Spirit Quest

O Canada … My Home and Native Land

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan

On Canada Day my mind wanders back a long way, to April 18, 1939. That day I got my first glimpse of Canadian terra firma. Mind you, after that stormy crossing of the north Atlantic when the sea often resembled mountains and valleys, any port was welcome. 

The shores of Halifax harbour  were still fringed with ice and snow which was a bit of a shock after “England’s green and pleasant pastures”. Nevertheless my mother and father along with 30 other families were happy to be welcomed ashore at Pier 21, doubly so inasmuch as all of us were refugees fleeing from the Nazis who had only a month earlier marched into our homeland Czechoslovakia. 

We didn’t know the Canadian anthem, that wonderful hymn by Calyxa Lavallee. “God Save the King” was more familiar. Nevertheless the words “O Canada”: was very much on our minds as we walked down the gangplank.

We were loaded into what was known as “colonist cars”, a railway coach with bunks and a stove on which to heat our cans of pork and beans that we acquired at the terminal’s shop.

This new country that was to be our home was still in the grip of old man winter. The rivers and lakes that we viewed from our sooted windows were still frozen or in the process of spring breakup. The locomotive gave a mournful wail rather than the sharp whistle of European trains. Was it trying to tell us something? 

Nova Scotia melded into New Brunswick then into Quebec. Montreal was a hopeful oasis of civilization enjoyed but for one day. The journey went on through northern Ontario’s rocks and trees. We looked questioningly at this new country. Was it the end of the world. O Canada?

At length we arrived in the Prairies. It looked more like one of the Great Lakes. Sometimes the only land was the railway embankment which our train straddled. Occasionally a sod hut stood on an island, its stove pipe emitting smoke gave evidence that it was inhabited, really?. 

A week after our disembarkment at Halifax  the train came to a halt in a small hamlet. It was an end station, we had run out of rails to traverse. The burgers of this village were all there more out of curiosity than welcome. Nor was this the end of our journey. Where rails could not carry us two waterlogged ruts did. By wagons loaded with our meager but valuable possessions we were transported into the hinterland. Five hours later we arrived at a wretched log cabin, a homestead abandoned  during the depression. The driver informed us that we were home, O Canada?!?

With the outbreak of war some of our would-be farmers abandoned coveralls for khaki uniforms to fight against our foe. Others including my father left the farm to be retrained to some profession useful in the war effort. He had been a journalist. We decided that Canada was worth “standing on guard for.”

Three years later in the midst of another snow storm and bitter cold, mother and I retraced our steps east to Toronto and a more normal and comfortable style of living.

The war was won but we lost our desire to return to Europe. In 1947 we joined others at the courthouse in Belleville to sing “O Canada” as we received our “papers”.

Our story isn’t that different from those who much earlier made the same transition, from potato famine or farm clearances or smoky boroughs of “satanic mills”. They came not only from the British Isles but the Ukraine and many other countries. In the west they came from the orient. It was never easy but all learned to sing “O Canada.” 

In the fifties, during my college holidays it was my privilege to work with Immigration  at the ports of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, welcoming and assisting immigrants, people who had experienced what we had managed to avoid: bombs, hunger and homelessness. All were happy to see these shores and most by far did well for themselves and for this country.

I have no trouble singing “O Canada” and when I do I sense a spirit that is moving from shore to shore to shore. “O Canada, our home and native land.”
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More about Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan’s story can be found in his excellent book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom available from Canada Books Online. — Mike Heenan, Literary Editor
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