Stanley Sape Vander Meulen

Stanley Vander Meulen was born Sape Vander Muelen on 26 January 1933 in Driesum, a rural village in Friesland, a province of the Netherlands on the North Sea. Sape was the second youngest of ten children born to Jacob and Antje, whose last name Vander Meulen translates as “from the mill” in English. The name is common in Holland because of the many windmills built for flood-control in that low-lying country. Such generic last names became widespread under the civic reforms imposed when Holland fell under the control of Napolean Bonaparte’s French Empire in the early 1800’s.

For the Vander Meulens of Driesum, the name may refer to a sawmill rather than a windmill. Sape’s father, one of a long, centuries-old-line of skilled carpenters, specialized in house design and construction as well as cabinetry. Jacob provided hands-on training in those trades while the young Sape took more formal instruction in drafting and design at a nearby technical school.

World War II (1939-1945) spared northern Holland many of the extreme hardships experienced by most other Europeans. But the difficulties in Friesland were real enough. A strong tendency toward emigration prevailed, especially among younger members of large families such as the Vander Meulens of Driesum. By the time Sape turned 18 and emigrated to Canada in 1951, the prolonged economic recession in post-war Western Europe produced another ‘push factor’ for him as it did for millions of others who made up the great wave of migration out of Europe during the years 1945-1955.

‘Push factors’ along with ‘pull factors’ are terms used by historians of immigration to explain long-term movements of people from place to place. After World War II, Dutch emigrants mainly chose South Africa, New Zealand, the United States and Canada as their destinations. Sape’s ‘pull factors’ came from Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the United States. That city had a large, long-established Dutch-American community, and a well-known wood-working industry that produced high-end furniture, wood-laminate beams, and aircraft parts. More important for Sape, his sister Janet had recently migrated to Grand Rapids with her husband Dirk Dejager.

Sape, however, migrated to the area just west of Toronto, Ontario. Canada’s application process for emigrants was shorter and less cumbersome than the American whose officials worried about the political learnings of the ‘foreign borne’ during the Red Scare and the rise of the anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy. Toronto, too, was relatively near Sape’s sister in Michigan. The Canadian authorities in Holland, who processed Sape’s application, looked mainly for farm workers as immigrants. Sape gave them the impression that he had experience on the farm. They approved his application and provided a one-year sponsorship from a small vegetable farm near the village of Streetsville in what is now the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

The 18-year-old Sape travelled from Friesland to the port at Hoek van Holland and from there by ferry to Dover in England. He stayed briefly in London and then on to Liverpool where he boarded the SS Franconia on 31 March, 1951. The ship made a stop in Belfast and then crossed the North Atlantic arriving at Pier 21 in Halifax on 7 April. Upon arrival, he was admitted to Canada as a landed immigrant and boarded a Canadian Pacific passenger train for Toronto and was soon in Streetsville.

He took on the name Stanley (Stan) because of the unfortunate meaning that the Frisian name Sape took on for English-speakers. ‘Sap’ is an English slang word for someone who is easily fooled in business or in card games and hardly applied to Stan. English-speaking skills came relatively quickly to Stan in part because he was already bilingual in Dutch and Frisian, which is a distinct language in the Netherlands and has many similarities to English.

Stan’s sponsors, Mr. and Mrs. Philip and Ruby Bird of Streetsville, did not take long to realize that his skill-set went well beyond typical farmwork. They turned over his sponsorship to Mr. and Mrs. Glenn and Barbara Grice who ran a construction company nearby and soon had Stan building houses and barns. Stan’s training had prepared him well for the new styles and practices of home-building that emerged during the post-war reconstruction of Europe and became standard in the North American housing boom of the 1950’s. The main aspects of these changes had to do with the development of mass-produced plywood and gypsum in four-by-eight foot panels. Among Stan’s skills was the ability to do ‘takeoff’ on a construction project, estimating from blueprints the cost of the project, the material and equipment needed, as well as the labour involved. Stan was also known for being able to manage and oversee crews of workmen.

By 1954, Stan, now 21-years-old, had become an independent contractor and named his company Vander Meulen Construction. Stan’s career in Southern Ontario continued through to the mid-1970’s. It included the design and construction of prominent houses, schools and churches in the area from Cooksville and Oakville in the south to Brampton and Orangeville to the north as well as several cottages and a veterinary clinic along the eastern shores of Georgian Bay (Parry Sound).

Stan’s early experience in the ‘new world’ offers a good example of what immigration historians describe as ‘initiators’ of ‘chain migrations’ of people. These initiators are individuals, families, or other groups of people who provide personal examples and encouragement to others to follow from the ‘old country’ to the ‘new’. In those years, the ‘chain’ worked mainly through postal letters, word-of-mouth, and very infrequent telephone calls.

In Stan’s case, none of his immediate family members followed. Several young tradesmen from around Stan’s family home in Friesland did. His future-wife Alice (Akke) Vander Schaaf (born 2 April 1934) along with her very large family that included her parents and 10 brothers and sisters, arrived in Canada a year after Stan. Alice and Stan were childhood sweethearts. Her family arrived at Pier 21 aboard the SS Waterman on 6 June 1952.

Her father’s immigration sponsorship landed the Vander Schaaf family in Nestleton, Ontario, north of Oshawa. Within a few years the family settled near Stan in Brampton, Ontario. Peter, Alice’s father, (born 1901) along with his older sons and sons-in-law worked with Stan sporadically over the years. Peter Vander Schaaf, too, was a talented carpenter specializing in cabinetry and trim detail. He had a long association with Stan. Peter passed away in 1974.

In the same year, Stan, distressed by the untimely death of his father-in-law, and always restless, energetic, and drawn to heavily-forested areas, set his sights on Canada’s west coast. His wife Alice and their five children soon followed him to British Columbia. (Judith born 1954; Anne 1955; Jacob 1957; Ronald 1958; and David 1963). Jacob, aged 18 and named after Stan’s father, was the first to arrive. The two worked together building houses on the Gulf Islands near Victoria, B.C. and in Abbotsford and Matsqui, B.C.

In Abbotsford, Stan established Fricia Construction, named after his home province in Holland. The company designed and built houses, agricultural and commercial buildings, schools, as well as several imposing church structures in the Fraser River Valley. Offshoots of the company manufactured doors and windows, imported agricultural equipment from Europe, and provided masonry and concrete services.

In 1992, Stan Vander Meulen retired, leaving Fricia Construction in the hands of his son Ronald, a skilled mason, and his son-in-law Hielke (Harold) Atsma, also a carpenter-immigrant from Friesland. Hielke married Stan’s oldest child, Judith, in 1978 who is active in community organizations. The couple have four children and several grandchildren.

Fricia continues in specialised construction projects in the Lower Mainland that include church buildings and public facilities such as schools and playgrounds as well as some of the facilities for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, B.C. One of Fricia’s strengths is the seismic upgrading of public buildings and schools to help them withstand earthquakes.

Four of Stan’s grandsons work for Fricia Construction and all are expert carpenters. His youngest son David helps the firm and does volunteer work in the Abbotsford community. His daughter Anne O’Leary is a noted artist in B.C. and a library technician in Abbotsford. Stan’s oldest son Jacob left Fricia in 1976 for university studies and taught at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. While in Halifax during the 1990’s, Jacob worked in a studio at Pier 21 among artists who rented studio-space there overlooking Halifax Harbour in the old immigration building before it was renovated and turned into the new Pier 21 Museum.

Stan and Alice Vander Meulen were divorced in 1989 after 36 years of marriage. Alice (Akke), a talented weaver and textile artist enjoys the company of several grand- and great-grandchildren in B.C. After his retirement Stan designed and built, almost entirely by himself, a large house in the older Dutch farmhouse style. It overlooks the beginning of the Fraser River Delta and the western end of the Fraser Canyon at Herrling Island between Chilliwack and Hope B.C.

Stan Vander Meulen remarried in 1995 and in 2012 resides with his wife Linda in Hope, B.C.