It’s a defining moment, not just for Canada, but also for those of Dutch heritage..That’s because May 5, Bevrijdingsdag Dag in the Netherlands — ‘Freedom Day’ — is a special day for me. And so it should be for this entire country as well, though most in this ‘Sometimes Great Nation’ (to quote Peter Newman) don’t know what it means. Or why..On May 4 the Dutch remember their war dead, akin to November 11, and then the day after they bust loose and celebrate pure freedom the only way they know how. It’s a national holiday. And they owe it all to us..Not only would it have been my Dutch grandfather’s 100th birthday, it also marks the 78th anniversary of an event that would come to define his — and by extension, my own — Canadian story..That’s when members of the British Columbia Dragoons marched through fields of tulips — which were being eaten for food — and collapsed what was known as the Delfzijl Pocket, the last resistance of Nazism in Europe and ended the Second World War in the Netherlands.. OpaMy Dutch grandfather, Klaas, fourth from the left circa 1939. .Although Berlin had effectively fallen with the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, Northern Holland saw some of the heaviest fighting even after Germany had essentially surrendered. My grandparents were some of the very last people liberated in the greatest conflagration known to man..It’s become entrenched in our family lore..Gramps didn’t talk much about the war — he had PTSD before anyone knew what it was. In hindsight I could see he was a tortured soul. But he did share his experience with me before he passed, because he knew that as a writer I’d retell it faithfully..I’m the keeper of the flame..In 1939, my grandfather — mijn Opa — was recalled to active duty in the Dutch cavalry and stationed in The Hague, or s’Gravenhage as it was called in Old Dutch. He was basically in the signal corps, running messages from the war ministry to the front lines when it all came crashing down in the spring of 1940. It was over in less than 10 days..He was a first-hand witness to Hermann Goering’s handiwork in Rotterdam, which infuriated him decades later.. Bombing of RotterdamBombing of Rotterdam .The bombing of Rotterdam was the only war crime that went unpunished at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Goering himself testified that it was too late to stop before the surrender order was received..Gramps always said it was a lie. I asked him how he knew? “Because I was the one who delivered it.”.One of the last things he did before laying down his rifle was to head to the seashore and watch the evacuation of Princess Juliana by boat to Canada, something that stuck with him the rest of his life. Then surrendered to his fate..After spending the better part of the year in a German internment camp — the same one that would send Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank, to Auschwitz — he returned to his home village of Uithuizermeeden near Delfzijl shell shocked and broken. In Hitler’s jail he was handed a German Bible and told to read it before they sent him to meet God..Instead, the Nazis decommissioned the Dutch army and sent them home on the grounds that they were more ‘racially pure’ than even Germans. Insult to injury..I have an old photo of him with his war buddies. Nobody ever said so, but it tells more than 1,000 words — this column is pushing 2,000. A bunch of Dutch guys in their fatigues, stripped of insignia, smoking cigarettes and holding up pitchforks and brooms as if they were rifles. ‘We fought with sticks and they had Stukas and tanks,’ is what it says..Life under occupation was harsh, but they persevered with two small boys. My mother came after the war. Pops was a ‘gronteboer’ — that would be a somewhat derogatory term for vegetable farmer — someone who fell off the turnip truck. But he managed to keep food on the table. The small brick farmhouse had an attached barn and they kept a cow and some chickens and geese. .The old house is still standing. I’ve seen it. The new owners have since converted the barn into a carport. It’s ‘gezellig’ — a Dutch word with no literal translation. The closest is ‘cozy’. It is.. Liberation of the Netherlands May 1945Liberation of the Netherlands, May 5th 1945. .At night he’d listen to the BBC on a radio he kept hidden under the the coal stove in the kitchen for war news. Penalties for having one were severe; the entire family could have been rounded up and shot. Late at night they could hear the British bomber squadrons flying overhead on their way to raids in Hamburg and back again..German soldiers would often come around the small farm house looking for food. Especially toward the end of the war when they were starving. My grandmother — Oma — recalled one that was so young, 12 or 13, his uniform didn’t fit and she kindly hemmed it for him. She told me later, that it was an act of defiance against an immoral and criminal regime that would callously send its youngest to slaughter..By the time May 1945 rolled around, they had a good idea of what was happening and knew that the end was nigh. The anticipation was unbearable. .Yet the firing of the big, heavy guns continued. On the morning of the Fifth of May, the shooting started again. Really loud this time. The ground shook. Oma gathered the kids and tried to run for cover..But my uncle, who was six by then, was missing. Panicked, she was hysterical, frantically running through the village to find him..That’s when he showed up proud and beaming on the back of a Canadian tank, troops in tow. It was one of the proudest moments of his life, he still recalls it with relish..In some versions of the story the soldiers gave him an orange, the national colour of Holland. In others it was a penny with a maple leaf on it. In any telling the end result is the same. .The gratitude to Canada was, and still is, absolute and profound.. Holland churchMariakerk in Uithuizermeeden, Netherlands, where the author’s grandparents were married and his mother baptized. .Not just in my family. When I go to Holland and wear my little Canadian flag, people greet me warmly. I’m proud of my country. And I’m Canadian, not Dutch. I had to go back to that village to truly understand what that means..In the town square of any small town in north Holland there’s a monument to the Canadian liberators, and every year school children put flowers on the graves of dead Canadian servicemen in war cemeteries across the nation. It’s quite a tribute..They haven’t forgotten. But for some reason we have. .For Canada’s 150th birthday the Dutch government sent hundreds of millions of specially bred red and white tulip bulbs to schools across the country, including my daughter’s. But she had no idea of why. .I had to tell her. Recounting the story of a young man scarred by war, who packed up everything he owned, along with three children — including my mother — onto a boat from the still bombed out port of Rotterdam (the Germans refused to rebuild cholera-filled canals) and headed across the sea..About how they landed at Pier 21 in Halifax with only what they could carry and headed west to Winnipeg on a train where they would build a new life in the fertile Red River Valley..How their names were changed by the customs officer to Anglicized versions: Meindert became ‘Martin’; Jan became ‘John’; Grietje — both my mother’s and grandmother’s — became ‘Grace’..All but one..The port officials wanted to change Klaas to ‘Clouse’ — the German equivalent — and Oma was having none of it. She made a fuss. She was persistent. She couldn’t even speak English. But she was so adamant the officer relented. Klaas, it remained..It’s a tale of how a young, idealistic patriot changed his true colours from Dutch oranje to Canadian red. And how it all started with a maple leaf on a penny on a warm spring day filled with hope and promise after complete, utter devastation..They put down roots. More children came. He farmed. But he was also a shop foreman for the Canadian Pacific Railroad for nearly 50 years. And proud of it, the beaver logo was his. He owned it. I proudly wear the red cap. On his retirement they gave him a watch and a golden spike engraved with his Canadian name: Klaas..He’s buried near the CPR rail yards he loved so much in south Winnipeg. They day he died — it was a freezing November afternoon, the kind Manitobans know all too well — a hundred shop yard workers we had never met crashed the funeral home. We were stunned. There wasn’t enough lousy coffee and sandwiches to go around. They handed my grandmother $100 bills..They lined up the locomotives and blew the whistles as we lowered him in the frozen tundra. In the bitter Manitoba wind, I remember thinking there’s no way tulips could ever grow in this cold, hard soil. And each spring, they come back..Freedom is a gift. The heart is a bloem — to use the Dutch word. It bursts through the stony ground. Even when all hope is lost, it finds a way..We as Canadians should never forget. The Dutch haven’t. And I won’t either.
