Sobey Wall of Honour
Column
35
Row
3
HOVIUS FAMILY IMMIGRATION STORY
Early in the morning of May 8, 1953 the Hovius family, consisting of Enne and Wiebrigje and their seven children left the town of Grijpskerk, Groningen in The Netherlands and traveled by car to Rotterdam. The children, Wiebrand, Heintje, Trijntje, Johannes, Aafke, Sieske, and Berend ranged in age from 2 - 16. In Rotterdam, the family boarded a boat called "De Waterman" and sailed for Halifax, N.S., Canada. Enne was hoping to purchase a dairy farm in Canada some day. It was extremely hard to obtain land in The Netherlands - hence, the emigration.
The family arrived at Pier 21 on May 16, 1953 and made its way by train to Cornwall, Ontario. It stayed in the Cornwall area for two years and learned first hand how tough it was to be a stranger in a new country. Poverty, unemployment, and the extreme cold of the first winter hit hard. An eighth child, Freda, was born in 1954. In May 1955, the family again packed up and moved to southwestern Ontario, to the town of Aylmer.
On August 14, 1957, Enne and Wiebrand died in a construction accident in Dresden, Ontario. Wiebrigje was left to raise the remaining seven children on her own. In 1968, she married Klass Bouwknegt and they lived in Aylmer until Wiebrigje passed away in 2000 at the age of eighty.
The remaining Hovius children are scattered throughout Southwestern Ontario and have themselves raised fifteen children, including two who live in the United States. At the time of writing (January 2003), there are also two great-grandchildren of Enne and Wiebrigje. The offspring from this original immigrant family include (in 2003) lawyers, doctors, teachers, a nurse, and a university professor.
Submitted by Berend Hovius, London, On. Canada.
