01-Online-From Romance to Reality: Dutch War Brides to Canada, 1945-1947
Fall or Spring Course | Registration opens 8/4/2025 6:00 AM EDT
Eighty years ago this past June the Canadian military liberated the Netherlands. Why did these troops remain in the Netherlands for over a year after the war? Two of the results of this extended stay were that Dutch women married Canadian soldiers, and the Canadian government funded the one-way passage of 1,886 Dutch brides to Canada. What conditions did these brides have to meet to be eligible for this subsidy? How did they find their partners in a country as large as Canada without speaking the language? How did they know where to get off the train? And what did they find once they got there? This power-point presentation of the first Dutch immigrants to Canada after WWII is divided into two sessions: Session I centers on the brides in the Netherlands, and Session II focuses on their arrival and lives in Canada.
Subject: history
Janet Sjaarda Sheeres is a freelance researcher and author whose work focuses mainly on the history of Dutch immigrant women. She has published four books on Dutch-American history (available on Amazon.com) and has been a frequent presenter for CALL.
Janet Sheeres
Janet Sjaarda Sheeres, leader, edited and annotated the Minutes of the CRC General Assemblies from 1857 to 1880. The book was published by Eerdmans. She is the author of three other books, two of which deal with CRC history. For the past 35 years she has researched and written about Dutch emigration/immigration, family, and church history. Her articles have appeared in national and international journals.