MY MOM’S BIRTHDAY JUNE 4

My mom, Tina Martha Doerksen, was born in rural Montana on June 4, 1919 at the end of WWI. She lived 88 years and passed away in November 2007. During her last five years dementia obscured her clarity and memory. As a boy, adolescent and young adult I appreciated my mother for all the customary reasons within happy families. My reasons for missing her today are explained by her history that I understood later in my life. An illness claimed her homesteading father's life when she was two years old and her sibling brother Peter was four. With her two children, her mother Marie emigrated to Saskatchewan and soon married Abram Willems who had been recently widowed and left with the care of his six children. It was a marriage of mutual convenience. Over time, this couple had five more children. Farming small acreage was a grim way to support a large family. My mom was able to go to school as far as grade 9 after which she had to find work, house keeping and childcare to farming families. She met and married Edward Richard Unruh, the youngest of four children. She was then 22 and he 26. I was her firstborn in 1942 and very soon as WWII involved Commonwealth countries, my Dad was enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. When the war ended, Mom and Dad made the decision to move to St. Catharines, Ontario where factory jobs were available and where many Mennonite friends and some family members already lived. Mom bore two more sons, Murray in 1947 and Neale in 1953. She lost twin girls years later when I was in my early teens. Dad's employment as an assembly line worker required my mother's supplementary labour at anything that paid. In the early years she was a housekeeper, and a seamstress. She made costumes each year for the St. Catharines Figure Skating Club. In time she became known for her cooking and from that developed a business, catering to small and large gatherings, serving coffee and baked goods daily at the Ontario Paper Mill Home Office, managing food services at Fair Havens Conference and Camp in summers. She assembled her recipes and published a cook book. She was always a woman of faith, and over time became respected and valued as a leader. She was humbled and amazed that she, with her grade 9 education was given responsibility to speak publicly and to lead a province wide women's organization for her church denomination. My mind still sees her distinctive handwriting with which she wrote her notes and letters and recipes. I would like to write this to her today, "Well done Mom. I love you."

A Pink Wedding – My Mom and Dad

It was 1941. The war was on in Europe. Who knew what the future would bring. Mom was in love with Dad. He was the youngest son in a respected church going family. He played hockey and ball on local teams. He completed grade eleven before beginning work at various jobs in the community. Then he owned and operated a gas station, well the one and only gas station in Hepburn. His brother Harry owned the local hardware store. His father was the town Reeve. Dad, Edward by name and known as Eddie, was a debonair man, prematurely bald, with a manicured pencil mustache. He whistled everywhere he walked. Church was not on his priority list. For that reason, when Mom fell for him, the counsel she received was cautious.

Mom had worked ever since she was a teenager. Compelled to work for the sake of the family she had to end school after grade 9. She always regretted this and bore a sense of educational inferiority through her adult years. It was against the general will of the Christian community for her as a committed Christian to marry someone who had not yet settled eternal matters with God as far as anyone knew. Dad and Mom loved each other. He was 26 years of age and Mom was 22. So on June 12, 1941 Edward Unruh and Tina (Doerksen) Willems exchanged wedding vows. Mom couldn’t afford a traditional wedding dress, white and clearly sanctified. She wore pink and she wore a hat. They honeymooned in Saskatoon. They were very happy.

Ed and Tina wasted little time in beginning a family which began with me, firstborn, on Sunday, September 13, 1942. WWII was raging and Hepburn’s inhabitants were primarily Mennonite people with a pacifist position with regard to conflict. They would be exempt as conscientious objectors. Dad was not bound by such religious strictures. My father had already made up his mind that he was a Canadian and he bore responsibility for the nation into which he was born and into which his child was born. Against the predictable community behaviour he and a handful of young townsmen enlisted. Dad joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and Mom became a war bride who would spend much of the next years on her own. Dad was never shipped overseas. When he was sent to Gananoque, Ontario, Mom was able to accompany him. When he was sent to White Horse for an extended time, she felt his absence. They would remain in love and together for 66 years.

Photos:
• Mom in her wedding dress and hat June 12, 1941
• Mom and me in the Hepburn Central Office and residence where mom and dad operated the switchboard.

Hepburn’s Elevator #901 and Me

Hepburn was my home for the first five years of my life.

As it was in 1942 it is still a small farming and bible college town located 40 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. A rail line was constructed and was operating in 1909. After a local farmer named Rowitt Hepburn applied for a post office permit on his farm, Hepburn became a recognized village in 1919. Within ten years the town population reached 800 people. Located beside the rail line was Saskatchewan’s Grain Elevator No. 901, which was built in 1928. It served the grain farming community for decades until the great depression and the drought years of the thirties when the population dropped to less than 300. Today there are 500 residents. The rail line was shut down by the province in 1989 and subsequently most provincial elevators were torn down. Hepburn’s elevator No. 901 survived because of enthusiastic local plans to turn it into the Museum of Wheat.

At the age of three, a friend and I ventured where small children do not belong. We peddled our tricycles to the yawning open doors of the elevator, walked inside, found a large platform that moved up and down with the flip of a large brass handle fixed to the wall, and we took turns riding it until a large man confronted us. No doubt he was terrified that two children were so close to danger and he rapidly terrified us as he told us the perils of falling into a bin of grain. I have not set foot inside an elevator since that moment. I would love to visit Hepburn’s museum one day.

I have written and illustrated children’s stories based on my childhood experiences and in fact printed a simple copy as a Christmas gift for my grandchildren.The Wheat Museum Page