It was a typical December winter day in Winnipeg’s North-end. The year was 1934. …just one week before Christmas. A beautiful white blanket of snow covered the ground. My mother’s voice joined in with the large gently falling snowflakes as she sang,
“Leise rieselt der Schnee… freue Dich Krist-kind kommt bald…. ( Snow is gently falling… Rejoice, the Christ-child is coming)”
Yes, the Christ Child’s celebration was only a week away and Mom still had so many things to do. The house had been cleaned and her children, Herman, Betty and Helen had already put up the Christmas tree.
This was going to be a very special Christmas celebration. You see, my father had nearly lost his life just two months earlier when he was involved in a terrible accident. As he was riding his bicycle from work, a truck carrying a full load of cord wood for heating had swerved to avoid a collision with another vehicle and the entire truck-load of wood had toppled and literally buried my father. He would have been undetected had it not been for a woman who witnessed the accident and kept shouting, “There’s a man underneath all that wood!”
Dad remained unconscious for many hours, finally awakening in the Misericordia Hospital with mother sobbing over him. Dad suffered a partial skull fracture and both legs were broken. It was a miracle he survived!
Now, two months later, Dad was able to walk with crutches and was staying with his employer, Mr. Spendlove, where Dad ahad been employed as a gardener and general handy-man. A convenient arrangement had been made so tha tDad could slowly resume his former duties. He had been given a basement room at his employer’s home on Wellington Crescent. As such, he was able to tend to refilling the coal stoker that fueled the prestigious home. Clearing the snow from the long double driveway was out ot the question and others had been hired to do the job.
Mr. Spendlove had made arrangement for Dad to spend Christmas with Mom and us three kids by taxiing him to our home on Redwood Ave.
“This” Dad said,”is going to be my happiest Christmas ever!”
He had been spared from death. Indeed, we could have been fatherless. Mom was just as excited. She knew Dad loved her Christmas baking and she was busy preparing another batch, just for him. They were his favorite shortbreads.
As the day-light waned into night, the house responded to the falling temperatures by letting out those familiar ‘frost bangs’ as the frost penetrated the walls. Mom had a hearty fire going in the wood-burning kitchen stove. As she placed a few more logs on the fire, she also added a handful or two of the sawdust left over when the wood had been cut in our back yard. Nothing went to waste in those terrible lean thirties… the depression years. Sawdust ust, however, had been an item of debate. Some considered it a dangerous fuel.
“Oh my goodness,” Mom suddenly exclaimed,”I’ve run out of butter for the short-breads. Herman, will you run to the corner store to get some?”
I was very comfortable and warm reading one of my Tom Swift collection of a dozen or so books in the series. I just hated the thought of going out into the cold night, but I knew that the cookies that Mom was baking were especially for our Dad who would be with us in a few days.
“Sure Mom,” I responded,”I’ll go to Kubow’s (the grocer).” While I bundled up, Betty and Helen were busy with coloring books and doll cut-outs.
While Mr. Kubow was writing up the bill for the butter, which he added to the rest of the month’s purchases ( the bill was paid only once a month when Dad received his pay-cheque), the silence of the night was suddenly broken by the screaming siren of a fire-truck as it rounded the corner and headed down Redwood Ave. to where our house stood. When I heard the siren, I ironically said to Mr. Kubow, “I hope it’s not our place.”
With the transaction completed, Mr. Kubow accompanied me to the front door of his store. To our horror and disbelief, it was indeed our home that was engulfed in smoke and flames. The fire-fighters were already inserting the water hoses through a hole they had chopped in the roof. With butter in hand, I ran petrified to our house.
“Where is my Mom; where are my sisters?” I cried.
Mr. & Mrs. Wagner, who lived a house or two next to ours, had already taken Mom, together with Betty and Helen, into their warm home. I,likewise, was shephered into the house to join a weeping Mother and two terrified sisters. Mrs. Wagner was doing her best to console them.
My Dad had already been notified by the police. Within a few hours a taxi, courtesy of Mr. Spendlove, brought Dad to his burned out house.
His first words were, “Where is my wife and where are my children?”
When my sobbing Dad was told that his family was safe at the Wagners, his only words were, “Thank God! Let the fire destroy everything but not my family. The house we can replace but not my Elizabeth, Herman, Betty and Helen I could not.”
Christmas,1934, came and went. Our family experienced love and kindness beyond description… from neighbors, from our church family and from many friends, some even unknown. Yes, there were Christmas gifts and hampers of food and clothing. There was even a large carton of groceries and goodies from the City’s Welfare Department.
Why have I told you this story? Well, it is my story of a Christmas that I will never forget. It was a Christmas that was not planned for: but it was a Christmas where more than ever, we thanked God for the gift of family… we were all alive and together. Mother had barely escaped with her life and the lives of my two sisters, now Betty Bergmann Martens and Helen Litz. It was a Christmas where God had spared the life of my Dad in October. It was a Christmas that today…73 years later…still flashes so vividly in my mind. It was also a Christmas where, especially my Dad was drawn closer to the Lord (as he would often comment in later years).
If my Dad had died in the accident and my Mom and sisters perished in the fire, I would have been an eight-year-old orphan.
So back to the title …. was the Wilm’s Christmas of 1934 a tragedy or a blessing? The answer is obvious. It was a blessing that emerged from great personal tragedy.
About the author. Herman Wilms married my cousin, Mary Kroeker, when he was 21. He was a prolific writer, but rarely showed his stories and poems to anyone. Mary discovered them in his files after he died at 83 ( 2009.)
Granstory 