At
the Table of the Giesbrecht Family
by Andy Clement
In the fall of
1945 the Giesbrecht family of eight children, Lisbeth, Greta, Katy, Jacob,
Gerhard, Peter, Helen, and Henry moved in from Manitoba, with their parents
George and Katherine. Of the Mennonite
persuasion they took up a partially cleared former homestead. Their home was over five miles from the school
car. There were three girls of thirteen, eleven, and nine years, and a boy of
eight, for school. A note of their
mileage walked in June to get to the school for a four day stop totalled
forty-four or eleven miles a day. Also
noted was that the eldest daughter, perhaps because of other work at home,
showed the most fatigue. The youngest
kept right up with the rest!
In the winter
they arrived by sleigh. With daylight saving they would leave home in the dark.
Trained in Manitoba they suffered only
for the slow tedium of the ride. But the
father made the sacrifice of hanging around the little store all day till four
o'clock.
I was invited
out to supper in the spring. This was
their way of saying thanks. I was
prepared for a frugal meal as I had seen those kids take only bread in their
lunches at school. Bless their hearts
they had a chicken. And they had
vegetables, and some sort of dumplings, and dessert and tea.
There was a
closing of the meal with a prayer. Nowhere
is a prayer more impressive than at the table of the poor. Hope, consolation, thanksgiving are all there.
It was a godsend that the buses would
call for them in the fall. I heard later
that the Giesbrecht family turned out really well.
Source:
A passage taken from by Andy Clement’s book, "The Bell and The
Book" with minor corrections by Gerhard Giesbrecht, now George Grant
from Eagle Lake, in Haliburton County, Ontario.
