It was through hard times that my grandfather came to own his first dog.
My grandfather, Adrianus “Arie” van der Fluit (1923 – 2002), loved dogs. When he was a teen in the Netherlands, he supplemented his income training dogs. After moving to Canada, in the 1950s and 1960s, he even trained dogs for the police. As long as I can remember, my grandfather always had at least one dog, usually a German shepherd. My favourite was Sheba, the first dog of his that I’m able to remember. He had dogs until the day he died at age 79, still training them even after he lost his foot due to complications associated with diabetes.
My grandfather with Sheba, sometime around 1970.
While I would have thought he had a dog ever since he was little, he told me that he did not have one until he was fifteen. It came to be during, and because of, hard times – the Great Depression. However, based on the story he told me, my grandfather could have gotten his first dog anytime after he was eight to when he was in his late teens.
Arie’s father, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932) died when my grandfather was eight years old. His mother, Theresia “Teetje” Pater was left a widow. Sometime after Arie died, Teetje’s younger brother Johannes “Jan” Pater (1900 – 1948) moved in with the family. I always understood it was soon after Arie died, which would make sense. Teetje was left a widow at age 37, with eight children. I am sure it would have been of great help if Jan moved in with his sister as soon as her need arose.
My grandfather in the Netherlands, a few months before he married my grandmother.
Jan had a dog, but Arie’s mother detested dogs. She insisted the dog go. However, because of the depression, it was difficult to even give a pet away as it was too expensive to keep one fed. Jan decided to drown the dog. Arie witnessed this. He swore to himself that no dog would suffer with him around, so he even got himself one.
This, of course, caused a conflict with Arie’s mother. She refused to allow a dog in her household, so Arie moved out. As his two older brothers were out of the house, and the other children were too young, Arie was the primary breadwinner for the household. Faced with the loss of the family’s main income, after a few weeks Arie’s mother relented and allowed the dog in the house.
Needless to say, the timeline is a bit problematic. If Jan moved in with his sister’s family shortly after Johannis died, my grandfather’s story would have taken place before he was ten years old. The most apparent way to reconcile the chronology is if Jan moved in with his sister when Arie was 15, around 1938. I don’t know much about Jan and I don’t know of any life events that would have caused him to move in with Teetje other than the death of her husband. Jan never married, so I can rule out him becoming widowed as a catalyst for change. The depression was still causing hard times – with harder times shortly over the horizon – so that part of the story still works.
My grandfather in Raymond, Alberta, in September 1999, age 76, with Dekker, along with my brother Trevor.
The cover of the book. Feature about Lee on page 98.
First, to recap, Lee was a Trooper of the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment (14th Canadian Hussars, also known as the 8th Recce) R.C.A.C. Lee was killed in action on April 12, 1945, age 22, less than a month before V-E Day, in the northern part of the Dutch province of Drenthe, the day before the start of the Battle of Groningen. Along with many of Canada’s other fallen soldiers, Lee is memorialized in two very special ways.
It was only a few weeks ago that the significance of the date on which Lee had been killed dawned on me. April 12, 1945 is the day that Canadian troops liberated Camp Westerbork. It was the transit point where the Nazis gathered Dutch Jews before sending them to the death camps. It was the first place they interred Anne Frank after she and her family were betrayed.
Going through the regimental diaries for Lee’s regiment, I discovered that it was the 8th Recce that liberated the camp, which the Germans had abandoned hours beforehand.
Entry from the War Diary of the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment for April 12, 1945 documenting the liberation of Camp Westerbork.
Based upon the chronology set out in the diaries and other war records, advancing on the camp was the first thing Lee’s regiment did that day. It means that the fighting in which Lee was killed occurred after the camp was liberated. While the entire regiment was not involved, there were at least 100 members of the regiment present at the camp, so there is a good chance that Lee was present for the liberation of Westerbork.
The topic of food is one of the prompts that shows up in the 52 Ancestors Challenge every year. This makes it a difficult topic to write about, since I covered it broadly in the first and second year I participated in the challenge. However, as Amy often reminds participants, the prompts are merely suggestions and we can interpret them as broadly as we want. Which I’ve done, writing about pets when the prompt was flowers, and vice versa!
With this week’s prompt, I’ve not stretched the topic as far as pets to flowers. Rather, I am looking at the favourite treats of my ancestors.
I’ll start with my mother’s maternal line. As I’ve often written about here, that branch of the family are Germans from Russia. One of their favourite treats is halva. It’s a confection that originated in Persia (now Iran) that spread throughout the Middle East and, later, throughout the Ottoman Empire. While halva was originally made with a variety of different ingredients, such as flour and dates, the traditional Turkish version is usually made with sesame seeds and most often sweetened with honey or sugar. You can find halva in many varieties. Halva with pistachios, chocolate, or vanilla is quite common.
Many German settlements in the Russian Empire were in what is now the Ukraine, which the Russians had taken from the Ottoman Turks in a series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries. While the German population was originally introduced to the Turkish version of halva, they most likely learned of the sweet treat from the local Jewish population that had been in Ukraine for centuries, including the time of Ottoman rule. However, the Germans soon modified the recipe using sunflowers, which are abundant in Ukraine and that are a symbol of that country. I’ve heard that many German-Russians prefer the sunflower variety, but I’ve never seen it. My grandmother and mother always bought the traditional Turkish version. While not a traditional Christmas food, that is the time of year my mother would most often buy it. My mother often spread it on toast, which is quite delicious.
Turning to my father’s side of the family, I’ll admit that Dutch cuisine is not world-famous for many good reasons. That said, there are many delicious treats that make up for it. One of my favourites, bitterballen, is commonly found as a bar snack. They are somewhat similar to croquettes, but are smaller and rounder. They are made of a mixture of minced beef, roux, onions, and seasonings, breaded, and fried. They’re addictive little snacks. There is a chain of cafes and coffee shops in the Netherlands called The Bulldog. In the 1990s, they had a location in Vancouver. I often went there for lunch with a friend and we always started with bitterballen.
Bitterballen are traditionally served with mustard. Lekker!
The Dutch also have many sweet treats. Almond-based treats (including marzipan) and baked goods made with warm spices are quite popular. The one I can remember having ever since I was little is speculaas. They always contain ginger, along with spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, anise, allspice, and white pepper. With those flavours, they were a common Christmastime treat, but now it is common to enjoy them year-round. They are particularly good with coffee. While speculaas might have been obscure outside the Netherlands and its former colonies, they’ve always been relatively easy to find in Canada. I’ve also noticed them popping up on baking and cooking shows in recent years.
Another delicious treat that is also good with coffee are stroopwafels. They’re made up of thin waffle-like wafers with a thin layer of caramel sandwiched in the middle. (“Waffle”, by the way, is an English word of Dutch origin.) They originated in the city of Gouda as a means for bakers to repurpose crumbs and scraps. You can get them freshly made from street vendors in the Netherlands, as well as bakeries and cafes. The availability of stroopwafels in Canada seems to wax and wane, although they’re always available in Dutch specialty stores. They were also featured as the technical challenge during “Caramel Week” on Season Eight of The Great British Bake Off (airing as The Great British Baking Show in the United States and Canada). It’s common to place them on top of a hot cup of coffee, which warms and softens them. So delicious!
Finally, many people know that the Netherlands is famous for its chocolate. During Sinterklaas, a favourite treat is chocoladeletters (“chocolate letters”). Centuries ago they originated as baked goods, but are now almost exclusively made of chocolate. It is traditional to receive a chocolate letter of the initial of your first name. My great grandmother, Elizabeth Bakker, always included chocolate letters in the box of goodies she sent us every Christmas. When we were children, there was always an argument that some letters were bigger than others so they had more chocolate. The truth is, while the surface area of each letter might differ, they are manufactured in different thicknesses so that every letter contains the same amount. The other problem is finding letters that are uncommon initials for names in the Netherlands, although that is less of a problem than it used to be.
Chocolate letters are another item for which, outside the Netherlands, the availability seems to change over time. When I was a kid, they seemed to be available everywhere. Purdy’s made their own for a while, but I haven’t seen them there in a long time. In recent years, the only place I could find them were in Dutch stores. Even then, I could not find Droste letters – the absolute best ones, bar none – anywhere. You could only find the secondary brands. I once asked a vendor if Droste no longer shipped to Canada, and was told they were simply too expensive to carry. Luckily, a couple years ago I found Droste chocoladeletters in a Dutch store in Lethbridge.
Fortunately, chocolate letters seem to be getting easier to find again, as I saw them being sold in many mainstream supermarkets and shops last Christmas. I first noticed them showing up a couple years ago in a local independent grocery store that specializes in Asian foods and ingredients of all places. Plus, in our neighbourhood of Steveston, there is a chocolatier that makes them – in every letter!
During my first trip to the Netherlands, I discovered a Droste store directly across from the Amsterdam Centraal Station. I enjoyed being able to buy any letter I wanted, well out of season! Sadly, the last time I was in Amsterdam, the store was gone.
In the Netherlands, there has not been much of a tradition of preparing and publishing obituaries of deceased persons. Deaths were once noted in local newspapers in regular reports of recent entries of births, marriages, and deaths taken from the local civil registry (“burgerlijke stand”). What is more common to see in newspapers are “familieberichten” (“family notices”). These are all secular forms of announcing and commemorating the death of a person.
For Roman Catholics, another common form of remembrance is a “bidprentje” (“prayer card”). In Germany, they are known as a “totenzettel”. These are usually given out at funerals and commemorate a deceased person. They usually consist of a short prayer or biblical verse along with the name of the deceased. However, bidprentjes can be used to mark other religious milestones, such as baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages, and ordinations into the priesthood. While they originated as a Roman Catholic tradition, in recent decades the practice of making these cards has occurred within other religious traditions.
Bidprentjes are a fantastic source of genealogical information. In addition to the name of the deceased they usually include the dates and places of their birth and death and the name of the deceased’s spouse. They also often have details of the date and place of the funeral and interment. Older bidprentjes are quite beautiful as they were adorned with religious art and iconography. In more recent years, they are more likely to include the name of the deceased’s children. In that regard, they now appear quite similar to familieberichten.
Bidprentje for my great grandfather, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894-1932)
Bidprentje for my great grandmother, Teresia (“Teetje”) Pater (1894-1947)
Bidprentje for my great great grandfather, Jan Dirksz van der Fluit (1846 – 1935). It notes that at the time he died he was the widower of Agatha Rood and that he had been previously married to Maria Veldman (my great great grandmother) and before Maria he was married to Brigetta Tak. Jan had outlived all three of his wives.
Neither bidprentjes nor familieberichten are government documents. They are private documents created, distributed, and published by the family. This means a primary source of bidprentjes would be the family of the deceased. There are also genealogical societies that have collections of bidprentjes. The Centrum Voor Familiegeschiedenis (“Centre for Family History” or “Central Bureau for Genealogy”) also has a collection of bidprentjes. While you can search the collection, you must be a member to view and download the document. Familieberichten can be found at Online Familieberichten and Mensenlinq.
A Deck of Ancestors 