By Olivia Snyder
The Haldimand Press
CALEDONIA—McClung Road on the east side of Caledonia has been a point of animated discussion for the past several years, but its story runs much deeper than any recent housing development. Lifetime Caledonia resident and World War II veteran Hugh Patterson remembers “horse and buggy days” when the road was dotted with farms and rolling fields as his father worked the land with Clydesdale horses.
Today, residents can travel past the Haldimand Road 66 intersection for a glimpse of what McClung was like back then. Along the northern half of the road, the old farmhouses still stand, including first-generation Canadians Tony and Jennie DeWeerd’s home.
While Patterson and the DeWeerds have never met, these former neighbours’ lives have been connected for 80 years. Going back to the first years of World War II when Patterson, whose family had lived in Caledonia since they emigrated from Scotland in the 1840s, left the farm to join the war effort.
From 1939 to 1942, Patterson worked at the munitions factory in Welland and the aircraft factory in Brantford while training as a signalman in the militia. In 1942, 20-year-old Patterson joined the Canadian Armed Forces as a Signalman in the Second Canadian Infantry Division. After 12 weeks of basic training in Orillia that summer, Patterson transferred to the Canadian Signals Training Centre in Kingston. From Kingston, Patterson travelled by ship to southern England.
Meanwhile, Tony DeWeerd and his future wife Jennie, then young children, were living in the Nazi-occupied provinces of Drenthe and Friesland in the Netherlands. Tony remembers “lying in bed hearing the hum of the (British) bombers flying over to Germany.” Jennie’s family lived near the train station in Wolvega, where they sheltered Jewish people who were in danger of being sent to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.
“They just did what they had to do I guess,” says Jennie of her parents. “They lived right across from the train station and that was where the Germans were, coming and going.”
Jennie’s childhood home was built in the traditional Dutch country style, with living space in the front half and a barn for hay and livestock in the back. The hayloft provided a quick hiding place in case Nazi soldiers surprised the family and their refugee guests.
While the DeWeerds and their families waited and worked, fighting their secret war of resistance, Patterson and the Second Canadian Infantry Division trained in Britain and then began fighting in France. Patterson participated in Operation Overlord, which began when Allied forces invaded Normandy on D-Day: June 6, 1944. As a signalman, Patterson followed the first soldiers a few days after D-Day to facilitate communication among different military divisions.
After Operation Overlord, Patterson spent much of June and July running messages in motorcycles and Jeeps for the Battle of Caen. The Allies had intended to take the French city on June 6, but found it heavily defended. The Second Canadian Infantry Division, as a part of the Second Canadian Corps, took the suburbs of Caen on June 20 and the Allies completed the mission July 8.
Patterson remained in Normandy through the summer of 1944, fought in the Battle of the Falaise Gap in August, and crossed the border into Belgium in September. Through the fall of 1944, Patterson fought in the Battle of the Scheldt in northern Belgium and southwestern Holland. In November, he began boarding with a Dutch couple in the outskirts of Nijmegen, a city in the southern province of Gelderland. The signal headquarters were located in the town, so Patterson spent his days working in Nijmegen and came ‘home’ to his hosts to sleep.
While Patterson spent Christmas with his Dutch hosts, Jennie DeWeerd celebrated her second birthday. She had been born in the wee hours of the morning on Christmas Day of 1942, and remembers her father telling how he “registered (her birth) on December 24 so he could get the ration cards for that week.” The war winters were especially difficult as food was scarce, even on the farms. Many Dutch families, especially in the southern provinces, had little more than tulip bulbs to eat. Jennie’s father used the extra ration cards from his first daughter’s birth to buy food for the Jewish people he was sheltering.
In spring of 1945, Tony DeWeerd, who was around six years old, lived on a farm with a forest behind it. Similar to his future wife’s family, food was basic and limited to staples. Tony remembers, “The Canadian soldiers were camped at the back of our farm.… I remember taking them a dozen eggs and they gave me chocolate and white bread, and of course that was the first time I’d ever had white bread.” These soldiers may well have been friends of Patterson, who spent some time in Drenthe that spring before advancing into Germany for the last weeks of the war.
After six long years of fighting, Patterson had done what few 23-year-olds today could imagine. Patterson, and other Haldimand soldiers, saved the lives of Dutch children like Tony and Jennie DeWeerd and unknowingly built into the culture of his hometown.
As of the 2021 census, 8% of Caledonia’s population was of Dutch heritage. Comparitively, in 1931, before WWII, only 2% of the population was Dutch.
Hugh Patterson’s story shows how intricately connected Haldimand’s diverse population of immigrant groups is. While the county’s many different cultures have arrived at different times and for different reasons, their stories intersect in beautiful everyday and historic ways.
One such intersection occurred in the late 1940s, when Patterson’s and the DeWeerds’ lives came together again. In December of 1945, Patterson returned home on the RMS Empress of Scotland. A few years later, the DeWeerds also came by ship to Canada, Jennie’s family in 1947 and Tony’s in 1948.
As the world settled down, so did Patterson. He married, lived in town for a few years, then moved back to McClung Road to raise his nine children just across the road from his childhood farm. Tony and Jennie grew up in their new country, met as young adults, married, and also moved to a farm on McClung Road to raise their family.
Scottish roots and Dutch heritage, Clydesdales and chocolate bars, Haldimand County and the Netherlands – McClung Road holds a deep and long story full of courage, sacrifice, and love. The farms, the flags, and the families on the roads of Caledonia are vibrant reminders of Haldimand’s local and global history.
