Dutch migration - 6 (English subtitles)

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The Vergouwens in Canada lost contact with the Netherlands sometime after the war. At first, Piet still wrote to his sister in Rucphen, but increasingly often those letters also contained the phrase: "Don't count on us anymore, the traveling is hard on us." Those letters can be found in the largest archive of emigrant letters from the Netherlands, at Calvin University in Grand Rapids. Funnily enough, Pete Vergouwen's letters from Canada are also kept there. Those letters were once sent there by a great-aunt of Rien Jongenelen, whom we spoke to with his wife Ariane in Rucphen at the old farmhouse where Piet grew up.

Contact between the families in the 'new' and the 'old' country was restored in the 1990s, when one of the grandsons had to be in the Netherlands for work and started making phone calls in Rucphen looking for family. Since then, there has been more intensive contact between the families in Canada and the Netherlands.