Helena Braun

Q: When were you born and where?
A. I was born in 1924 in Saskatchewan, but I only lived there for about 6 months and my parents moved to Manitoba....
Q. What was life like there?
A. ...Our parents came from the old country with nothing and so they were on a rented farm ... a farm with everything, they raised cattle and animals and chickens and whatever they could, so we grew up on the farm and worked along with our parents.... We were very free. Our parents were not too strict – they taught us how to work but ... they let us have a lot of free time, so I remember roaming in the woods and picking crocuses along the fence and watching gophers and things like that in the early years....
Q. Where did you go to school [near Steinbach]?
A. ...We went to a lovely little school, a one room school called Good Hope, and there were 8 grades in the room, so we had a very good education, we had excellent teachers. And they tried to keep us well occupied and when you are in a room with other grades, you are always listening in, so we were thoroughly grounded.... Then later on ... I went to the convent, grade 10 and 11, and that was run by the grey nuns. That was a very fine school too....
Q. Where did you go to get your teaching license?
A. Oh, that was very interesting. It was war time when I graduated from the MCI in Gretna and they needed teachers so badly they offered grade 12 students a short course, a crash course, at the university in Winnipeg, and then they assigned us to schools for the first year, so we were called permit teachers....
Q. And can you tell me about your decision to come to the Fraser Valley?
A. Well, really it was because my parents moved. They moved in '46, and I stayed out there to finish out my teaching year, and so when I came to visit them at Christmas time, the private school in Greendale needed a teacher for next year and they asked me whether I would be interested, and I thought I would be.... I was very interested in teaching, I loved teaching. So it didn't really matter to me very much where I taught....
Q. So what kind of wage did you get?
A. ...When I came to BC my first wages were $1600.00 a year! (laughter) Not a week!... I was taught or raised to be very frugal.... During the thirties, everybody didn't have money.... You didn't feel poor, just didn't have things.... We didn't clamour for things. We had to learn to do without....
Q. So where did you live when you moved?
A. I lived with my parents ... on Sumas Prairie Road.... My parents had gone to BC [1947] to get away from a very cold and adverse climate and ended up the next year with the flood. And then 12 feet of water in their place. And my year of teaching was cut short because the flood came the 1st of June, so that summer I worked for the Red Cross....
Q. How did your role as a woman influence your daily life – what you could do in the community and also in your job?
A. ...I think I had the advantage being a single girl, of having a profession. I was considered a professional. And it was easier for men to talk to me ... than if I had just been anybody. I sort of had a good job, I was competent in a way, and I felt well respected, well received in the district, and in the church too.... My mother complained that once for 2 weeks, I had never had one evening at home, I was in church every evening. But ... you shared in people's lives, we sang at all the weddings and funerals ... and it was a close community....
Q. So how did [the lay pastors] make a living?
A. All of them had their own property, their own farms. Rev. Dueck had a dairy farm. And Rev. Harder did too, I think.... Those ministers were so dedicated. I remember Rev. Dueck saying one time he had made 200 trips to Vancouver in a year – unpaid. And he still had to milk his cows and keep his dairy farm going....
Q. How did you relate to others outside of Greendale?
A. ...When our Mennonite people [made] sort of a closed Mennonite settlement, there was some resentment from the outside.... One of the men who had been in the air force overseas ... was angry with them and ... said when the flood came that the dyke should have been broken and all those people should have been drowned.... Later on they apologized for their attitude....
Q. So you were saying that your work changed in the sixties then?
A. Well, I became a principal ... of several schools for about 15 years. And then I was asked to be the primary consultant for the area, and that was the first time anybody had been a consultant, so it was sort of pioneering that work.... Later on I joined MCC.... I offered my services for overseas, and I could do that – not being tied down at home.

Frank Hildebrandt

Q. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
A. ...I was born 1925, July 25 in Neuendorf in the Ukraine.... Our teacher in our village was all German. We had a couple hours a week we had Russian.... We worked on a community farm. You had to go to work just like here on a job and you didn't get paid.... At the end of the year they paid you with grain and the money they paid you, you had to pay back to the government again.... There was about seven villages with all German people.... There was no school 1941 – the war started in June ... and the school was out, we had to move out ... of the village but we came back after the Russian army had left us and the Germans came in ... and then we could go back to the village again and live our normal life again....
Q. Why were you brought to Germany?
A. Well, because we were all afraid that when the Russians came back they would all murder us.... So that's why the Germans ... took all the German people from the Ukraine and Russia as far as the German army went into Russia and they tried to bring all the Germans back again.... We all had to walk, but I didn't have to walk – I was driving the team of horses but my sisters and mom, they were all walking. Day and night we walked – we walked the first 2 days, no stopping. We stopped a little bit for feeding horses, and then we walked and walked and walked. We were walking behind the wagons just like asleep. Hanging on to something and walking....
Q. What made you decide to come to Canada?
A. Well, there was no future in Europe. Germany was all busted up.... The whole ship was immigrants.... We went across the channel to England ... and then we took the big trip to Halifax – 9 days! We landed in Mission on the train, CPR, and then we moved to Sardis....
Q. What were some of your first impressions of BC?
A. Well, I tell you, not very good! (laughter) I couldn't speak the language you know and if you can't speak the language you're just about a dumb guy,... you can't talk to anybody and you want to go buy groceries,... you had to ask for everything.... But we managed and then when we were here for a while I started studying English myself,... I got books and started reading it. Back then you couldn't go to school, you didn't have no money, and the government didn't help you.... I worked at the dyke after the flood, that was a government job, we would get 90 cents an hour.... And in two months I saved enough money up to pay for my boat fare.... It [temporary residence] was just an old rough cabin, shiplap floors. Our son, he was crawling.... In the evening give him a bath and put him to bed, [my wife] always checked the legs and there was always slivers in them – that's how rough it was, and this is the honest truth.
Q. So what are some of your memories of the community of Greendale?
A. Oh, I think it's good memory. I mean we get along with all the people and associate with all the people and – you know how church life is.... We had a very good life. There's not too many days we spent at home, nights. No, we always invited out,... so no, I'm not sorry I came to Canada. First, I'll tell you,... I couldn't speak the language and people, they weren't very friendly. If I woulda had money I would have went back to Germany. But I didn't have money.... And then some of these German people here, they spoke English, and they always told us ... we just came here to take the jobs away from them. And I said, We don't, and what are you going to do, I mean, you have to work.... I mean, who would feed you?... I think I did very good in this country....
Q. Did you have a lot of contact with people outside of the Greendale community?
A. Yes. From Agassiz all the way to Richmond and Delta [in his capacity as employee for Fraser Vale Growers]. All the farmers,... if you had asked me,... I could just name about every farmer in the Fraser Valley what I had something to do with.... And I was always welcome when I went to see them, I always sit down,... usually they invite me in for a cup of coffee and they sit and talk round the table. And in the spring there was 2 months where I made contracts with different growers.... We ran 3 shifts. We had up to 500 people working at Fraser Vale....
Q. So what role did music play in the church?
A. Music? Well, I always enjoyed music, we always had a choir sing in church,... but lately this overhead singing, that's the pits, for me.... I mean we are not pushing this overhead singing away, I mean the older people we tried to have at least one or two songs out of the hymnody, you know, I mean the songs that we know the Christians were singing years ago.... Honestly, when they sing a song out of the hymnody, then you hear the voices coming and that's good singing.... This overhead singing, how can you sing bass or tenor,... it doesn't work that way very good with them songs....