Interview with Virginia Woodard

August 2014

Tell me about your family and how your family ended up in Canada?

My parents were first-generation Canadians, but my grandparents were born in Ukraine. In 1870 when things got bad in Ukraine many of the Mennonites came to Canada and the US. My paternal grandparents were already married and had one child and one child on the way when they were on the ship. My grandfather was a teacher, but when they came to Manitoba there were no schools so he couldn't teach. Instead he had to farm.

What was your childhood like? 

I felt very secure and protected. My mother was always very busy, cooking, canning, making clothes and knitting. We went to Sunday school every Sunday. When I was 12 years old I won a Bible for going to 12 years of Sunday school. I only missed one or two days because of snow days. On snowy days my brother took me on a sled to Sunday school. It wasn't far.

I spent a lot of time with my cousins. I had cousins who were close in age with me so we spent a lot of time together. In Canada almost as soon as you learn to walk you learn to skate so we'd go to the outdoor ice skating rink in the evenings. We would also go tobogganing, sledding, and snowshoeing.  There was no skiing, but we made up some snow games.  We’d also go picnicking at the rivers and we'd have an inner tube to go down the river. The water was always very cold but we were used to it. There was no swimming pool in town at that time. Steinbach had about 3500 people then. It was very small. It had the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 

Was your school all Mennonite?  

They didn't teach religion. It was the provincial curriculum so it was whatever they used in Manitoba. The teachers were mostly Mennonite, but later more teachers came in who were not Mennonites. In the elementary school there were one or two classes for each grade. In high school the rural kids who were not Mennonites came because they didn't have a high school where they lived. Those kids had gone to one-room rural schools. Some of them rented a room in Steinbach to study in high school there.

Did you grow your own food?

The Mennonites had big farms and they were very agrarian. They were very productive. They had big dairy and wheat farms, not just little family farms. My family lived on the edge of town. We had some chickens and pigs and cows. My mother always had a huge garden. That was her favorite thing to do. She grew everything -- fruits and vegetables. We had neighbors so we grew certain fruits and they grew certain fruits, then we shared whatever was left over. That was the agreement.  The neighbors grew goose berries, they were very sour and looked almost like grapes. 

We lived in a big house. There were a lot of children. My father was a well driller, water wells.  

When they first moved to their property, they were married and there was some kind of a building there so they built an apartment on the top of that building and they lived there while they were building their house. They were just starting out but they must have expected a lot of children. 

They built a big kitchen, a big living room, a big dining room and something they called the library but it wasn't really a library. There were 4 bedrooms upstairs. They did end up having a lot of children -- four boys and four girls. I was the youngest. My older sister was 20 and a-half years older than me. She was almost like a mother to me. 

Did you have your own room growing up? 

No I didn't. When the other kids started leaving my mother wanted a smaller house, so they sold part of the land to another family and they built a smaller house for my mother. It was very small.  It had four very small bedrooms and I did have my own small bedroom. My mom just didn't want a big house anymore. I hated that so much that we didn't stay in the big house. Now I can understand why she didn't want that big house. It's was a lot of work to take care of it. She still had a small garden. In the big house, I didn't have my own bedroom. I kind of got shifted around. The boys had one bedroom the girls had another one. Maybe whoever was the oldest got the extra bedroom. I was shifted around from the girls' bedroom to the library. 

Did you have electricity?

As far back as I can remember we had electricity. Because my father was a well driller we had indoor plumbing and water.  It was up to date. We had lot of pine trees on the yard.  

Did you have pets?

No my mother did not like pets at all. We had a barn and we had a cow, so somebody milked that cow, but by the time I was old enough we didn't have it anymore. We also had chickens so had fresh eggs. We also had pigs and every year they slaughtered a pig for food.  

What were your chores?

I don't remember, bothering everybody (ha ha).

I played the piano. I taught myself how to play the piano and then I took lessons. We got the piano because somebody owed my dad money for a well, which was great for me.  The piano was in the library.

My mother didn't have much education. When I was a baby there was a three-year Bible School in Steinbach, so she went to that Bible School and graduated. My mother taught a high school girls Sunday school class, and sometimes invited the class to our house for an evening of fun and snacks.  She was criticized a lot for attending the Bible School, but my dad was very supportive of her. That was good.

At that time you could quit school at eighth grade and some did. You could also, instead of taking academic classes, go to trade school to learn a trade. That was useful. 

What language did you speak?

We spoke German at home. It was a dialect, low German. I spoke German to my grandparents and to the older family members who didn't speak English. I spoke English with my brothers and sisters and cousins.

At church they spoke high German. We learned German songs in church and the preacher spoke German.  Schools were all in English. We had good teachers and they were well trained. They had what they called “normal schools” then, where teacher went for 3 years. Then you could be a teacher and you didn't have to get a BA first.  After high school you could study two or three years and then be a teacher. Some of my cousins, after 11th grade, went to a summer “normal school” and then taught in rural schools for one year. That was hard because you'd have lots of grades combined. One of my cousins met her husband in normal school, who went on to get a PhD in Russian history. Most of the elementary school teachers were women and most of the high school teachers were men, except for an English teacher I had. She also taught Home Ec.

Was education important in your family?

Education was important in my family, but going on to college wasn't promoted that much.  

I quit high school at 11th grade because 12th grade was not a very big class. You would go to 12th grade mainly if you were going on to a 4 year college. Our 11th grade was equivalent to 12th grade in the US.   When I went to college in the U.S. my 11th grade qualified me. We had school 10 months of the year.  We were off in June and July. 

Did your brothers and sisters go to college? 

No, I was the only one. My brothers and sisters didn't finish high school. Maybe a couple of my sister's finished 10th grade.  They could do that, it was okay. I don't think my father studied either. I don't know how much education he had.

I wanted to be a secretary so I took typing in high school and in those days I needed to learn shorthand too, even though I hardly ever used it. I took a correspondence course in shorthand. In those days they didn't have electric typewriters, just manual typewriters.

What kind of food did you eat?

 Germans eat pretty heavy food. My dad liked sausage and fried potatoes. My mother was vegetarian so we had lots of vegetables and fruit.  Germans generally like dessert a lot so we always had dessert and cookies. My mother ruled the kitchen and didn't let me help.

 Did she teach her daughters how to cook? 

No she didn't teach her daughters how to cook.  I remember when she was away I would go to the kitchen and make fudge.  I don't know why, that's hard to make. I had one cousin and her family had a maid who cooked everything. I envied her because they lived next to a grocery store and she could go buy cookies and candy and charge it.  I spent a lot of time at their house. 

Another cousin came from a very strict family and the girls were required to do a lot. A lot depends on the family, but my mom liked to do her own thing, even washing the dishes and setting the table.  

Why was your mother a vegetarian? 

I always wondered that. One of my sisters said she just didn't like meat. She cooked meat for the rest of the family, but most of the family was gone when I was growing up so we had a lot of vegetables, which was fine with me. She made a lot of good soup.  

Did she go to the market?

 I guess she did. I had nothing to do with that. My dad had a major stroke when I was 11, so he couldn't drive anymore. She didn't drive, so she must have walked or maybe my brothers helped her.  

I remember in late summer and the fall everyone was busy with canning. They would buy peaches and apricots and can them. It had to be done right away.  I remember helping with canning. All the Mennonite ladies canned in the fall. It was a big thing. I also remember helping to dig up the potatoes in the garden. The garden was also my mother's domain but I did help with that a little.

Of course when my dad went fishing he would bring fresh fish.  We also went blueberry picking -- that was the best. My dad was a hunter, so during hunting season he would bring home fresh deer. We would eat venison all winter long. Even though we didn't have a freezer, they would kind of make a freezer in the snow. I remember eating antelope for Christmas dinner.  

Christmas Eve was a big thing.  There was a Sunday school program. Each class performed and every student got a little bag of goodies, nuts, candies and fruit. We opened our gifts on Christmas Eve when we got home. On Christmas day we just hung out and had dinner. We would go to the cousins' house and they came to our house. We had Christmas goodies and cookies and fruit cake. It was very festive, but we never had a Christmas tree. We would decorate the house and put a wreath on the pine tree outside.

Were there a lot of stores in the town?

Yes, there was a grocery store, a hardware store, general stores. I walked everywhere. I walked to school. Steinbach was mainly a Mennonite town and playing pool was a no-no, but there was a pool hall. Drinking was not allowed either but there was a bar. It was near the hotel. Only men went to play pool and drink, but I don’t know if Mennonites went. Eventually one of my cousins became the bartender, haha, so much for Mennonites.  Business people also came to Steinbach.  I remembered my niece's boyfriend saying he went to the movies, but I wanted to be a good girl and not do those things.  One time when I went to a summer camp, we got rained out so we all got transported to Winnipeg, and some of us went to a movie while waiting for a ride home to our respective towns. I thought it wasn't such a big deal to go to a movie. It was a pretty good movie. 

What movie was it? 

The Fuller Brush Man with Red Skelton.  It was very funny -- it was a comedy.  This was the early fifties or maybe late forties.

What kinds of gifts did you get for Christmas?

 Toys, mostly snow gifts like toboggans, skates, maybe clothing to wear for doing snow sports, mittens, hats.  Most of my friends were my cousins, but I had other friends too.

My mother's mother died when I was about 19. I spoke German with her. My cousins and I would visit her on the way to school and she'd give us cookies. The day after Christmas, on Boxing Day, she would always have a big family party.  She had a cute little house, but she would rent a place for Boxing Day and her daughters and daughter in laws would bring the food.  It was an all afternoon affair. We would eat and the cousins would play. She liked to crochet and she would make something for everybody. Even as a little kid I would get a little doily -- it was cute.  Even though she was of the older generation she would do little things like wear jewelry under her dress. Ha ha, jewelry was a no-no! Women were not to wear much makeup. 

Did you read the Bible together at home?   

No, it was an individual thing. I did learn to read the Bible in German and the Bible is not easy to read. I don't know who else did this, but in my family before eating a meal we would all close our eyes and said grace quietly.  In other houses the father read the Bible and prayed out loud.  

Did you play hockey?   

The boys did and sometimes the girls played when boys weren't around.  When the boys played hockey the girls showed up to watch them and it was really cold. It was all outdoors. Then we'd go inside and there was a big stove to warm up. Then we'd go outside again. We’d walk home after that. Most of us wore our pajamas under our ski pants and ski jacket to keep warm. Then when we went home we would just take off our outer clothes and go to bed. 

My mother made my clothes and knit and crocheted for me.  I took piano lessons in grade school and up to 9th grade. After school I had to do my homework and practice the piano.

Did your mom want you to learn the piano?

Yes she did. I wanted to learn too.  I took piano lessons from a piano teacher from Winnipeg who came to Steinbach several days a week to teach students in Steinbach. 

Did you always have enough food to eat?

There was always enough food. We weren't rich but we were comfortable. My dad made a decent amount of money and he gave my mother an allowance for food and whatever she needed. She was a tightwad and always saved part of it. If I wanted money I'd ask my dad and he'd quiz me for a long time and ask me why I wanted it. Eventually he’d give me the money.

Even though Mennonites are strict and you might think they're very serious, they're not. They are cheerful and happy and spend time with their children. We had a good life. My dad and my brothers liked cars. I have a picture of my parents with an old convertible car.  Cars were okay. What's interesting is some things were not accepted at first, like TV sets, telephones and computers.   When cars first came to Steinbach, it was a problem in the church, but one member became a car dealer and then everybody went and bought cars.

Mennonites are peace-lovers. They don't go to war because they’re pacifists, but hunting was considered OK.  I guess one summer when my father was young he and his cousin went on a trip and used guns illegally.  I'm not sure what they did, but when they came back they had to go to confession at church.  

Did you travel?

No, we didn't travel long distances. We went to the lakes and rivers around the area, went fishing and visited relatives who lived in other towns and farms nearby.  We went to Winnipeg a lot. We did much of our shopping in Winnipeg.  We'd go camping at a lake outside of Winnipeg. One cousin traveled a lot. They went to the Hoover Dam and British Columbia. They had lots of money and they liked to travel.

Did you get news from the rest of the world or was it pretty isolated? 

We listened to the radio for news.  I listened to top 40 music when I was a teenager.

World War II was happening when I was 9 or 10 years old. The Canadians joined the British military. I was 10 when my brother, John, went to the war. That was 1943. We didn't have newspapers in our home. I wrote letters to him a lot. Some people in the family listened to the radio to find out what was going on, but I was too young to comprehend it. There was rationing of gas, coffee and sugar. That's when I started drinking coffee. I guess since it was rationed I figured it was good.  The sugar rationing was a big deal for Mennonites who are big on making desserts. Coffee was also a big thing.  My mother preferred tea to coffee. 

My oldest sister Erna married when I was 2 years old and she was 20. Then her daughter Kathy was born when I was four and a half.

I remember my sister Anna got married the day before my seventh birthday, so I didn't expect anything. But the next day they had a surprise birthday party for me. It rained so we pretty much took off all our clothes except our panties. There were boys and girls and we ran around in the rain and we ate leftover cake from the wedding. It was fun.

Games 

We played board games like Monopoly and checkers, Chinese checkers. Cards were a no-no.   My dad had cards, but he had them hidden. When my mother went away and my father stayed home with me, when nobody else was around, he would take out his cards and teach me how to play Solitaire. My dad had a little rebellious streak. My mom probably knew about this, but she was the more religious one.

Did your dad go to church?  

At certain points yes and at certain points no. He was all for it though. He probably stopped going when he had a stroke. He lived for nine years after the stroke. That was during my teenage years so that was tough. He died when I was 20. He couldn't work for those 9 years and that was during the war. One of my brothers was a conscientious objector.  My brother, Walter, joined the army and he was injured so was discharged and on a pension. My brothers weren’t really around to help my dad. I imagine my dad had an associate who continued the well drilling business and later my brothers picked that up and kept the business going. My brother, John, made it into a bigger business later.

Friesen Drillers

Friesen Drillers is in its fourth generation now.  John Jr. was the president till his death from a motorcycle accident in July 2014.  His brother James also works for the company.  John Jr.'s sons and daughters and daughter in law also work for the company. This works out because they are not hot-headed or temperamental. They are easy-going.

Ten years ago David went to visit the Friesen drillers and my sister Erna in Steinbach and had a picture taken with the two brothers, James and John, and also with my sister Erna. My brother John's son-in-law also went into the drilling business and when John got older, he had some health problems and he made his sons and son-n-law partners and figured that would make them work harder. When he couldn't work anymore the changeover was easy.

Now Steinbach is a lot bigger, maybe 14 or 15 thousand people.

Do people still have a lot of children?

I don't think so.

Is German still spoken?

I doubt it.  We got married in my church and they were speaking English then. Maybe in some families they still speak German. Some parents probably don't teach their children German anymore.

Do you think the language should be kept up?  

It is our heritage and it is always good to know two languages. When I was in Germany it was nice to know some German. When I was taking a Spanish class, the German would come back. It was like a foreign language department in my brain.

Did your parents think it was important to teach their children German?

Well, it's not so much that they thought it was important. It's just what they did. That was their language.  

Did you ever want to teach your kids German? 

I wanted to. I thought it would be good for them to learn it, but if you don't keep it up it’s hard. I taught them phrases. I still know a lot of German but I've forgotten a lot. 

When I would go home to visit, I hadn't spoken German in so long and people would speak to me in German and I had to think about it. My brother John would say something in low German and, because it's not a written language, it's harder to understand and remember.  Finally I would get it.  He was testing me. I'm a very visual person so low German is hard because it's not written. I was thinking of taking German classes in adult ed in Santa Barbara, but they were in the evening.  

When you moved to the US did you go to a Mennonite Church in the United States?

No. Grace Bible College was run by Mennonites and they had a church on Sunday morning but I went to another church to get off campus. The church at Grace wasn't in German.  

Did you ever want to go back to Canada?  

After one semester at Grace I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back to school. I didn't particularly like going to school and studying. I don't know why I went to school. So I went back to Steinbach and got a job in Winnipeg. Toward the end of summer I decided to go back to Grace. The second summer I stayed and got a job in Omaha and I went home for one month to sleep.

I finished Grace in the middle of the year because I started in the middle of the year. After that I stayed in Omaha to work till graduation in May. It was during that working semester that I met dad.  

And then you never thought about going back to Canada?  

No, and if I did I wouldn't go to Manitoba. It's too cold. I like British Columbia. The US is my home now. After 9/11, I told Dad that if it gets too bad here we can just go to Canada, live in a cottage or something if it gets too dangerous here.

The organ

At Grace, once I started taking organ lessons that was it. I was enthralled. It was a lot of work, so much to learn, but it was a good challenge. Then I could play in a church and make a little money.   It was good to have an outside interest. But later I lost touch with the organ and I didn't play it anymore.  I used to mentally criticize people who, when they got old, didn't play the piano or the organ anymore and now here I am. 

But now you are playing the piano again, no?  

Well, I'm starting to, but I'm not doing enough. I need to get used to the piano they have here. It has a harder touch than my Spinet, but the more I do it the better I get. 

I went to Grace for 3 years and got an Associate of Arts degree in music. Now it's Grace University but then it was Grace Bible Institute. There were certain classes we all had to take and others based on your major. I took music theory and music history.

Did your brothers and sisters or parents play music too?  

No I'm the only one. I learned to play hymns on the piano.  My mother sometimes pounded hymns on the piano. She did that when she was trying to wake me up. That did it.

Did you have a fireplace?

 No, we never had a fireplace. We had a furnace in the basement and I guess it used wood. It was a big basement where they kept all the canned goods. They preserved carrots and potatoes in a certain way in a big barrel of sawdust. We had indoor plumbing and hot water too.

Were there ever blizzards or tornadoes?    

Blizzards yes, but not tornadoes. When I was about 18 there was a big flood in the Red River that flows through Winnipeg. All Winnipeg was flooded and lots of people had to evacuate. After the flood they had a big sale and I bought shoes and other items.  Since then they've built a dyke all around Winnipeg to avoid the flooding problem.

When you were younger did you think, “Oh I'm going to go to college, marry a guy and move to California?” Or what was your plan?

Well, my plan was to be a secretary, which I was after high school, and then I hoped to marry and have kids. I didn't know how many and I didn't think I'd be moving to another country until I made a trip to Nebraska and saw that there's another part to the world. When I went to school, geography was always a favorite of mine, but I didn't think of moving to another place, no.

When was the first time you went somewhere outside of the US or Canada? 

Mexico was first. When Emily was born we went to Mexico. Then after we retired we went with a tour group to Europe. Florence was my favorite place in Europe. Then when Katrina lived in Florence we went back to visit her and Rob.

Did most of your family stay in the Steinbach area?

Yes. Some of my nieces moved to other provinces and some live in the United States. One niece moved to Oklahoma. Most of them are in Canada.  

Was it considered ok with your family for you to marry a non Mennonite?

It was okay, but people just didn't do it. I was the first one to marry an outsider. 

Question to dad: Did people in Steinbach give you mean looks because you weren't Mennonite?  

A little bit yeah, especially the old preacher there. (Haha).

The preacher of our church didn't do the wedding ceremony, my uncle did. But the preacher wanted us to come and visit him. He asked dad what he did and he said he worked in television and he said hmmm. So we could have been in trouble if he didn't approve, but it was okay.

(Dad): It makes me think of a monk who said, “the Bible says television (tell a vision) to no man.” Haha.  That was another time though.

Some of my nieces married Frenchmen. Before that, Mennonites and the French would never marry.   One of my cousin’s daughters would rebel and she would hang out with French guys in Steinbach and smoke cigarettes. Her father was a prominent school teacher in Steinbach.    

Did parents punish their kids if they did something wrong?

Sometimes for punishment you had to work, like mow the lawn, or sometimes we'd get a spanking.  Both my Mom and Dad would spank.

In school did they hit you?  

No, never. Sometimes someone had to sit in the corner for a while.  High schoolers might get a short suspension.

Did you have to sing the national anthem?

Yes, Oh Canada. Every morning. We also sang “God save our gracious King,” since we were part of England, to the tune of Our Country Tis of Thee. Our seventh grade teacher was also a minister so we would also sing a hymn in the morning. His favorite hymn was Onward Christian Soldiers.   But he would always sing "Oneword Christian Soldiers" instead. 

In 8th grade, the teacher had a spelling drill and I always won right off the bat.  So I had to sit out after that out to give my classmates a chance.  The teacher did tell me once that I daydreamed and I looked out the window, so I guess it was more interesting to look out the window. 

Did you always get good grades in school? Were there any subjects you particularly liked? 

I was an average student, but literature and spelling were the top grades, math was okay. In grade school everything was pretty much okay. In high school I wasn't good at geometry. I got a D and I had to retake the test in summer. It's interesting that I was fine in algebra. You would think algebra would be harder than geometry. Sometimes it's the teacher.

Were you allowed to wear pants when you were little?

Oh no, we always wore skirts to school. In Canada they wore, what do you call it now, tunics. It's like a jumper with three big pleats and it was pretty common in England. You wore a white long-sleeve shirt, button down, and a black necktie. We didn't wear that all the time. I think on Fridays we had to wear that. There was a school choir so when there was a function or a photo we wore that uniform. The boys wore black pants and white shirts when the girls wore their tunics.  

Did you wear tights to keep warm?

In the winter, yes, we wore tights and stockings and we wore a skirt and sweater over it.

Did you wear pants outside of school?

Yes, in the summer or for ice skating. My mother made most of our clothes. I had one dress or skirt and sweater for each day of the week and wore the same five outfits every week.

Sports

In Canada, rugby was the big thing, as well as hockey and baseball. We had time to play sports at school and we were wearing our medium length skirts and played baseball in our skirts.  Every spring we had an all-school all-day picnic. We all marched from the school to the picnic area, which was about two miles. People lined up to watch our parade.  We had lunch, which the parents brought, and played games and baseball.  

Did you play rugby?  

No, only the boys played.  

When it was too cold to go outside for lunch at school, we brought our own lunch and ate in the auditorium.  They set up ping pong tables and I’d sometimes play the piano. It was kind of chaotic in the auditorium. It wasn't that big. 

Do you remember some songs in German?  

I do, yes. I also still remember a German prayer I always said before meals. After going to Grace, when I went home I still said the German prayer and my family said, “Is that all you learned at Grace, a little German prayer?” Haha. 

Did many Mennonites come to Canada from the Ukraine?

A whole bunch of Mennonites came to Canada at the time when my grandparents came and throughout the years. A hundred years earlier, they had gone from Germany to the Ukraine. They wanted a peace-loving country where they didn't have to fight. Germany was a very militaristic country. The Mennonites would always donate and do things in other ways to help so they wouldn't have to fight but eventually that got harder and harder.  

Catherine the Great, also German, invited the Mennonites to the Ukraine and at the time they had to have exit visas from Germany. It took time for a lot of them to leave. They were farmers and they hired a lot of people and they were good workers. It worked out in the Ukraine for about a hundred years, but then in the 1870s things got bad. Many Mennonites left and went to Canada and the United States, especially the Midwest and Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They got a lot of free land.

They had built a good life for themselves in the Ukraine, so it was very hard to leave. When they got to their new land, there wasn't much there. It was a hard time. My sister’s second husband and his family stayed in the Ukraine and they didn't get out of there until 1918. They just came with the clothes on their backs. Some stayed even longer. 

Before the Bolsheviks were in power they lived peacefully among themselves, but then they became part of Russia and had to learn Russian.  Even though they had to learn Russian they still thought of themselves as Germans.  When the Nazis had to retreat from Russia to go back to Germany, some of the Mennonites followed them even though they were not Nazis. They identified with the German and sang the German songs. 

Did you learn about this history from your parents?

No, not from my parents, but from reading. I've read various books. When I was in Canada 10 years ago, I stayed with my cousin and her husband. They had a lot of Mennonite books. He had a PhD in Russian history and was very interested in the Russian/Ukraine history. They gave me a book to read written by a woman whose last name was Friesen, and it was about how her family had gone from Ukraine, Russia, and followed the German Nazi soldiers back to Germany. I don’t know what they knew about Nazism, but they were German and they wanted to get out of there.  When they got to Berlin it was chaotic. 

Nobody wants to go to the Ukraine now, but there used to be a tour of places where the Mennonites used to live and their big houses. They were doing really well.  When one culture does really well others resent them a little bit.

Many of the people were farmers, but also many people who came to Manitoba were business people. They built up the town of Steinbach. People from surrounding areas would go to Steinbach to shop. They could buy farm equipment, seed and food, everything they needed.