The Dutch Store, another meeting

I met him in the Dutch Store, which he founded when he came to Canada. It is a remarkable store, just an unattractive low building from the outside. It could be anything, a garage, a shed. Inside I find a Dutch world in miniature. In this part of Winnipeg where many Dutch immigrants live as well as Germans and Mennonites, this store is quite popular. To my surprise I see Dutch brands, "Bolletje beschuit", "ontbijtkoek", Dutch cheeses, and not only Gouda cheese which is exported to many countries, but also Dutch farm cheese, which is much nicer as far as taste and quality are concerned. There are chocolate letters which are given in December at St. Nicholas, unique for Holland, there are Delft blue products, tea towels, cheese slicers, Dutch coffee and cacao which is unsweetened, and much more.  The owner, Marten Posthumus, a Frisian from the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has retired and his son, a true Canadian born in this country, has taken over the shop. I would like to meet his father, who has written a book about his youth in Friesland, as son of a poor labourer’s family. He has illustrated this with his own pen drawings, and that is the reason why I would like to meet him. I wonder if there are any similarities with my own father, who has also written a book about his youth as the son of a poor fisherman, an autobiography which he embellished with his own drawings and watercolours.

 pictures of a ghost town

 An abandoned old timer

The former general store

In the shop there is a marvellous book on display, the latest one by Marten Posthumus, a fat tome with drawings of ghost towns, barns, grain elevators and small towns in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, drawings of a past life that is quickly disappearing. In these black and white pen drawings he has captured this past, abandoned homesteads as in spite of hard labour the land did not yield enough to make a living. 

Badlands; Big Muddy River

I have just travelled with dear friends through this part of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, through the Badlands (556) and the wide open grasslands, where the winds blow freely across the treeless prairies. A land which seems too barren and wild to cultivate. A land with its own beauty of undulating grass in an ever changing pattern of pastel colours, with grasses turning orange in autumn.  When the sun slants through the grasslands, they look like burnished gold. In some places there is arable land, with ripe corn rippling in the wind.

Badlands

 Big Muddy River

 orange grasses and ranchland

Some of the old grain elevators are still in use, others abandoned like so many other buildings, the paint peeling, the place names fading. With the dismantling and disappearance of those old grain elevators, the small towns have vanished, the elevators being the heart of the towns, the reason for their existence. Grain is now stored in modern, much bigger and uglier elevators, and everything is done on a grander scale, so the towns are dying.

The book which is on display captures the sadness of lost dreams, mourning and honouring a vanishing past. It pays homage to the hardship of the settlers who tried to cultivate this land under difficult circumstances, battling with the forces of nature, the climate, the land, the barren winters and the heat and drought of summer, the wild animals. As everything was built of wood, in 50 years time there will be no trace left of those villages, as if they never were.

 Some old grain elevators

 an empty land

Part of the Dutch store has small tables and chairs and serves as a coffee shop and lunchroom. Apart from typically Dutch food, such as “kroketten” one can also buy soup, a BLT or a Rueben sandwich, which is American: pastrami and sauerkraut on bread. To my surprise the former owner of the shop, the author of the book on display, enters the shop. I am told he comes to the shop every day to meet people he has known for as long as his shop exists. We start talking and there is an immediate rapport. Posthumus reminds me so much of my father. He was widowed a few years ago but has this attitude which I recognize, thankfulness for every new day, a love of the natural world and an eye for beauty. He still draws and drives around to forgotten towns and homesteads with his sketchbook to record what he sees before it gets lost forever. Like my father, he admires the hand of the Creator in the wonders of nature. His background is Dutch Reformed, as is mine and my father’s. So there is this feeling of knowing each other, of finding a soul mate, in spite of the differences in age and living conditions. We talk about his book, and he tells me a book about Friesland is going to be published soon. He and his son have just come back from a visit to the Netherlands and Friesland, which he thinks it will be his last. I wonder how this shop will change after his death. His son was born in Canada, is Canadian. So as well as the homesteads, this remnant of a Dutch past, of the history of the Dutch immigrants and their culture, will also die.

I buy his book as a present for my friends, and he signs it for me. When I say goodbye to him, it is as if I say goodbye to my father.

It is one of the more memorable and meaningful meetings during this trip through Canada.