Eganville – As Remembrance Day approaches and the thoughts of people across the nation turn remembering the war dead and the men and women who risked their lives so we enjoy the freedom we have, an Eganville resident has shared her personal story of the significance of the day for her.

Last week, Margie Patterson sent that story to the Leader and in a later interview, elaborated on the events that prompted her to share her memories and recollections of an impactful day 75 years ago, which she passionately recalls to this day. She is a retired United Church pastor who ministered at Melville United Church up to and during the final service  before the congregation disbanded in September.

While her age at the time of the event limited the significance of what had occurred, it later became a very important detail in her life as her family shared the story because of the impact it had.           

The day was November 11, 1949, and the then Margie Daye was one-and-a-half years old. She and her two older siblings, Johnny, 8, and David, 4, her parents, Ossie and Lois Daye, and her maternal grandparents, Sterling and Lina King, had moved the previous day (November 10) to their newly constructed home on St. James Street, in Woodstock, New Brunswick.

“The next day dawned cold, frosty and windy,” she wrote. “Our family was preparing to go to the cenotaph.

“Where were those mittens packed?” it continued. “Four adults rummaged through the boxes.”

She recalls having been “tied” to the outside front door as the adults searched for the mittens, when a woman with three children stopped by.

“She said something to me, then knocked on the door,” her story read. “I remember hearing only the word “welcome.” She left, returned, knocked again. She had handmade mittens, enough for all seven of us. The two families began the five-block walk to the cenotaph service.

Mrs. Patterson said that was the family’s first encounter with Mrs. DeBruin and her children, and the start of a lifelong friendship between the two families that proved to be the inspiration for her story.

Attending the annual Remembrance Day service was very important to everyone in Woodstock because the area known as Island Park was the training ground for the Carleton York and the North Shore regiments.

“Any time in my childhood, even when the veterans would meet on D-Day in June, the community was out at the cenotaph for that,” she shared. “And anytime there was a parade relative to the war.”

No matter the weather, one stood quietly at the service, and learned about the significance of the event.

Mrs. Patterson also had a familial connection to the war as her grandfather Daye, was in World War I, her grandfather King’s two brothers, and her grandmother’s brother was chaplain in WWI. Her father, who had lost many friends in the conflict, attempted to enrol but was turned down because of his eyesight. Woodstock was only 10 miles from a major U.S Air Force base that possibly could be the target of an attack and he was given the responsibility of going around in the community during any possible bombing “blackouts” to ensure people had their lights off. 

“That was his role during the war,” she said.

Grade One Story

Her story fast-forwarded to November 1953, when she was in Grade 1, prior to the annual Remembrance Day ceremony.

“My grade 1 teacher asked each of us to tell a one-minute story as to why we would be at the cenotaph. By this time, I had learned from my parents the story of the person I called: “the mitten lady.” 

This is the story she shared that day.

“I live on the same street as Mrs. De Bruin. She and her three children came from Holland in 1949.

Before Canadian soldiers marched into her village and gave her freedom, she and her family ate bulbs because there was no food. One year when it was very cold, we could not find our mittens. She gave my family mittens. She said it was her way to say thank you to Canadians.

“My family will go to the cenotaph to say thank you for freedom for us and others, but I don’t know yet if we will need mittens or not.”

Mrs. Patterson said she had learned Mrs. DeBruin came to Canada in 1949 after her husband had been killed during the war.

“She had four young children, came over on the boat, landed in St. John and then settled in Woodstock. She lived there the rest of her life.”

She recalled how Mrs. DeBruin owned and operated a little corner store, where she and her brothers spent lots of time with the DeBruin children. It was during those and later visits, she learned how the DeBruins had survived by eating tulip bulbs because of the scarcity of food in their homeland during the war.

“She became very maternal of the children in the neighbourhood,” she recalled. “Hers was the little corner store our family gravitated to.”

Mrs. Patterson said when she reflects on that today, she said with the global wars and devastation, the civilians being killed, and food scarcity, when she plants a tulip bulb today it is hard to imagine that being your only source of food.

“Not only for today, but for many days,” she noted of the hardship Mrs. Debruin and her family, and countless others endured. “I try and envision in the sounds of silence and guns that you’re digging for this as your meal for the day.”

For the next 40-plus years, Mrs. DeBruin provided tulip bulbs to the neighbourhood, saying it was her symbol of remembrance.

Her story then advanced to March 1991, and Mrs. Patterson was visiting her in hospital where she was doing some chaplaincy work.

“I did not know it would be my last visit,” she wrote. “As we were reminiscing, she asked if I would tell the next generations about her symbol of freedom: the symbol of the bulbs.

“I asked her if I could tell a story of her hospitality and welcome to a neighbourhood, a story remembered and symbolized by mittens on a cold November 11th morning. She smiled and nodded in agreement.”

Mrs. Patterson said in the ensuing 30-plus years, she has shared Mrs. DeBruin’s story in every community she has lived in.

“Often it would be done in the context of worship,” she explained. “Whether we were hosting the Legion or we were just doing, in our Liturgy, the Remembrance Service.

“That story would be told, and I would even have bulbs and pass them to the children,” she added.

She said the story was always gratefully received, noting many people had no idea of the significance of the tulip bulbs.

“Others that came from Dutch backgrounds were grateful to hear that reference to their suffering. “They knew their family story from the other side of it.”

She said when she is at the cenotaph in Eganville on November 11, the story will be with her, as it has been for 75 years and will continue to be with her forever.   

“Yes. I remember: different cultures, different languages, and different generations,” her story concluded. “Yes. I will tell a story of the symbols. Yes. I will plant bulbs. Yes. I will be at the cenotaph. Will I need mittens?

Yes: always in memory!”

Mrs. Patterson said she kept the mittens for many years, but in the many locations she and her husband made during their ministerial careers, they had flooding issues in some of their homes which resulted in the loss of the mittens.

“But I still carry that story here,” she said holding her hands over her heart.