A tribute to my two grandfathers, Opa Wieringa and Opa Vanderwees:
I have almost completed high school, and in the next few months I will be leaving my childhood home and the house I grew up in to enter my parents’ homeland. My journey will take me to Canada, where I will live indefinitely after having grown up in Nicaragua for nearly as long as I can remember. As I begin to make this transition, I cannot help but think of my two opas, both of whom migrated to Canada when they also were in their late teens. I share with them the desire for adventure, the anxious fear of entering into a new culture and a new home, the bittersweet emotions of leaving friends and family, and the unknown and uncertainty of the future.
While we share many things in common, we will have made the trek for very different reasons.
At the time when my grandfathers left the Netherlands, the Second World War had just reached its end. Liberated by Canadian soldiers, the Dutch people held Canada in high regards. Songs like “Trees heeft een Canadees” (Triss landed a Canadian) showed the attitude towards Canadians at the time. Indeed, more than one Dutch girl moved to Canada with her new Canadian sweetheart, beginning the mass migration of Dutch people to Canada. My grandfathers were just two of the several thousand Dutch immigrants who migrated to Canada in the early fifties. Jobs were scarce and times rough in Europe, so these men, my opas, immigrated to Canada to ensure economic security for their families. On the other side of the story is me. I will travel to Canada, not for economic reasons, but rather to attend university. Instead of taking on a supporting role in my family, my parents will be supporting me.
My opas were going to a land they had never seen before, to a country with a language they could not speak, and a place with few connections once they arrived. They had to start from scratch, find their own places to live, cook, and make a living. I, on the other hand, cannot count the number of times I have visited Canada. I have no language barrier and already hold a Canadian passport. I know where I will be living and I know where I will eat. In many ways, our journeys are completely distinct. Yet some of our struggles are similar. My grandfathers had no family awaiting them once they arrived, and mine will be several hours away. I will have to learn how to build my own community, and learn Canadian culture for the first time.
Among the struggles, there is something exciting in this upcoming journey that I value as well. I will be experiencing a new kind of freedom as I leave all customs, family, and friends behind. My opas felt this as well, as they were the first to leave their families. It becomes a journey of the exploration of the unknown, with few rules and expectations and no preconceived notions for who I am. There will be many adventures before me, new friends and homes, and numerous learning experiences.
When my grandfathers left the Netherlands, they were not just thinking of themselves and their immediate future. They moved to Canada so that they would be able to provide not only for their parents and siblings, but also for their future family, their own children and grandchildren. Their vision for the future led them to take back-breaking jobs in greenhouses and farms, to buy broken down vehicles, and to be conservative with their spending so that their kids could attend university and afford a better lifestyle than they ever could. When my opas decided to provide a future for my parents, they – by default – provided one for me as well.
This journey that I am about to embark upon makes me realize the significance of the sacrifices my opas made. Sacrifices not just for their immediate families, but for me as well, two generations later, which they could not have begun to imagine yet. Indeed, it was their hard work and dedicated vision that paved the way for the opportunities I have had in life, even if one of my opas never lived to be able to see it all unfold. Their legacy remains in me.
