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Children September 30, 1952 – Groote Beer (The following are my recollections, whether that be original or from hearing stories from my parents, about the trip from the Netherlands to Burdett, Alberta.) Housing in the Netherlands was terrible. My parents and three children (I was the youngest at …
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Children March 1951 Our family immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in March of 1951. We were a family of eight children, two boys and six girls, ranging in age from one month to eleven years. I was eight and the third oldest. My recollection of the event begins just prior to our departure …
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Children I was only seven when my brothers, sisters and I were told we were moving to a place called Canada and would live on a huge ship for about nine days to get there. Wow! From that moment on, what had been ‘normal’ faded into the background. Chaos took its place! Strangers walked into our …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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Families August 11, 1953 – Sibajak My name is Anton Rouss. I arrived with my wife Paula (nee Van Den Berg, married on July 15th 1953) on the M.S. Sibajack on August 11th 1953 after leaving Rotterdam on August 3rd at 17.00 hours. I wrote a diary of the nine days on this ship: Monday August 3rd. – …