The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2006, Síða 34

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 60 #2
Learning about Flin Flon
by Megan Einarson
For my family story history project I
decided to interview my grandmother,
Kathleen Einarson. She grew up in the
small mining city of Flin Flon in Northern
Manitoba, and lived there from 1938 to
1986. During the years she lived there
much happened.
Both her parents were immigrants who
had come to Canada several years earlier.
Her mother’s name was Catherine Bain
Sailor who had come from Scotland. Her
father’s name was Leendart Jan VanderWal
(later changed to Leonard John when he
gained Canadian citizen) and he had come
from the Netherlands. They met in
Yorkton Saskatchewan where her mother
worked at a drycleaner’s and her father was
a tailor. They got married and moved to
Flin Flon in 1930 looking for a new life
where her father could start his own tailor-
ing business. But Flin Flon was a mining
town and it was very hard for her father to
find work. Eventually he got a job at the
Hudson Bay Melting & Smelting
Company (HBM&S) where he sewed up
things like pants and tents.
When her parents first came to Flin
Flon they ended up living out of an old
boxcar. But when Catherine found out she
was pregnant they decided to move and
find a better home. At the time, Flin Flon
was pretty small and the hospital had just
recently been built. My grandmother’s
older sister, Sjaane Adriana VanderWal,
was one of the first babies born there. She
was also the first female non-aboriginal
baby born at the hospital. A few years
later, in 1938, my grandmother was born.
At that point in time Flin Flon was
rather secluded as there were no roads built
that connected Flin Flon to the other
towns. There was only the Canadian
National Railway system which connected
Flin Flon with the surrounding area. This
kept the town’s population fairly small.
But it was also very safe. My grandmoth-
er could go out and play in the bush for
several hours and her mother wouldn’t
have to worry. It was a small community
and everybody knew everybody. The
main roads coming in and out of Flin Flon
were built in 1951.
My grandmother was about four
years old when the war began so she does-
n’t remember much about what it was
like. She said that the town was put on
rations and everybody was given a rations
book. This meant that every time you
bought certain foods, like meat or sugar,
you had to hand them a coupon. Her
father joined the Dutch army since he was
not yet a Canadian citizen and was sta-
tioned in Guelph, Ontario. Went he was
sent there the whole family went with
him. They stayed there for a year. During
this time Princess Juliana of the
Netherlands came to Canada with her two
daughters to escape the war back home.
One day her father came rushing home
and told his wife to get my grandmother
dressed in her best dress. The princess
was coming to inspect the troops and he
wanted her to present Princess Juliana
with flowers. Although at the time no one
was allowed to use film so there weren’t
any pictures taken.
At the end of the war my grandmoth-
er remembers looking out the window
and seeing something on fire. She called
to her parents and when they came they
told her that it was an effigy of Hitler.
The townspeople were burning it up and
celebrating the end of the war.
During the war my grandmother
helped her parents put together parcels of
food to be sent to her father’s family in the
Netherlands. In 1949 she went there with
her dad and her sister to visit some family.
She said that they still had the Jello pack-