Those Hogenkamp Women

It's time to talk a little about the Hogenkamp women - my tutors, my protectors, my mothers. I add my mother because once she married my father she became a Hogenkamp in spirit and life.

Let's start with my mom, Florence Balharrie - She arrived in Holland in 1939, having sailed on the Queen Mary 1 from New York to England where my father boarded to accompany her across the North Sea to Holland. I suspect he wanted to prep her to meet the fearsome trio of Maria Hogenkamp (my Oma), Johanna Hoenkamp (Tante Jo) and Claziene Hogenkamp (Tante Ina) who would be dockside in Rotterdam. I don't know how the meeting and greeting went. The absence of family stories suggests that the first encounter was strained and very polite. The Hogenkamp's oral history has it that my mother was liked immediately and warmly welcomed into the family with a cup of tea and a "gebakje". My mother did allow that everyone was very kind and she was very nervous.

What was a 27 year old nurse from Canada doing in Holland in 1939 with the clouds of war hovering over Europe? She came to marry the tall 29 year old Dutchman she had nursed in the Ottawa Civic Hospital some seven years earlier. She didn't know anyone in Holland except my father and yet she left her affluent family home to come to the unknown. Years later she claimed that she sensed going to Holland and marrying my father would "save" her. Save her from what? The narrowness of her Ottawa life and the limitations of her family.

My father was much more clear. He met a nurse with the sunniest smile and the warmest laugh and loved her immediately. Once he recovered and was discharged from hospital, he was deported back to Holland. It was the Immigration policy of the time to deport all immigrants who became too ill to work. Since my father entered Canada under the Farm Labour Act, he forfeited his part of the agreement to work by becoming seriously ill (we never claimed it was a fair policy). Before returning to Holland, he asked if he could correspond with his favourite nurse. She agreed and so began a seven year courtship by mail.

Once he was settled with a good job at KLM, he asked her to be his wife and she said yes in spite of his warning that war in Europe could be immanent. Her answer to that was, "I would rather be with you in war, than without you". Very romantic and so naive: she hadn't the faintest notion what war would be like.

My mom was much more courageous than she ever gave herself credit for. I can't think of too many women who would pull up stakes, go to a foreign land where she didn't speak the language, settle into her future mother - in - law's home, proceed immediately to learn a new language and marry a man she learned to love by correspondence. Once the the Nazis invaded, she also was in danger of being arrested as an enemy alien (Canada, as a member of the British Empire, had declared war with Britain). She could never risk speaking English in public again. With my Tantes' help, her Dutch became impeccable and as a result, I learned to speak Dutch and English interchangeably with my earliest words.

My Oma, Maria van den Berg, came from a family of means, land and education. She was formidable - strong minded, stern and very dignified. As was the custom of the day, she always wore widow's weeds. The country was full of older women in somber clothing because there were many widows after the First World War, "the war to end all wars". Oma ran a tight ship of moral rectitude, duty and good reputation. That was her face to the world.

I knew a warm, loving and funny Oma that always had time for me. She adored her only grandchild, and I adored her. She was strict but never patronizing. I spent two days each week in her care and loved every minute of it. I made tents from the bedding, played dolls under the table, helped her with the cooking and ate up her stories. Stories about little girls who overcame many obstacles. There was never a prince charming in Oma's stories. She knew better. We would both take a nap after lunch in her great bed. When visiting in the country, we sat facing each other in a hammock as she invented tales about little girls and animals. At two or three, I collected a pail full of rabbit turds and proudly presented them to her. Oma commended me for my diligence and generosity before disposing of those nice round pellets - rather like me praising Chester when he would bring me a mouse.

Oma was also the fulcrum around whom the family turned, the glue that held us together and was the book keeper who collected my Tantes' wages to measure out the regular debt repayment. To me, it seemed she was afraid of nothing. But she had a big fear. That of losing face. Respect was everything.

She had another fear as well. She was afraid for the safety of her family after son Jan and daughter Ina had both enlisted in the Dutch Resistance and placed themselves in harm's way. She was proud of them, didn't discourage them, but deep down, I think she wished they hadn't joined.

More about my Tantes later. It grows late.