My mother, Ida (Hiebert) Penner started painting when she was 80, learning from a “How to Paint” Show on TV. She thrived on the weekly lessons. Before long, she was sitting in our yard trying to capture the colors of the sunset. It is many years since she passed away but her paintings have graced our walls all this time. Now, my siblings and I are sharing them with you.
OUR 60TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY was unique!
No visitors due to Coronavirus distancing rules. We didn’t want a big celebration but ….. Four inches of snow looked pristine white but created problems which were miraculously removed by our kids two blocks away.
Childhood
John Bergen is my Opa, which means grandfather in German. He was born in 1933 in the Mennonite village of Gnadenthal, Ukraine. About 200 families lived in this small farming community. For the first years of his life, he lived there with his parents, Abram and Susanne Bergen, and his older siblings, Peter, Katie, and Henry. When John was six years old, his father was taken away, never to be seen again. This was at the very beginning of World War II. From then on, Susanne raised her children on her own. John remembers the good times he had in this village, especially picking vegetables in the garden located on the outskirts of the village. The village then became under German occupation and in 1943, all the families of Germen descent were told to return to Germany. This included the Bergen family. At ten years old, John took the train with his family to Poland, where they lived for a while, then fled to Germany when the German army was beaten back. In Germany, it was common for John to have to take refuge in a bomb shelter and hear the bombs exploding not too far away. Finally, in 1947, Susanne Bergen decided to join her relatives in Canada. She and her children took the boat to Canada and installed themselves in Manitoba. Throughout his childhood, John went to school in four different countries. He was seventeen years old when he finished grade 6.
Work, marriage, and family
John started working on farms when he was almost seventeen years old and learned how to milk cows. After doing this for a few years, he became an apprentice working with sheet metal (apprenticeship was the most common way to learn a job). Eventually, he started working with air conditioning systems, started his own company and trained apprentices himself. He says he has “enjoyed making people comfortable, summer and winter”. One day, he was invited to go bowling by a girl named Shirley Penner, whom he had seen many times at his church’s youth events. A few weeks later, she accepted an invitation from him to go boating. The two of them fell in love and were married in 1960. They had five children between 1961 and 1968: Carol, Marjorie (my mom), Donna, Nancy, and Richard. All the children got the opportunity to work with sheet metal every now and then. John and Shirley also made sure that their children got to visit their extended family regularly and they were often on the road.
Later years
As the children grew older and left the home, John was blessed with twelve grandchildren to which he enjoys telling the stories of his life. Many times, they have gathered around him to hear bedtime stories, always requesting for more. Now, John and Shirley also have 6 great-grand-children. His greatest joys of being retired are spending more time with his beloved wife and with his grand-children and great-grand-children when they come for a visit. He also enjoys working in his garden, a passion that has never left him since he started picking vegetables in the community garden in Ukraine.
Experience with aging
John is now 84 years “young”. When asked if growing older was different from what he had expected, John replied that he had no expectations. In fact, he says he has no dreams for his life: he simply takes every day as it comes. He has started experiencing a few health difficulties, namely a frequent ringing in his ears and cancer a few years ago, which he has recovered from. He also cannot work as much in a day: whereas he used to work sixteen hours a day, he now cannot work more than three. However, he says it does not bother him since he does not have as high expectations of himself now that he is older. John is still quite active: he works on renovations in his house, does repairs on his church’s building, goes for walks and works in his garden.
Thoughts about today’s world
When asked how he thought the world had changed since he was younger, he replied, “It used to be that you could believe what people said. That is no longer the truth.” He went on to say that people seemed to seek their own profit rather than the other’s interest, especially in business, and that people were more self-centered. John’s advice to the younger generation is this: “Get yourself trained for a job… You might want to change it later, but you want to have something to fall back on.” He also encourages them to find things that they enjoy doing while they are young, because it will follow them when they are older. He says it is much harder to learn something when one is older.
Philosophy of life
John has a few sources from which he draws life principles: the Bible, teachings of his mother, and his experience. His faith in God gives him a direction in life and his moral guidelines come from the Bible. He has developed a habit to go to church regularly and he says his beliefs have kept him from being tempted to develop bad habits. My Opa lives for helping others. Even when he will no longer be able to do any physical work, he says he will still be able to pray for them. He is also not afraid of death because he knows he is going to meet Jesus in Heaven when he dies. Even when he was going through treatment for his cancer, he was at peace. My grandfather takes one day at a time and trusts in God. He says, “I want to give God joy that I am doing exactly what He made me to do.”
This is a repost of a story posted 4 years ago, written 25 years ago.
My first job was at the Canadian Imperial Bank in East Kildonan. It was 1952 and I had just graduated from Grade eleven. The manager, Mr. Schmor went to the same church as our family and hired me immediately as a ledger clerk. All bookkeeping was done by hand. The books had to balance before we could go home so we often worked late. The bank was open for customers from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday to Friday. On Friday we opened from 4:30-6:00 pm so stores could bring in their cash deposits.
On my second Friday at work, we were very busy getting ready for the afternoon rush. The teller had just filled his drawers with the daily cash quota when two masked men walked in. One stepped quickly into the manager’s office. The manager, who was interviewing a loans customer, leaned back in his chair and tried to push the alarm button. But he was rudely forced to lie down on the floor at gunpoint. The other masked man came toward us. The accountant, Mr. Wasson, put up his hands.
“Get down on the floor,” the man ordered while pointing a sawed-off shotgun at him. The teller was similarly pointed to the floor. They cringed as the bandit stepped over them to go to the vault. Fortunately, Lorne, the teller had closed the combination to the safe moments before. The bandit did not force him to open it but went straight to the teller’s cage and emptied all the bills into a shopping bag. Then he headed for the door.
We ledger clerks were partly sheltered on the other side of the teller’s cage. Quick-witted Irene knelt down and pressed the burglar alarm before she lay down on the floor with the rest of us.
The police station was next door so it did not take long for the police to get there. But Police Chief Einfeld thought it was another false alarm so he had his gun in his pocket which was probably a good thing. The masked man guarding the door made him lie down with all the customers on the floor. Chief Einfeld was afraid the man recognized him. He was very, very afraid!
The masked men stepped over the police chief and got into a waiting car with a driver that sped away before people outside realized what had happened. The only person who saw hold-up was one older lady whom they allowed to sit on a chair. She watched, spell-bound, as she clutched the cash deposit from her daughter’s store. The robbery took only 90 seconds. Not a shot was fired. Estimates re how much they took were about $2,000.00 which would amount to $40.000. in today’s sums since minimum wage was 70 cents an hour.
We all got a bonus because of the stress we had endured.
The Capture of the gunmen made headlines for a week. They had prepared a hideout in the bush near Vivian, Manitoba. But they needed water. A fearful housewife noticed their guns as they sat by the side of the road. She told her father who was a pump man with the CNR at Vivian. He notified the station agent who tipped off police that he saw two men taking water in a jug from the pump house near the station. R.C.M.P. then converged on the area.
A vicious gun battle took place Sunday evening. One gunman, John R.Zahara. was killed. Just before he passed out, he shot Constable John Friend in the head and nearly killed him.
Alexander Zakopiac, the mastermind, was wounded in the foot but tried to escape. He was handcuffed and taken to Deer Lodge Hospital for treatment. He was scheduled to go to Headingly Jail, but evaded capture. The public was warned that he was schizophrenic and extremely dangerous. For many days and weeks there was no sign of him.
A few months later he was arrested walking across Redwood Bridge at night, perfectly normal and unarmed. This was only half a block from Glenwood Motors where my Dad was the gas-station attendant that night.
I saved nine pages of newspaper clippings in my scrapbook
Granstory 