Memoirs of Pake and Beppe

It was better, they told us, to change our names when we came over.  I guess Canadian tongues couldn’t handle a Dutch name.  Mother’s name became Mary and so did Map.  Tjittie became Sylvia, Adrie now was Audrey, Tjeerd became Terry, and Leni became Linda.  I have to say I had a hard time with that.  One can’t just change a name.  They wanted me to become Rolly.  I refused.  What was so wrong with Roel, I wondered to myself.  I might need to use Rolly every so often, but my name was Roel.

We lived Tante Aat and Ome Wim on Townsend Street for six weeks in total.  They had a two and a half storey house, and they were so gracious about letting us stay.  They had one room, we had one room, the five girls shared one room and the boys slept with four of the in the hall upstairs.  It was cramped and crowded.  We were a little lost and just so very glad to have a place to stay.  After three weeks we felt settled enough to start to look for a place of our own.  I needed to get some work before we could be sure what we could afford. 

I went with Uncle to the unemployment office.  It was crowded, and I was very anxious about how things would turn out.  I had been planning to try my hand at something new, maybe carpentry work or electrical work.  Turns out it wasn’t so easy as that.  The officer behind the desk was rather impatient with his work and just looked at me when I suggested occupations in those areas.  He asked me what I had done back home.  I told him about my work in the barber shop.  That was it, they told me that I should stay with the trade I knew.  And just like that my fate was decided.  I really didn’t dare to argue with them.  To be perfectly honest, there had been so much change, and everything was so different that the thought of returning to the barber shop with a pair of clippers in hand brought me no small measure of comfort.  Some things would stay the same.  There was a barber working out of the basement of the Empress Hotel that needed help.  Ray Young was his name.  He guaranteed me $40 a week and if I couldn’t make it on my own, he would pay it to me anyways.  It was generous.  I felt the Lord providing all that needed just one step at a time.

We went out every day looking for a place to rent.  Some places were better than others.  Mother was doing her best keeping a stiff upper lip.  With each house she would say “Nothing a little soap and hot water can’t fix.”  I think she was feeling the closeness of our quarters.  As time went on, we became less and less particular.  The interviews would go very well until they heard how many children we were bringing with us.  No one was interested in renting to a family with five children. 

It wasn’t just a simple thing to start work in a new country.  The work itself was familiar and I was glad to step back into something I knew.  I worked hard and did by best to earn my keep.  It was hard dealing with the customers though.  Some were better than others and I could make out enough of what they were saying with a couple of questions and help from Ray if needed.  Haircuts were pretty basic things. 

One afternoon Ray went upstairs to get a coffee from the shop.  It was after school and I was on my own in the shop when the lady came in with her two boys.  She talked faster than anyone I had ever heard.  Her boys were a handful, out of control and asking for a good hard spanking if anyone asked me.  But they didn’t ask me.  She gave me instructions about the haircut she was looking for and I did my very best to understand what she was trying to say.  She just talked so fast.  Finally, I began to cut.  I did my best to please her, she seemed like the hard to please type.  When I finished with the cut, I took one look at her face and I knew that she was not happy.  Wow, did she yell.  I didn’t understand anything she was saying, and she just kept getting madder and madder. 

The shoe polishing boy finally was able to tell her that I was from Holland and didn’t understand what she was saying.  Just then Ray returned from his coffee break and she ranted at him for a while.  In her mind there was no way I should be left alone in that shop!  When Ray cut the second boys’ hair, I saw how she wanted it done.  It really couldn’t be helped.  At the end of it all, the boy whose hair I drastically mis-cut came and gave me a quarter for a tip.  I did appreciate that. 

Finally, in the middle of August 1954, we found a place.  We rented our first house, a bungalow, on Wellington Street for $50.00 a month.  It was a square house.  It was small, very small.  There was a small hokje in the front that led to the kitchen.  On the right side was the living room with two doors off that for the two bedrooms.  That was the whole house.  The rooms were small, we easily filled them.  Tjeerd and Lena slept in the double crib in our bedroom and that room was full.  The girls slept in the smaller bedroom with a chair beside the bed – and that room was full.  It was small but we had our own house.  We had our own place to call home.  We were going to make it here in Peterborough Ontario.