Higher Ground

I was born on what was once an island in the Netherlands.

Wieringen has always been a place of shifting sands and severe storms, where the coastline changed dramatically due to natural and man-made forces and tales are told of ancient cities lost under the waves and of buried hoards of Viking silver. Wieringen was part of the mainland surrounding a freshwater lake but in the Middle Ages storms completely changed the area.

The lake became a part of the ocean — the Zuider Zee — and Wieringen was isolated.

Almost two thousand years later, in the 1920s, it would again become part of the mainland when dikes were built and the land south of it was drained to create new farmland in a region called Wieringermeer.

Jan Kat (my paternal grandfather, centre), a widower remarried to Neeltje, a widow, worked on the Zuider Zee dike projects.

Jan positioned and anchored the floating cranes used to move sand and rock in the building of the dikes.

In particular, he helped build the Afsluitdijk, the 32km dike that once again cut the Zuider Zee off from the ocean, starting its slow change back into a freshwater lake and providing existing dikes an extra layer of defence from ocean storms.

A memorial on the Afsluitdijk pays tribute to the hard work that went into building it (each stone in the dike's top layer was placed by hand)...

... and a plaque reminds all that the fight against the water remains a fight by and for the people. This sentiment was particularly clear in the closing days of World War II, 15 years after the Wieringermeerdijk was completed and Wieringermeer drained.

Months after D-Day, the Battle of Normandy in June 1944, Canadian troops in France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany were redeployed to advance on German positions in the Netherlands. The Dutch people were starving under German occupation; some were forced to dig up and eat tulip bulbs to survive. As each town was liberated by the Canadian troops, people spilled out into the streets to cheer for the soldiers. The Canadian advance was halted on April 12, 1945, however, with concerns that the retreating German forces would start blowing up dikes.

Sure enough, five days later on April 17, the Nazis blew up part of the Wieringermeerdijk and flooded Wieringermeer.

(A memorial marks the water-filled crater created by the explosion and subsequent torrent.)

Water began rising around the houses in the town of Slootdorp in Wieringermeer. Jan Kat, his wife Neeltje, and their children Marten and Janie (from Jan's previous marriage), Adriaan and Chris (from Neeltje's previous marriage), and baby Rits (named after Jan's brother), climbed into a horse-drawn buggy and headed for higher ground.

No one was killed by the flooding as there had been enough warning of the Nazi's plan for people to escape, and while Wieringermeer was drained again by the end of the year, much property had been lost. Jan took his family to Westerland on the former island of Wieringen, where his brother Rits lived and owned a grocery store. They lived in a room above Rits' store while waiting for the government to complete the special houses built for those displaced by the flooding.

Jan Jorna, originally from Friesland, worked in the engine room of the dredging boats in the fishing village of Den Oever where he lived with his wife Reinoutje and his daughters Bets, Grietje (or Greetje as they called her), and Wouda. Their house was old and had not been updated with modern plumbing; while Jan was at work, it fell on Reinoutje to empty the outhouse bucket into the schorre, an open composting field at the back of the property. Sometimes she didn't get to this thankless task until after the contents had exceeded the bucket's capacity.

In December 1957, Jan Jorna moved his family into a better home — one he could hardly afford — on Slingerweg in the nearby town of Hippolytushoef. Greetje, 11 at the time, was thrilled to get her own room as she had always shared a divided bedroom with her sisters and parents.

After finishing grade 6, Greetje went on to a college prep class at age 13. The college itself was on the same property, but between it and the prep school stood the neighbourhood public shower.

Jan Kat had moved his family to Hippolytushoef as well, into a house across the street from the prep school, shower, and college, and he and Neeltje had another daughter, Vina. One day young Rits — now 15, having completed trade school, apprenticing with a carpenter, and taking evening classes with a notion of becoming an architect — saw Greetje from his living room window and was smitten.

Rits' father Jan died in 1960 when Rits was 16. Rits started dating Greetje the following year, and two years later they got engaged. They registered with the municipality to get on the waiting list for a rental home, and Rits started traveling out of town to find better jobs to pay for their wedding. Greetje, meanwhile, dropped out of school as soon as she and Rits started dating and began working various jobs, including washing dishes for a hotel restaurant, twelve hours per day, six days per week.

Rits and Greetje got a home on Slingerweg, the same street Greetje's parents Jan and Reinoutje lived on, and they married on November 18, 1966. The house had gas for heating so Rits converted the former coal bin into a shower (modification of rental homes was permitted). The young couple were very happy and intended to have children right away.

In August, 1967, with the house doctor making rounds on his bicycle to three births in progress, I was born in this house on Slingerweg and named Jan after both of my grandfathers.