Things Are Getting Better

The Europeans who came to Canada after World War II came because they wanted to give their children a better life away from the continual threat of war.  My father’s comment to his mother when she came to visit us in 1962 was “Canada is a good land but it’s a hard land”.  I think I have mentioned before that my father chose Canada because he felt that it was the safest place in the world.  He knew that Canada did not have the draft and while he only had one son at the time he had seen the devastation of war and wanted no part of it for his children.

I’ve written some of the sad parts of the story but most of the time it was really good.  For one thing my parents were able to buy a house within 2 years of arriving, something that would never have happened in Denmark.  Just like Erma Bombeck in her great book “The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank” the first house in Grimsby had some trials, including the whole septic field fiasco.  I actually Google mapped our house on Cline Road but I couldn’t tell 100% which of the 2 homes it was since they were changed a fair bit.  For one thing there was a garage which we didn’t have at the time.  Ours was a little split level of red brick and what I remember most about the outside was that there was a deep ditch separating our back yard from the vineyard on the other side.  Naturally we kids were prepared to ransack the vineyard as soon as the grapes were ready for plucking but we were deterred by the sudden explosion of shotgun!  We scrambled back over the ditch and stood there gapping, wondering where the shooter was.  We couldn’t see the sneaky guy so we decided not to attempt it again.  (It was many years later before we were told that there had been an automated system that kept the birds away!)

My parents had several good Danish friends.  On the weekends we frequently would have these friends over or we would be going to their homes.  When we lived in Hamilton my father also had some good friends in a couple of lady colleagues, Helen and Margaret.  We girls really loved them since they often would bring a treat for us.  It was Margaret’s brother who lent us his summer cottage in Fruitland while our house in Grimsby was being built.  We lived there for several months and we kids had the time of our lives.  The house was right on Lake Ontario so we would fall to sleep with the surf in our ears.  There was a piano in the dining room that Jeanette and I would rattle away on and outside there was a horse drawn sleigh.  Naturally there was no horse but we could imagine that very well and would bounce around on the sleigh yelling Giddy Yap and crack our imaginary whip over our heads.  In the bedroom there was a lady’s dressing table where Jeanette and I would sit and play movie star or Princess.

And soon we had more brothers.  Peter was born in 1959 and Erik in 1961 – today is Erik’s 50^th Birthday in fact.  Things were getting better for my parents.