-
Children March 1952 At 15 years of age, somehow I knew I would not always stay in my home country. That was about one year after a 5-year occupation of ‘Holland" by Germans. They had left the country severely crippled and damaged. The idea to emigrate did not seem strange to me, or my family. We …
-
Children April 2, 1954 The move to Canada seemed imminent. My father’s parents along with some of his younger brothers and sisters had already immigrated to Canada a few years prior. My father felt that after the war, the future wasn’t looking bright as far as employment was concerned, and for …
-
Children March 1953 - Groote Beer At the age of nine I emigrated with my family (parents and 2 older brothers) from the Netherlands to PEI, Canada in March of 1953. The decision to immigrate was made by my parents in order to provide the opportunity for a better future for their children. It must …
-
Families September 30, 1952 - Groote Beer After returning from a five-year stay in Indonesia, Toon Maas courted Trees Holdrinet for a short period before proposing a marriage and immigration abroad. Toon and Trees (the common Dutch form of their names) were married in a civil ceremony in Oosterhout …
-
Families September 21, 1952 – Groote Beer In 1952 my husband Johannes C. Kreeft and I left Holland with our three small children, Jacomina Susanna, Gerard Jan and Willem ages 5,4 and 3. We travelled aboard the Groote Beer, leaving September 21, 1952, arriving in Halifax 9 days later on September …
-
Families April 1, 1953 - Waterman Times were hard in Holland then and although Pete worked hard to make a living for us, it was hard to provide us with a comfortable existence. In the years between 1945 to the early 1960’s a lot of people emigrated to other countries and stories started to go …
-
Families April 16, 1958 - Waterman After our 10-day journey on the S.S. Waterman of the Holland-America Line we arrived in Halifax around 7 o’clock in the evening of 16 April 1958, half a day before its planned arrival. Such excitement when we first saw land and then steamed into Halifax Harbour. …
-
Single Men and Women February 26, 1950 – Beaverbrae I have been asked numerous times why I left home and came to Canada. When I was 9 years old the war started in the low lands (Holland) on May 10, 1940. At about 4:30 a.m. there was a lot of banging, airplanes flying in all directions. An hour …
-
Single Men and Women July 20, 1957 – Waterman My story starts in the summer of 1951, when I went on holidays with my family to a resort in Holland called "Het Trefpunt", translated it means "Meeting Point". There I met Gerald, my future husband, although at that time we had no idea that we would be …
-
Artifacts-Dutch Passports …