1
Oral History Project: Interview An Immigrant
History 3613 x1 – Canadian Immigration
Hillary Merks (100108424)
November 28, 2013
Oral History Project: Adriana Johanna Ansems
Although the Netherlands had one of the highest population densities in Europe, before World War Two the Dutch government did not encourage or support emigration from the Netherlands, and not a huge number of Dutch people desired to leave the country. This changed after World War Two when the Dutch government began to encourage and support the emigration of its citizens in the hopes that it would help alleviate the country’s economic problems, and the overcrowding of the country.[1] It was at this time my Grandmother, Adrianna Johanna Ansems Merks’ parents, Chris and Johanna Ansems began looking into emigrating from the Netherlands.
The Netherlands had been devastated by the war and it was a huge economic strain on the country to rebuild. Its industry and transportation system had been severely damaged or destroyed. The Netherlands also had to drain over 500,000 acres of dyke land, which had been flooded with seawater by the Germans to slow the allies advance, this damaged around 10% of the already small amount of farmable land in the Netherlands for years.[2] At this same time of rebuilding the Netherlands also wasted valuable recourses in a four-year conflict in Asia trying to retain their colony known as the “Dutch East Indies”. The Netherlands lost this colony in 1950, which had not only been an important source of revenue for the Netherlands, but also meant that many Dutch colonists and Indo-Dutch people relocated to the Netherlands, which further worsened the overcrowding.[3] The overpopulation in the Netherlands, whose population had grown even during the Great Depression and World War Two, wasmade worse as the Netherlands had the highest birth rates in Western Europe.[4] This made it virtually impossible for social mobility or stable employment to occur, and it also meant that it was extremely hard to buy land to either extend the size of a farm or to start a new farm.[5] This was one of the reasons my great-parents Chris and Johanna Ansems decided to leave the Netherlands in 1953, they wanted all seven of their sons to farm but there just wasn’t enough room for that. My great-grandfather first looked into moving to France, but after going to “check out” the country he decided that Canada seemed like a better choice.
The Dutch government realized that the only way they were going to be able to save the economy was through rapid industrialization, which included mechanized farming. Supported by trade unions, farm organizations, immigration societies and both Calvinist and Catholic churches, the Dutch government decided that they needed to reduce the amount of people in the densely populated rural areas to lessen the amount of farmers, and also to lessen the amount of unskilled laborers going to cities.[6] The economic troubles in the Netherlands during the 1940’s and the 1950’s also meant that the country could not afford for too much money to leave the country with those emigrants. Therefore the Netherlands put restrictions on the amount of money that could be taken out of the Netherlands. Adults were allowed to only take one hundred dollars with them and the rest of their money they either had to use to buy goods in the Netherlands, ranging from household goods to pre-fabricated house.[7] They bought these before leaving; to be shipped to wherever they were immigrating and the rest of their money had to remain in Dutch banks.[8] To encourage people to emigrant the Dutch government began paying for the passage of immigrants in 1956, and around this time also provided financial incentives to those wanting to emigrate.[9]
For the Dutch citizens themselves there were other push factors for leaving the Netherlands other then just the desire for better economic opportunities, though this reason was the most important. These reasons included the trauma of the war; Dutch people who had done things like work for the resistance or hidden Jews during the war were more likely to emigrate, especially when they saw how some collaborators retained their positions after the war. Also there was a fear of both socialism, and what would happen if the Cold War became a full-fledged conflict in Europe. After the war the Dutch government became increasingly bureaucratized and had come under the influence of a group of socialists. These factors influenced young Dutch people to leave because they meant that there were fewer opportunities for young Dutch people to get ahead in life, because of how difficult it was to get licenses to start new businesses and how the government controlled salaries depending on factors such as age and martial status.[10]
Like all immigrants to Canada the Dutch had to go through a series of medical tests to see if they were healthy enough for Canada to want them to come. The people looking to immigrate to Canada would go to the Canadian immigration office at the Hague where they would be examined to see if they were healthy enough. When my Grandmother and her family first started their preparations to go to Canada her mother’s varicose veins and her oldest brother John’s heart defect posed some problems. John had to go to the immigration office in Belgium to pass his physical, since the people working there were less strict then in the Netherlands. This did not pose a huge problem for him because their family lived only a ten-minute walk from Belgium, and he still was able to fly to Canada with the rest of the family.
Canada became the most popular destination for these post-World War Two immigrants, with around 185,000 coming between the years 1947 and 1970.[11] In part because the Netherlands was liberated from Nazi German occupation by mostly Canadian troops, many of whom remained in the Netherlands until 1946, and because Canada was a Western nation with many cultural similarities with the Netherlands. These two factors made Dutch people more interested in Canada and the possibility of relocating to Canada.[12] Dutch immigrants, as Western Europeans, had been some of the most wanted immigrants since the 1800’s. When the Canadian government realized in 1947 that they were going to have labour shortages in the primary industries such as in the agricultural and logging industries[13] the Canadian government changed its immigration laws from the restrictive ones that had been put in place during the Great Depression. Since Dutch immigrants had been preferred immigrants in the past the Canadian and Dutch governments entered an agreement known as the “Netherlands-Canada Settlement Scheme” in which the two governments encouraged rural Dutch people to immigrate to Canada.[14] In this agreement, the Dutch immigrants were supposed to work on Canadian farmer’s farms, they were called “sponsors”, for one or two years, until they purchased their own farm, to gain knowledge in how farming worked in Canada.[15] Many Dutch immigrants were able to do this, especially if they had older children when they came. My great-grandfather was able to buy his own farm in Ontario after two years.
Though many Dutch immigrants were treated fairly in Canada, some were mistreated by their “sponsors”, there were cases where the Canadian farmer did not pay the Dutch workers the wages they were due, or they housed their Dutch workers in chicken coops or shacks. Many did not continue working on the Canadian farms they were assigned for the whole year because of how they were treated[16], or they left because they wanted to better their lot in Canada.[17] Sometimes though, the Canadian farmers were “cheated” when they thought they were getting a worker experienced in farm work and found out their new worker had never worked on a farm before and had lied to the immigration authorities.[18]
The Canadian and Dutch governments also agreed that the immigrants that could enter Canada would be decided by the demands of the Canadian labour market.[19] In the 1950’s, Nova Scotia had some of the best chances of an immigrant getting their own farm in all of Canada. This had to do with the policies Nova Scotia put in place to encourage farming immigrants, mainly Dutch, to come to Nova Scotia and settle there and start up farms. In many parts of Canada native Canadians were moving from farms to urban areas and this was also true in Nova Scotia during the post-World War Two years. To help immigrants settling in Nova Scotia the province made the “Nova Scotia Land Settlement Board”. This board’s job was to bring in farming immigrants and to help them buy farms and get settled in Nova Scotia. With the help of Dutch emigration services the Land Settlement Board was able attract many Dutch farming families to the province. Another attraction for coming to Nova Scotia, other then the fact that the land was cheaper then in many other parts of Canada, was the provincial government passed a bill allowing the Land Settlement Board to give loans to farmers who were not British or Canadian citizens.[20] The largest numbers of Dutch immigrants came to Nova Scotia before 1955 and after that year the number slowly declined. My Grandmother and her family came to Nova Scotia in 1959 because it was more affordable to buy farms for all seven of the sons. Even though this meant a more isolated existence for my great-grandparents, because while the area they lived in in Ontario had a sizable Dutch population with people their own age, the Village of Port Williams did not. They also couldn’t communicate with Canadians their own age because of their limited English. Most of the Dutch immigrants to the Annapolis Valley during this time were much younger then them and they didn’t have much in common. The Ansems family and many of the Dutch people who came to Nova Scotia were from the Dutch province of Noord Brabant and were Catholics.[21]
Religion was also a major factor in Dutch immigration to Canada. For many it decided where they were settled, whom they socialized with, and the level of assimilation they reached once settling in Canada. Until the early 1960’s, the Netherlands was one of the most traditional and religious countries in Western Europe.[22] The society was divided up between three categories, Calvinist, Catholic, and the smallest being the non-denominational groups. The Netherlands’ society was divided among these three groups, therefore the society was divided by religion rather then class and wealth.[23] Though class and wealth were also important within the people in these three groups amongst themselves. This was known as “Pillarization”, and each “pillar” had their own social institutions, banks, unions, newspapers, and etcetera. This pillarization continued when the Dutch immigrated to Canada. The Canadian government and Canadian church officials influenced where Dutch Calvinists or Dutch Catholics would settle, encouraging or stopping them from settling in certain areas. One difference between a Dutch Catholic and a Dutch Calvinist settlement is that Dutch Catholics were more likely to settle where there were the best opportunities for work, while Dutch Calvinists were more likely to settle near Calvinist churches. The “Immigration Committee of the Christian Reformed Church” assisted Dutch Calvinists who wanted to settle near Calvinist, or Reformed, churches.[24] The Catholic Church also tried to influence Dutch Catholics to settle in certain areas to help repopulate areas and churches with dwindling Catholic populations.[25] This difference led the two different religious dominations to settle in certain areas and also affected the level of assimilation both groups reached. Dutch Catholics who came to Canada showed greater levels of assimilation then their Calvinist countrymen. One main reason for this is that when Dutch Catholics came to Canada, the Canadian bishops were against the Dutch Catholics forming their own churches and institutions so Dutch Catholics joined already existing Catholic churches and institutions.[26] While some Calvinists joined local Canadian churches, such as the United Church of Canada, many Dutch Calvinists created their own churches and institutions because the ones in Canada didn’t quite fit their religious needs.[27] This led them to having less social interaction with non-Calvinist Dutch people and therefore led to many of them retaining their ethnic identity and culture for more generations then Dutch Catholics.[28] Due to their faith, most Dutch Calvinists lived separate from the general Canadian public since they had their own churches, schools, political and social organizations while Dutch Catholics did not try as a whole to live and interact with just Dutch Catholics and became much more assimilated into Canadian society then the Dutch Calvinists.[29]
Dutch immigrants to Canada had numerous support systems in place if they needed help. One being their family and the Dutch Canadian community, another was immigration officials. If Dutch immigrants were being mistreated or underpaid by their sponsors they could go to immigration authorities that would try to get the money owed and to place the immigrant in another workplace. One such case is when John Eisen and his brother worked on a Canadian farm and the farmer tried to withhold their pay saying that since their pay had gone into their food and board. John and his brother then refused to work and contacted immigration authorities that came, made the farmer pay them, and then placed them in a different workplace.[30] A similar incident happened to my Grandmother’s relative, who worked on a farm in Port Williams for six months and then the farmer refused to pay her and she had to go to Alan Foley, the local immigration authority, to get her pay. The Dutch government also kept an eye on the Dutch immigrants in Canada, making sure that they weren’t being mistreated.[31]
For my grandmother, other then adjusting to a new language and culture, the biggest thing that she had to adjust to was the climate of Canada. Where she had lived in the Netherlands the weather was quite mild and had virtually no extremes. In Ontario on the other hand, the weather was much less stable. The summer they arrived in Ontario the summer was extremely hot and my grandmother remembered that everyone in her family had terrible sunburns with huge blisters. Ontario’s winter was also much colder then the winter’s had been in Noord Brabant, and the thunderstorms in Ontario were much more severe, usually lasting the whole night. My Grandmother thought at the time that Canadians were much more relaxed compared to the Dutch, though she admits this may be because she had very little contact with Canadians in their first few years in Canada. She also remembered that her mother Johanna had said that the big brick houses in Ontario reminded her of Belgian.
My Grandmother and her family had a fairly typical experience of what it was like to emigrate from the Netherlands to Canada post-World War Two. Their experiences in Canada were also fairly positive, according to my Grandmother. However, she also acknowledges that she was a young girl and if her parents had problems they wouldn’t have discussed them with the children. My Grandmother feels she was luckier then many Dutch immigrants because her whole family immigrated to Canada and were able to support one another.
Bibliography
Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and Statistics Canada. 1996. Profiles Netherlands: Immigrants from the Netherlands in Canada. [Ottawa]: Statistics Canada.
Dijk, Joanne. "The Role of Religion in the Postwar Settlement Patterns of Dutch Canadians." Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 38, no. 1 (2001): 57-74.
Ganzevoort, Herman, and Mark Boekelman. Dutch Immigration to North America. Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1983.
Ganzevoort, Herman. A Bittersweet Land: The Dutch Experience in Canada, 1890-1980. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart in association with the Multiculturalism Program, Dept. of the Secretary of State and the Canadian Govt. Pub. Centre, Supply and Services, Canada, 1988.
Gerrits, G. H..They Farmed Well: the Dutch-Canadian Agricultural Community in Nova Scotia, 1945-1995. Kentville, N.S.: Vinland Press, 1996.
MacLean, Raymond.Canadians from Holland - A Generation Later. Halifax, N.S.: Saint Mary's University, 1981.