David E. and Regina Hartman Family

My name is Lillian Alton and I am David & Regina Hartman's third daughter, and the first one born in Canada! Mom was 4 1/2 months pregnant with me, when they left Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  After sailing for 2 weeks they landed in Halifax at Pier 21. They had two other daughters, Wallentina and Olga (Wally-- called Willa-- and Lola), who were 3 and almost 2 years of age at the time. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta exactly 4 months later on December 16th, 1928.

Mom and Dad are now deceased but their reason for coming to Canada was for a better life (which they had and we children have had). Their reason for emigrating was due to religious persecution in Russia. My father had been a lay preacher in the Baptist church and had helped to build a church in Volynian. Their choice of a country to emigrate to was done by drawing the name of a country from a bowl (three countries were chosen -- America, South America and Canada). Canada won out, 3 consecutive times! On the way over here they said that they were going to raise their children as real Canadians, which they did.

Their families had originally gone to Russia from Germany at the time of Catherine the Great and my mother's family were Lutheran Ministers with the oldest son always in that profession in each successive generation from that time, until 1910 when they converted to the Baptist faith. Catherine (who had come from Austria) had asked for professional people to help populate Russia and although she also had peasant Germans come, she also requested professional people to emigrate there as she was trying to bring the people into the modern world of the time. These German people were called Volga Deutsch and ancestors of theirs can still be found in Russia. Although they lived there for around 200 years they never did take out Russian citizenship. Therefore when my parents arrived in Rotterdam, the Canadian Consulate wouldn't accept their Russian papers and my father had to go to Berlin, Germany to get a proper German Passport. This he did while my pregnant mother was left in Rotterdam with the two small children, my sisters. He made it back in time to board the Veendam on the day of sailing -- a Tuesday. They arrived in Canada with $400 (which apparently was a princely sum at that time!).

They took the train to Winnipeg and were met there by a Baptist Minister who had sponsored my father... but my dad had been sent on to Edmonton, Alberta where he opened a grocery store. His first love was to own a flour mill (as his father had owned one in both Germany and Russia) and when one became available in 1934 in Westlock, Alberta (north of Edmonton), he purchased it but due to the depression, 3 years of drought, and 3 years of early frost, he lost everything and we were thrown out on the street by the woman from whom he was purchasing the flour mill. A father, a mother and by now 5 small children, Wally/Willa, Lola, Lydia (Lillian), Evelyn and David Jr., ages 13, 12, 10, 7 and 4. The year was 1939 and that September the second world war began!

My father moved us to Vernon, B.C. for about 3 years. He went into the army and in 1942 he moved us to Toronto. Following the war he started his own business manufacturing slides to extend the leaf on the latest thing in furniture -- chrome tables -- and corner brackets to hold the legs firmly in place on the tables of this chrome furniture (he had 7 patents at the time). He was very successful but in 1959-1960 he had to sell the business due to ill health (the business is still a viable entity to this day). He was 59 years of age at the time but lived on until he was 91 years, 8 months old! My mother, Regina was killed in an automobile accident just prior to her 69th birthday in 1969. The youngest child and my only brother, was owner with his oldest son, Steven, of a successful firm in Brampton, Ontario and he passed away in 2002. My oldest sister, Willa, also passed away 6 weeks after he did. There are still 3 sisters living; me in Peterborough and two in Toronto. Our life here has been good and we thank God that our parents came to this country. When my husband and I went to visit Pier 21 in 2000 and had their names placed on the Sobey Wall of Honour I was moved to tears as I passed through the original doors where my parents and sisters had passed through so many years before  (Of course, I guess I had passed through them also, albeit in utero!).