In the Museum’s Pier 21 Story exhibition of the Museum, there is a section called Treasures From Home, with artifacts and props representing what immigrants brought with them as sailed to Canada. The objects are contained in a large wooden case and include many different objects: a bicycle, a pair of clogs (a traditional wooden shoe), a dresser, a set of dishes, and, yes, the kitchen sink.
On the left side of the wooden display case are large stencilled letters that say “Van Dijk Farm” with an address in Ontario. The case is, in fact, a recreation of a kist, a large wooden crate used by Dutch families to transport their possessions from the Netherlands to Canada.
They didn’t pack light.
The Treasures from Home exhibit resonates with many Museum visitors, a lot of whom have Dutch roots. Annette Verschuren’s parents immigrated from the Netherlands in 1951 and settled in Cape Breton. In honour of her family, Annette has made a major gift to the Museum. In recognition of her support, Treasures from Home will be dedicated to the Verschuren family at a ceremony on April 6, 2023.
After the Second World War, the Dutch government restricted the amount of money emigrants could take out of the country with them. If you were moving and sold your home or your farm, you might find yourself with a good amount of money (in Dutch guilders) but you couldn’t just convert the money to dollars and put it in a Canadian bank account. So how did families try to transfer the wealth they’d accumulated to their new home? One of the options for bringing personal wealth with you to Canada was to bring things.
Dutch families brought lots of things. Furniture, clothes, appliances, cookware, and more. Kists were large and could weigh several tons. Some families filled and shipped more than one. Some even purchased items in the Netherlands in advance of travelling. One Dutch farmer bought a combine harvester (a huge piece of farm equipment) and paid the cost to have it shipped to Canada.
But it wasn’t always expensive objects that got transported. There is even a story of a woman who brought the rock she used to hold down the lid of her pot to keep it from boiling over. She wasn’t sure she would be able to find such an object in Canada.
As funny as stories like these are, beginning a new life in an unknown land can be scary. Imagine you were moving to a new country. If you were offered the choice of bringing your possessions or of having money to buy all new things, which would you choose? Bringing familiar objects to a new home provides comfort and a sense of continuity.
The container is as meaningful as the contents
Myno Van Dyke, whose family immigrated from the Netherlands in 1951, begins his immigration story:
When I retired a few years ago, one of the first promises to myself was to clean up the garage. In order to complete this task, I had to have a place to move the junk, so that meant I had to clean out the barn first. I went upstairs in the barn and started moving wheels, tires, aluminum lawn chair frames and some old bikes the kids used to ride. Under the bikes I found two small wooden chairs. A lump suddenly came to my throat. These were the chairs made by my father in 1951. The wood came from the “Kist.”
-Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 collection, S2012.1567.1
Myno’s childhood chairs recalled layers of memories. The wood that had transported furniture from the family’s old lives, had been reshaped into new furniture and was now outgrown and nearly forgotten. Now the chairs had been rediscovered while sorting through the detritus of a life lived to begin retirement with, if not a clean slate, at least a clean garage. The chairs, like so many of the things in our lives that are precious, contain greater significance than you would guess from looking at them.