speak in English or Dutch?

“Let’s do Dutch, I don’t speak that much anymore. You can definitely hear from my speech that I’m Frisian.”

How are you?

“Good, because I live in the best place in the world, in Elim Village. It’s super clean here, inside and out. I live independently and cook my dinner every day. I regularly eat kale; I know that from my childhood. My first years in Canada it was nowhere to be found, until the first Dutch stores came.

(In a dramatic voice): “I’m alone in the world. Of the family I grew up in, I’m the only one who’s still alive. We were seven children, actually 10, because one twin died at three months of measles – there were no vaccinations at that time – and another child of cot death.”

How do you look back on your childhood?

“As a very happy time. I never once heard my father and mother say a bad word to each other. I had a strong bond with my father, who I told everything. He was a small farmer with seven cows, who also worked for the water board. We had no electricity or running water. We used rainwater that was purified with calcium in a concrete tank. I was the youngest. When I was born, I weighed more than 10 pounds. ‘You can send her straight to the farm, she’s that strong,’ said the family doctor.”

What was the reason for emigrating to Canada?

“In 1947 I married Jan. He came from a farming family of 17 children, eight boys and nine girls. He wanted to become a farmer, but only one son could take over the family business – not Jan. Canada was desperate for farmers and that’s how we came up with the idea of ​​emigrating. Of the 17 Dotinga children, 12 emigrated to Canada and America, all to be able to farm. I was the only one from our family who left.

“My father didn’t like the idea. ‘That’s not going to happen, you’re not going to Canada’, he said when we told him about our plan. But he saw children of friends leaving and that Jan had no chance of farming in the Netherlands. He slowly got used to the idea. After we got married, on his advice we lived with my parents for a year so that we could save. Jan worked as a farmhand, I as a seamstress. After a year we had enough to pay for the boat trip to Canada. I found emigrating an unprecedented sensation; when you are young, you mainly see the adventure.

“We were among the first post-war emigrants when we left in 1948. There was a Christian emigration office where you could register, and which arranged work and housing. You were not allowed to choose where you wanted to live, that was determined by the Canadian government. Dutch farmers wanted to go to British Columbia because the climate there is like that in the Netherlands, but in 1948 most were placed in Alberta, including us.

“We were taken from Friesland to the port in Rotterdam in a bus full of emigrants. There we boarded the Tabinta, a troop transport ship, with our four-month-old baby. I slept in the hold with 300 women, in bunk beds three-high. I lay downstairs with the travel cot with the baby next to me. The men and women had to sleep separately – crazy.

“After 10 days we arrived in Quebec City. There we boarded the train, a journey of four days and four nights on wooden benches, without sleeping facilities. The journey seemed endless – we immediately felt how enormous Canada is.

“It was April 28 when we left the Netherlands, everything was beautiful: the cows were grazing in the fields, flowers were blooming in the meadows and all the trees and bushes were green. On May 12 we arrived in Edmonton, Alberta. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, the trees were still bare. I thought: ‘This is not good, what are we doing here?!’ I kept that thought to myself. Jan was not a talker. If you talk about difficulties, you are not strong, he thought.

“A farmer picked us up at the station with his truck and took us to his farm, 15 miles, about 22 kilometers outside the city. We were to work on his farm for a year, from four in the morning until six at night, and were given shelter in a converted chicken coop on his property. There was a small bedroom that just fit a bed. There was no room for a crib, so we put the carrycot with our baby on a cupboard.”

Were you homesick?

“I did cry at first. Everything was different and I couldn’t understand anyone – I only spoke a few words of English – and I missed my father and mother, brothers and sisters. So I didn’t tell them that in my weekly letters, not to worry them. A few days after we arrived, I wanted to send my first letter to my parents and tried to explain to the farmer’s wife that I needed airmail. ‘Sky mail,’ I tried, but she didn’t understand. Then I threw my letter into the air. ‘Ah, airmail!’ she shouted.

“We soon discovered that the winters in Alberta last seven months. That long period made me depressed. Fortunately, a brother of my husband lived on the same property and a sister of his lived 16 kilometres away. We saw her every Sunday when we went to church. Our first year, the only church, the Christian Reformed Church in Edmonton, was half full. Twelve years later there were 15 full churches. So many Dutch emigrants came that way, especially Calvinists.

“The Protestant church stimulated emigration to Canada and helped to make contacts. In Canada, the religious community supported us. I think it was because of that church connection overseas, the stability and the feeling of home that the church gave, that so many Calvinists came. I always looked forward to Sunday, because then I met people and could speak Dutch.”

How did your life in Canada go?

“As an immigrant you have to work hard to get anything done. In the early years we knew poverty. We had no money and connections to start our own farm. It took 15 years to do this. Up until then, Jan had done everything. He worked on farms as a truck driver and a carpenter. As soon as we had saved $500, Jan went to the bank and asked for a loan to buy 17 cows for the piece of land we had rented. The bank said: ‘We have helped a lot of Dutch people, that all went well, you can get a loan too.’

“After 12 years we left Edmonton. I could not stand the long winters anymore. I grew green beans; when they were just ready to be harvested, they froze. We moved to Abbotsford in British Columbia, where the climate was more pleasant. When we retired, none of our children wanted to take over the family business. We were able to sell the property and buy a nice house with the proceeds.

“In Canada we had seven more children, two of whom died – our son with Down syndrome at the age of 8, and another son at the age of 51. Two years later I lost my husband. After a walk I found him dead behind his computer.”

Looking back on your life, was your emigration the right decision?

“If I had known in advance what we would all have to brave, I would not have done it. The worst thing, which I still regret, is that I never saw my parents again after we left the Netherlands. That 28th of April 1948 when my mother waved us goodbye at the garden gate, turned out to be the last time. The first 25 years in Canada we had no money to visit each other. We had no telephone, there was no computer yet, our contact was by letter. One day the postman delivered a condolence card: my mother had died. The post had been so slow about it that she had already been buried in the meantime. It was exactly the same with my father. I got through this too. It’s all good.”