On Saturday we drove to Vernon to visit Cec's Aunt Helen. She is Cec's dad's only living sister. She lost her husband last year. They were married for 66 years! She is a lovely lady and we always enjoy visiting her. She sold her family home and moved into a wonderful assisted living complex in downtown Vernon. She is across the street from the Dollar Store and very close to Safeway. She gets around easily unassisted and still makes her breakfast and lunch. Dinner is served nightly in the dining room. It's complete with a grand piano and a bar! She is very happy there and I'm glad to see her looking so well. Cec took all his genealogy findings and shared them with her. We learned a lot about his paternal grandfather when we started our genealogy searching. Cec's paternal grandfather was arrested by the KGB during the Bolshevik revolution and was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Voucho Nobarnie, Siberia for four years. The reason they captured him was because he was a German citizen and lived and farmed in Russia without being naturalized. When he was released the family returned to Germany where Aunt Helen was born in 1924. The ships records showed they went from Hamburg to Liverpool and then to Canada arriving on 7 Dec 1926. They took the CPR railroad to Fernwood Saskatchewan, arriving in the middle of the night in the middle of winter! I remember Cec's father telling out how frightened and cold they were. The trip cost $1,695 for the train passage and it took Cec's grandfather until 1950 to pay off the debt plus interest. The Baptist Church helped them through the early years of coming to Canada. I also remember Cec's late father telling us when we showed him Cheryl's nursery of when he was a child he slept in barns and the rats jumped over him all night. He had tears in his eyes and said how lucky Cheryl was to be born in such a wonderful country!
Genealogy has been my hobby since I retired. The journey through our ancestors lives has given me an appreciation of what they sacrificed for us. I plan on documenting this in a book for our grandchildren so these stories never get lost. Aunt Helen's older sister Mary (1920-2014) wrote a book in 1995. She only published it for family and friends but she details her memories of Russia, Germany and coming to Canada. Aunt Helen was too young to remember Germany but she did tell us of her school days in Kelowna. At home they spoke German and she really didn't know English until she went to school. She was marked as a "German" during the Nazi years. She was bullied and tormented by the children at school. They had nothing to do with what went on in the 1930's in Germany and I wonder if the children of the Islamic countries that came here before the problems of today are having the same problem. Your parents are law abiding wonderful contributors to the community and because of where you were born are hated by some. Sad!
And the people in Vancouver were warm! 39C/102.2F when we finished lunch on Sunday
