Dear friends,
Most of you don't know that I deleted two of my article recently. One was a four star article. The other was as good, but wasn't marked. Answers to my earlier post about beggars assumed that I was a little softy who couldn't even properly imagine hardship and poverty.
That isn't true.
Here you will learn facts of some of what I have experienced, what Ben has endured, and what we have suffered through together. Some dismissed what I had to say about conditions in *Canada* believing that I was speaking of beggars in *China*! Then, to top off that mistake, actually imagined that Canadians can't possibly understand extreme hardship. This is ridiculous.
Do you know how many Canadians know that their grandmothers were hitched to plows to till the new fields, and lived with their families in holes in the ground covered with sod roofs on the frigid Canadian prairies, until in a couple of years or more they could manage to construct houses? No. Those weren't my grandparents. Mine had other horrors to endure in North America and before in their ancestral lands.. Most of the population of Canada is here because they, or their grandparents, or earlier ancestors fled the dangerous, terrible conditions of ancestral lands.
I never told you all of Ben's and my life story. I expect I never will. Lots of it is too painful to remember. I never told you about my ancestors who fled torture and the scorched earth policies of the Spanish Inquisition. They thought for themselves, and wouldn't be bullied into changing back to ways they had rejected. Two of my direct ancestral lines fled three times from France to Holland. They were persecuted Protestant Walloons and Palatine Protestant Germans. That was in the 16th and 17th centuries. They finally made it to North American and opened Manhattan Island to the Dutch. Then they fled to Albany, New York some years later because of Indian raids. They were on the British side in the American Revolution and were imprisoned, shot, their child died in prison, another was burned to death chained in their house. They fled to Canada. The results of all this persecution and fleeing without anything they had built up still echo down our generations to shapeour own experiences.
They made homes over and over again from the most primeval wildernesses in two countries. Never assume that you know what any Canadian or his family has had to sustain in life.
Ben and I have personally experienced the following things in our own lives:
Ongoing hunger
Ongoing harrassment by people to whom money owed was due to circumstances to do with weather, not personal failure
Lost a business and were advised to declare bankruptcy. Didn't. Instead worked to successfully pay back the debts.
Suffered from prejudice ourselves, as did parents and grandparents
Been shunned by non-accepting people in a small town in Canada where newcomers from another part of Canada could never break in to the cliques of those whose ancestors settled there.
Lacked for certain things and suffered from the lack with torn skin,
Homelessness
Fled several times from old rented dwelling due to imminent danger of fire from ancient heating equipment
Jobless
Fled dangerous war front two hours head of advancing line.
Fed two people on $5.00 per week,
Denied three major rights due to gender, although fully competent.
Sexually harrassment by stranger and fellow employee
Humbly grateful when allowed higher education due to loss of self belief.
Bedridden with illness every second or third week as a mother of three.
Had to eat from garbage dumps. Carried a spoon for the purpose.
Seen many dead, starving and wounded people
Home territory devastated into jagged heaps. Destroyed by war
Missed months of school. Still passed exams and didn't miss a year.
Exiled from well-loved, ancient ancestral lands. Still occupied lands.
Very cold for long periods, with no way to get warm
Had to walk extreme distances every day to get to safety
Shared rusty old bathroom.
Humiliated and beaten with rod at school
Indentured for period of years, which is almost slavery. Superiors could do almost whatever they wanted to you
Dependent on the kindness of others for survival
Fed, prepared old chickens already turning green, which were cooked over and over for new meals until at last the bones made a weak soup
Dug for potatoes and existed on turnips and potatoes.
Always wore the used clothing of strangers
Treasured one little egg
Ben and I have had these experiences. Some are his. Some are mine. You are probably surprised to learn that we have jointly suffered more than most of you on this forum have suffered.
Now you know why I was so angry when it was assumed that I knew littleabout poverty and beggary. We didn't beg, except that once during their flight Ben and his mother and two little sisters had to beg a farmer to use his barn for shelter. Otherwise, we didn't beg. We don't want to remember those times, so that's the last you'll hear of our own bad times.
Best wishes to you all, that your own lives will go smoothly,
Mary and Ben
