Anita Fagerlund wrote:
After 60 years in Canada our friends and we remember our first Christmas here. In December 1951, when Ulf and I arrived in Vancouver we were directed by the Immigration Office to rent a room on Beach Avenue, near English Bay. Our landlady was from Scotland and with our school English we had difficulty understanding her brogue. The rent was 10 dollars a week and we soon run out of money. Luckily I got a job as an au pair with a young lawyer’s family, where we both could stay.
Our friends from Finland, Rolf and Kerstin, came shortly after us and Rolf, who had graduated from the same university as Ulf got a job at B.C. Research Council. At a staff Christmas party Rolf had won a turkey as a door price and since we were going to celebrate Christmas together Kerstin and I were stuck with the task of preparing the turkey.
Neither of us had seen a turkey before, let alone a dead one with the feathers on and we started by pulling out all the feathers. We went down to the landlady to ask for further instructions.
Neither of us remember what happened to the innards, but they must have been dealt with successfully, and we all thought the taste was very good. Rolf and Kerstin ate turkey for a week. It was a big bird!
Parcels from Finland 1968 – Chris Yli-Luoma
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a young girl in the late 60s by favourite Aunt Kaisa would send us a parcel each year around Christmas time. It came wrapped in plain brown paper with carefully knotted rope holding it together. As it made its way from Helsinki to New Brunswick, I don’t know if she knew how thrilling it was for my sister and I to get this exotic package.
Inside were many things. What I remember the most were the hand-knitted striped socks and mittens. What was wonderful about the mittens was that when you slipped your hand inside there were all these funny fuzzy wool worms. What a delight for a young child.
And finally there was the chocolate – Frazer chocolate bars, nougat and jellied fruit. There was also a big box of individual chocolates filled with soft chocolate wrapped in crinkly blue, red and silver paper. They were so good. To this day I still wish I had an Aunt Kaisa to send me parcels filled with love and pieces of Finland tucked inside.