In 1946, Bep boarded the Queen Mary, along with hundreds of other war brides, and left her life in Holland to be with her husband in his home.

After living all over her 20 years in the ancient and modern city of Den Haag in Holland, the new bride was ill-prepared for the strangeness of all things which lay in her future.

New experiences came immediately. At the first breakfast on board ship, Bep was confronted by a bowl of golden flakes such as she had never seen before. She and her Dutch travelling companions tentatively scooped up some of the flakes with the spoon that was provided, and looked at each other in chagrin. “What dry awful stuff” they declared. A steward stepped forward and advised that cream and sugar were a standard addition to cornflakes. “Well,” Bep announces triumphantly, “We liked it then.” 

Docking in Halifax in the evening, Bep could see little difference between the lights of that city and those of the 800 year old city she had left behind. Her husband met her with a car, and they drove away. 

“After I saw the lights of Halifax, I didn’t see lights for two and half hours. I didn’t know what to think.” she says, “Then he said we’d arrived in his home town of Tatamagouche. I expected to see something, but I didn’t.” 

“I stepped into the house, and there in the kitchen my mother-in-law lit a lamp. I looked around, and there was a light on the ceiling, and a switch on the wall. I thought ‘they are crazy here.’ Then my husband told me that the house hadn’t been hooked up to electricity yet. So we lived with lamps.

“When we went to bed, I saw my first ever quilt on the bed. It was all made out of little pieces of cotton. ‘Are they ever poor,’ I thought. Then I asked for the bathroom, and my husband showed me the commode. I nearly had a fit. But you know, they say you can get used to anything but hanging, and we lived in that house for ten years, and we never did have a bathroom.

“We lived next to a schoolhouse. Everyday at 12 o’clock the kids would go out and play. They came over and stood in a line, saying it was to see my baby. They wanted me to talk, because they thought I talked so funny. I had absolutely nothing in common with the people there. I thought they were funny and they thought I was funny.

 “The first time I saw an apple pie I didn’t know what it was. When the person who’d made it started cutting it up, and I could see all that apple inside, I wondered ‘how did she get that filling through that little hole on top?’ Of course, when I made one I understood, but if you have never seen it, you just don’t know.

“Life was so different here. You can’t compare it with life in Holland. But no matter how it felt, you have to go through it. 

“People would ask me ‘How do you like Canada?’ and I’d think, ‘After three days how in the heck do I know?’