We don’t always realize the historical value of weathered papers and items we have in our possession. Many families have passports, pictures and immigration documents from the early 1900s; I recently came across such a collection.
I often ask my mother-in-law, Matilda, for guidance when writing a historical story. The other day she pulled out a brown envelope and in it was the immigration information from her parents. I knew she was holding out on me; she had that information so long that she did not remember it was there, tucked away in a little suitcase.
Her parents, (The Hubs grandparents) Gaspar and Lidia were immigrants from Hungary. This is their story.
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Lost in Translation
With thousands of people landing at immigration ports daily, it isn’t hard to imagine how record-keeping errors occurred. Multiple languages plus the pressure to put people through as quickly as possible made the job of an immigration worker challenging. Names and dates were lost in translation.
The immigration papers asked what their “approximate” birthdate was; even though Gaspar and Lidia had birth certificates with them, their names were misspelled when copied down. It is possible no one checked their papers; immigration staff simply copied the information down the way they heard it.
One of the other questions on the form was, “can you read?”. Lidia and Gaspar answered yes, but this question reminded me that many immigrants could not read or write; filling out paperwork was a significant challenge, often requiring someone else to do it for them. Even if they could read and write in their language, getting by without speaking English was difficult.
Entering Canada
If you did not have the funds to immigrate, a friend or family member in Canada could sponsor you. They would buy your ticket, and then you worked to pay them back once you arrived. There was no official contract; it was based on the honour system.
The main ports of entry to Canada were at Halifax, Nova Scotia and in Quebec. The Port of Quebec was an ocean liner terminal and immigration hall. Three million travellers would eventually pass through it’s doors.
Passengers who landed there in the 1920s could purchase a hot meal for $.25. The entire facility held up to 3000 people. It included hotel-type rooms where travellers could rest before continuing their journey.
Once passengers disembarked from the ship, they were required to go through several health screenings.
A train station was conveniently located near the immigration facility. Once passengers cleared immigration, they could board a train, each carrying 400 passengers and continue on their way.
Gaspar
Gaspar was born in 1898 in Sikator Veszprem Megye, Hungary. He recounted that as a teen, he and his friends made a ball to play with out of old rags, tightly wrapped in twine. Family lore has it that he knocked a window out of a church steeple with that ball.
He was six feet tall with brown hair, a moustache and hazel eyes. His happy-go-lucky manner and warm smile put those who met him at ease.
Gaspar served in the Hungarian Army during World War I; on one mission, his unit was pinned down for eleven days. In days prior they had noticed turnips growing in a nearby field and when night fell they dug them up, guided only by the light of the moon. They had nothing else to eat.
Gaspar became ill with malaria during the war and was treated at a field hospital. When the war was over, he spent a couple of years doing farm work in Hungary.
Word of available, affordable land in Canada enticed him. He immigrated to Canada in November of 1924, when he was twenty-six. His parents, brother and sister, stayed in Hungary, and Gaspar never saw them again, although they initially communicated by post.
Gaspar sailed third class on the ocean liner, the Melita, from Antwerp, Belgium to the Port of Quebec at Quebec City.
R.M.S. Melita
The Melita is an example of the steamships of the day:
- length 520 feet
- width 67 feet
- speed 15 knots (30 km/hour)
- two funnels
- two masks
- three decks
- 550 cabins
- 1200 3rd class passenger bunks
- used for troop transport during the first and second world wars and passenger travel in the years in between
- in wartime, these ships often sustained damage or were sunk by torpedoes
Gaspar was sponsored by a family friend from Hungary who was already settled in Saskatchewan. He travelled from Quebec to Saskatchewan by train. Gaspar worked for a year cutting wood with an axe to pay off his passage debt.
In the winter, the coldest temperatures in Hungary had been around -10 C. After experiencing a Canadian winter, Gaspar was second-guessing his decision to move.
Gaspar
When he was free and clear of his debt, Gaspar worked various labourer jobs before heading to Ontario to work for the railroad.
In 1928 he returned to Saskatchewan and purchased a quarter section of land sixteen miles southwest of Shell Lake in the Woodhill District. He built a small lodging and began clearing the land. Although he loved having his own land, Gaspar occasionally reflected that working for the railroad would have been more lucrative.
Gaspar at the Woodhills homestead
Lidia
Lidia was born in January of 1913 in Orszent Mikolas, Hungary, to Joe and Susan. Lidia’s older brother, Joe Jr., was born in 1910. When they were small children their father served in World War I. He was listed as missing in action and was never heard from again. Lidia always felt that a piece of her was missing because she didn’t know her dad or what happened to him.
Joe Sr. circa 1914
In 1923, Susan remarried a man named Sam, and they had two children together, Ruby in 1924 and Ernie in 1926.
Joe Jr. had worked in a bell factory in Budapest since he was twelve. He and Sam decided to immigrate to Canada in 1927. They worked to raise funds to bring the rest of the family over.
Susan, Lidia, Ernie and Ruby immigrated in 1929. The foursome sailed from The Port of Paris at Cherbourg, France to Quebec on the Aurania, in August of that year when Lidia was sixteen. Susan was severely seasick on the journey, so Lidia looked after Ruby and Ernie.
Passengers disembarking from the Aurania at The Port of Quebec. 1929Susan bottom left, Ruby, Lidia holding Ernie on the stairs
When she set foot on Canadian soil, Lidia was a slim, striking, five-foot three-inch brunette with hazel eyes and a fair complexion. She had a quiet, caring demeanour and looked out for everybody.
Lidia and the rest of the family travelled by train to Saskatchewan to join Sam and Joe Jr. Sam and Susan lived in the Royal Lake District for almost thirty years. Susan served as a midwife in the area, delivering over 50 babies. They retired to Leask in 1957.
Susan and Sam and family reunited in Canada
Back - Lidia, Joe Jr.
Front - Susan, Ruby, Sam, Ernie
Lidia worked for a short time at the local dairy, but she found the language barrier difficult. On one occasion, the lady she worked for asked her to change the bedsheets, but Lidia thought she said to shoo the cat out from under the bed. She left that job to help her mom at home until she got married.
Gaspar and Lidia
Neither spoke English when they arrived in Saskatchewan, but they picked the language up over time.
Gaspar and Lidia became acquainted through mutual friends and were married in November of 1930; Lidia was seventeen, and Gaspar was thirty-two. The ceremony took place at a small country church in the Aldina District, and a gathering was held afterwards at her parent’s home.
Lidia and Gaspar on their wedding day with her brother, Joe
Gaspar at Sam and Susan’s home after the wedding ceremony
In the early years of their marriage, most of their time was spent working on their homestead—visits with family and neighbours were their primary entertainment source. The great depression was on, and times were hard.
Gaspar worked to break the hilly, rock-covered land little by little. The house he had built there was a one-room log structure. They started with a cow, a pig and a horse. To earn money, Gaspar worked for other farmers, walking for miles to get to his jobs, leaving the horse for Lidia to use.
Lidia was an excellent cook and made delicious traditional Hungarian recipes. She had a big garden every year and did a lot of canning.
The nearest school was too far, four miles away. They decided to move so the kids could attend school. They sold the Woodhill property in 1942 and shortly after bought a farm in the Bramshott District, nine miles from Leask.
Gaspar and Lidia, Bramshott
Fortunately, the land on the new place had less rock. There was an existing one-story plank house to which they added a new kitchen and two bedrooms. Bramshott School was only a mile and a half from their home and the kids attended classes there. They operated a grain and cattle farm and also had chickens, geese, pigs and horses.
1945 construction of the addition
The couple had four children between 1931 and 1952. Their first three children: Matilda, Paul and Violet, were born when they lived at the Woodhill homestead, and their youngest, Jerry, was born after they moved to Bramshott.
The couple farmed until 1964, when they retired to Leask. In retirement, they still planted a big garden with Lidia entering her prize produce and flowers in the local horticultural show. He puttered around doing woodwork and gardening.
Paul, Violet, Jerry, Lidia,
Gaspar, Matilda
Gaspar passed away at age 88 in June of 1987. Lidia continued on her own, tending her yard and garden as long as her health allowed. She eventually moved to the Wheatland Lodge Nursing Home in Leask, where she passed away in March of 2006 at 93.
Imagine For a Moment
We often hear stories about people who immigrated to other countries a hundred years ago or more; imagine for a moment how difficult that would have been:
- ride a train for 800 miles to get to the port
- spend two weeks on an ocean liner covering 3200 nautical miles crossing the Atlantic Ocean
- everything you own in a steamer trunk
- after you clear immigration, take another train 2000 miles to the area several provinces over where you plan to homestead
- travel the rest of the way from the station by horse and wagon
- proceeded to build a home and a life literally from the ground up
Talking about skills passed down reminds me that there were fewer distractions then. Evenings were spent doing handicrafts, not staring at a screen. Gaspar liked music; he played the button accordion but traded it for a calf; he later purchased another accordion. People learned these skills out of interest, necessity or due to sheer boredom. Families talked to each other and told stories.
I never tire of hearing about the lives of frontier couples; their strength and resilience are a source of inspiration to those who follow in their footsteps.
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PODCAST OF THIS EPISODE 🔗 LINKS TO RELATED STORIES by Norma Galambos
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