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PETER MOOGK, UNIVERSITY of BRITISH COLUMBIA the Netherlands and Canada: a Wartime Love Affair

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PETER MOOGK, UNIVERSITY of BRITISH COLUMBIA the Netherlands and Canada: a Wartime Love Affair PETER MOOGK, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA The Netherlands and Canada: a wartime love affair The mystery of an enduring relationship the words "boss" (baas) and "cookie" - derived from koekje (little cake).2 Of the countries liberated by the Canadian Army during the Second World War - Italy, France, Since the 1880s the Canadian government's Belgium and the Netherlands - an exceptional immigration policy treated Netherlanders as relationship developed between the Kingdom of preferred immigrants and they were encouraged the Netherlands and Canada. We are reminded of to come to Canada by the government and by the that relationship by the annual gift of 25,000 tulip Canadian Pacific Railway Company.3 By 1911 bulbs to the City of Ottawa, Canadian military there were 56,000 Canadians of Dutch origin. veterans' tours, the Netherlands Centennial Farmers were wanted and the Dutch were famed Carillon in Victoria, and by displays in the for their skill in agriculture. The promise of Canadian War Museum. No comparable bond, free farmland on the prairies led Dutch groups forged in war, developed with the Italians, the to establish agricultural communities, such as French or the Belgians. Americans and Poles Neerlandia and Nobleford in Alberta, or Edam, fought in the southeastern Netherlands and the Saskatchewan. Willem de Gelder, a settler whose British helped to liberate the eastern provinces correspondence has survived, heard of Canada in a - there is gratitude for them, but not on the scale public lecture and emigrated to Manitoba in 1910. shown to Canada's soldiers. Why did this special He worked as a hired man and a labourer before relationship between Hollanders and Canadians obtaining his own land. He found the droughts, develop at the end of the Second World War? wildfires, isolation, brutal cold and other hardships of prairie homesteading disheartening.4 Dutch Tenuous pre-war connections immigrants were more adept at dairy farming, market gardening and in the cultivation of irrigated One can attribute this bond between the two land than in raising grain on the drylands of nations to the Second World War, because it was Western Canada. Dutch skills were called upon for clearly absent before the 1940s. There was always the reclamation of farmland from lakes in British a trickle of Dutch-speaking newcomers to Canada, Columbia's Fraser Valley before and after the starting with the Dutch-American Loyalists who Second World War. migrated to the remaining colonies of British North America in the 1770s and 1780s. 1 The Dutch­ Before the war Canada did not attract many American linguistic legacy is evident in the North colonists from the Netherlands. The Dutch East American name for St. Nicholas: "Santa Claus," Indies were more appealing for adventurers and, which is a corruption of the Dutch "Sinterklaas," since the mid-1800s, Dutch migrants to North T 2 Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies America were drawn to the United States, where princess, Margriet, was born there in January, 1943 there were well-established settlements, such - she is an authentic Canadian princess. Pictures as those in Michigan, Illinois and Iowa. For of the little princesses in Canada appeared in Netherlanders, Canada was peripheral to the propaganda leaflets dropped by aircraft over the American republic and scarcely recognized as a Netherlands.8 As one migrant said "Juliana had separate country. As long as there was prosperity lived in Canada and everyone knew it. A princess at home, there was little incentive to come to had been born there in Ottawa, on a piece of Canada.5 ground proclaimed to be Dutch soil."9 Canada, as a place of exile for the royal family, was slowly Canadians, for their part, knew little about the intruding on the Netherlanders' consciousness real Netherlands.6 It was proverbially a country of and the war increased awareness of this North windmills amid tulip fields, populated by people in American country that was not the United States. Volendam costume, wearing wooden shoes when they were not on skates. The book Hans Brinker or The liberation of the provinces south of the Maas the Silver Skates (1865) formed the mental picture River in the autumn of 1944 was the first occasion that North Americans had of the Netherlands. This for a meeting of peoples. Because of their British children's story was written by an American widow style uniforms, Canadians were first mistaken who had not visited the Low Countries before for English "Tommies." The impression given writing her book. This explains curious details by Canadian soldiers was favourable, even if such as a boy plugging a leaking dyke with his they were not as rigidly disciplined as Germans. finger.7 This is an experiment that no one should In December 1944 the war diary of 2 Canadian try to repeat. For Canadians, that picturesque Army Troops Engineers, RCE, noted "the average and fanciful image of the Netherlands would be Canadian soldier has a genius for 'winning friends changed by first-hand experience. and influencing people' and the chocolates and cigarettes are only a part of his diplomatic stock­ in-trade but his open handedness goes a long way The catalyst of war and liberation toward removing the national distrust with which inhabitants of the liberated countries are prone to Canadians did not go to war against the Third look at all soldiers."JO Cooperation was already Reich in September 1939 to liberate the the pattern in military matters. Within the First Netherlands from Nazi rule. The threat to Britain Canadian Army was the Dutch Princess Irene was uppermost in Canadian minds and neutral Brigade, many of whose members had been trained Holland had not yet been invaded. The German in Canada. The Canadians also were assisted by conquest of the Netherlands in May 1940 and the Dutch resistance members who provided strategic flight of the royal family to Britain established a information and guides. connection between Canada and Holland. In 1942 the future queen Juliana and her two daughters found a safe refuge in Ottawa, Ontario. A third The reception given to the Canadian troops advancing into the western provinces in May 1945 3 The Netherlands and Canada: a wartime love affair overwhelmed them. Journalist Peter Stursberg famine that was particularly hard on city residents recalled the welcome that he, as a Canadian, of the Western Netherlands. They had been received after the German capitulation: "The war denied regular food supplies, household gas and was over, and the next few days were a jumble of electricity after the railway workers went on strike victory parades, wildly cheering crowds, and even in September, 1944. Trees were felled, wooden the odd skirmish between Dutch Resistance forces paving blocks lifted, and abandoned houses were and the German SS troops. The celebration began demolished to obtain wood chips to feed the tiny before we reached Utrecht, when a joyous mob "wonder stoves" that warmed darkened rooms in descended on us and almost took over our jeep. I that chilly winter. The urban population subsisted was pushed to one side, and the next thing I knew on thin potato soup, sugar beets and adulterated a pretty blond girl had squeezed next to me, and black bread. This diet was insufficient to maintain was stuffing golden tulips into my raincoat, and life and, by April 1945, half of the deaths occun-ing a boy was sitting on my knee. There must have in the Western and Northern Netherlands were been thirty or forty people on our jeep and trailer, attributed to starvation. Even the central soup and more were trying to get on as we entered kitchens to feed the needy ran out of food. Women Utrecht. ... the Dutch threw tulips at our troops; acted as food gatherers because men who appeared a well-aimed bunch of tulips could hit with quite in public could be forcibly conscripted for work in a smack. Johnny Canuck, the ordinary Canadian Germany. soldier, was treated like a hero or a film star; he was mobbed by an adoring public, hugged and One writer tried to explain what freedom meant kissed by pretty girls, and he even had to sign that May: "There will be food again; gas, light and autographs."I' Captain (later Colonel) C. Sydney water; trains and trams will be running; our men Frost remembered "we had some great parties, will come back from forced labour in Germany; I'll tell you. It was a wonderful time to be with our prisoners of war and students will return; I will the regiment, a wonderful time to be alive .... It be able to go out whenever I want; ... I don't have all seemed worthwhile, all the wounds and the to be afraid when a car comes into the street; nor suffering, suddenly it all seemed worthwhile."12 when the doorbell rings at night; ... families will The sacrifices made were vindicated by be reunited ... I can ride my bike without fear of the destruction of Nazi military power and confiscation, and I can listen to any radio station I acknowledgement of the benefits brought by the choose."13 The dark night of terror, confiscations Canadian liberators. The victory parades, military and oppression had lifted. reviews and official celebrations continued until the end of June. As one Dutch observer remembered, Canadians "passed out the food and showed the little kids The delirium with which people greeted their pictures of their own little kids .... Big men, tough. liberators in May 1945 is explained by the ... Good, though. I thought I'd like to live ... in coincidence of the end of the Nazi occupation with a country where these kind of men came from, the coming of peace and the ending of a killing Nazis one day, giving chocolate to little 4 Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies children in The Dam [square in Amsterdam], the from the streets of war-damaged towns.
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