Our First Christmas Turkey in 1951

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!