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Canada would have lost Margarita Bruehler nee Sosnowsky to Paraguay if her brother hadn’t come down with the chickenpox. Margarita’s early childhood memories are dominated by her family’s escape from Russia in 1943 and life in the battleground of German occupied Europe. The family crossed many …
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Christine Schlechta was a 10-year-old German immigrant at the time of what she recalled as a magical quarantine Christmas. “It was Christmas Eve, 1951, when we arrived in Halifax at Pier 21,” Christine remembered. “We were led into the large assembly hall lined with benches where we had to wait …
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In the summer of 1940, as the blitz raged in England, Percy and Grace Blackman’s parents told them they were going to Canada. They were thrilled. They were born in Canada and their family had moved back to their parent’s country in 1938. Percy and Grace were excited until they found out that they …
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Being quarantined at Pier 21 meant a rough start to their Canadian adventure for the Blom family. Shelly Blom was born in the Netherlands and in the spring of 1953 her parents decided to move. “My parents had decided to leave our home in Apeldoorn to seek out new opportunities for their young …
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I just hung up the phone with Patricia Roberts-Pichette and find myself writing in the hopes that someone out there can help us with a question. Patricia wrote to me back in 2011 while researching her book on the Middlemore home children. During our correspondence I mentioned that a visitor had let …
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I received an email on January 2 nd from a very excited Margot Tarajos. She asked if we would be open for her visit 363 days later. Margot was two and a half on New Year’s Eve in 1955 when her family arrived at Pier 21 and was ready to start planning a 60 th anniversary trip back. She wrote, “ We …
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Ralph and Kay (McAndrew) Collicott Joanne Collicott Mc Guigan was born to Canadian serviceman Ralph Benjamin Collicott and his war bride Kay on a Halloween night. The moon was full as bombs fell around the Hammersmith hospital demolishing half a block across the street. After the war her father …
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We often say that the War Brides followed their hearts to Canada, and so they did, but they were not the only ones. From the Italian proxy brides to those who met on ships as children only to find each other years later in Canada we have had the opportunity to hear a lot of love stories. I think of …
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(Updated December 18, 2020 ) One of the visual icons of immigration to North America are photographs of newly-arrived immigrants, dockside just after their arrival. Thank you to Back in Time Photos for this image. This photograph of immigrants arriving at Pier 2 in Halifax just before the First …
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The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is Canada’s sixth national museum. Our mission is to share the ongoing story of immigration to Canada—past to present and coast to coast to coast. The Museum is located in the Pier 21 national historic site at the Halifax seaport where nearly one …