To start this story, I should give some background or a timeline of the Julius Lutz family coming to Canada.
In 1912 Julius Lutz and his two brothers, Ludwig and Fred, came to Canada, leaving their families behind in what is now Ukraine or Poland (then it was Russia). They came to find opportunity and work, to earn money to send for their families to join them later.
Julius worked on a farm at Theodore, Saskatchewan, Dad told me. By 1914 he had saved enough money to send for his wife Ernstina (Tina), daughter Otillia (Tillie), born in 1903, son Reinhold, born in 1905, and daughter Olga, born in 1910. However, in 1914 WWI had started, the money for the fare was lost and the family back in Russia had been displaced and were eventually sent to Siberia together with the other families from their predominantly German village.
I believe that displacement was very similar to what the Canadian government did to the Japanese-Canadians in 1942.
After World War I was over, in 1918, the displaced families were sent back, not to their now-inhabited homes and villages, but to Germany. Dad did not speak much about their experiences, the trip and their life in Siberia, but the few stories he told might be material for another story.
Through the Red Cross, contact with Julius was established, more money for the fare was sent and the family was reunited in Edmonton in 1922, ten years after Julius had come to Canada.
So my dad, Reinhold, was 17 years old when he came to Canada. He would have been seven when he had last seen his father.
Dad said that when travelling across Canada by train, they kept seeing the same letters or words in a sign, over and over. What did the sign say, what did it mean, how was it pronounced, they wondered. The sign was COCA-COLA.
Dad’s first job in Edmonton, which had become Julius’ home, was working in a packing plant or slaughterhouse, plucking chickens. His wage was a penny per chicken. But like everything else, Dad used to say later, if you do the same thing over and over, you get faster and faster doing it. Dad said he got as high as 60 chickens per hour. That’s 60 cents an hour or one minute per chicken.
Many years later, as a boy I remember seeing Dad pluck freshly scalded chickens. He rubbed the feathers from the hanging chicken’s body with both hands, wet feathers scattering around him. But Dad’s finished job wasn’t perfect. Mother or my two older sisters did the final touching up.
I don’t know if Dad’s older sister Tillie had a job in Edmonton or what work Julius had. Olga was born in 1910. She would have been 12 when they came, too young to work.
The family’s desire and aim was to have their own farm. Dad said there were a lot of German immigrants living at Millet and Leduc, including, I believe, a cousin of Julius’. However land in those areas seemed too expensive and out-of-reach for them. Julius had also made friends with some German-speaking families who were settling around Bruce. The land at Bruce, though less fertile, cost considerably less than at Millet or Leduc. I believe it was a Minchau from Bruce who encouraged Julius to come with his family to Bruce and begin farming there.
So in the spring of 1924 they rented a half-section of land, with buildings, two miles west of Bruce, the N1/2 of 26-48-15 W4. I believe the owner’s name was Sagert, also a German name. That farmyard is now gone.
By the fall, they had harvested a crop, they were milking four or five cows, and they had some pigs, chickens and four draft horses. They had planted a garden; the house had a cellar for storing vegetables and their summer jars of canning.
They made friends in their neighbourhood around the small village of Bruce. I’m not sure if the Bruce Lutheran Church had been built by that time, but the United Brethren Church, a German church 15 miles north on the correction line, was and drew German-speaking families from north and west of Bruce as well as from north of Holden and south of Vegreville.
The Julius Lutz family was invited to the Christmas Eve service at that church by one of their neighbours. That church, though the name has changed, is still in use today and still continues with its annual Christmas Eve service.
They decided to attend. This is the story, as Dad told me, of their first Christmas living on the farm near Bruce.
December 24, 1924 was a nice, though fairly cold, winter day. There was already some snow on the ground and sledding was good on the narrow, trail-like roads. There were very few cars around; none would have been used in the winter.
The evening chores were done early, well before dark, with an early supper. The 15-mile trip, with a cutter and team of horses, would take between two and three hours— the former if the horses trotted part of the way. It would be nearly Christmas Day when they would be home again.
They arrived at the church, unhitched and tied up their horses alongside other teams.
The small church had a basement where the heat from a big coal heater rose through large floor registers to the pews above. A row of five or six coal-oil mantle lamps attached to rods hanging down from the ceiling lit the church. As the evening progressed, one by one, the lamps grew dim and an usher would come with a long wooden dowel and hook, take down the dimming lamp, carry it to the rear of the church, pump it up, bring it back, and hang it up, shining brightly once more.
After the service had started, Dad said they could hear the wind begin to blow. Then the wind grew louder and stronger until, he said, the lamps began swaying back and forth. People grew anxious as they listened to the storm outside.
When the service ended, there was a raging blizzard outside. The men hurried to hitch horses to sleighs or cutters; mothers and children huddled with coats on inside the church.
Roy Schmautz, who lived with his family two miles north of the church, came over to Julius and Dad hitching up their cutter. He said it would be impossible and foolhardy to try to go home in the storm.
“You must stay at our place overnight,” he said. They reluctantly agreed.
Visibility was nearly zero, with waves of snow and wind and the temperature dropping. The Lutz team was soon tied with their halter ropes to the back of the Schmautz family cutter. Even in the dark and the snowstorm, their horses could find their way home and got there safely. The women and children rushed for the house; the men and older boys unhitched and stabled the horses.
The storm continued all night, Dad said.
They had Christmas morning breakfast with the Schmautz family and helped with their chores. Before noon, the wind and snow was abating and they had an unexpected and hurried Christmas dinner with their generous hosts. They hitched the horses to the cutter and started for home. The sun began breaking through the clouds and the wind was dying down, but it had become very cold.
Snowdrifts, large and small, were everywhere, many across the road. In some places, Dad said, the road ahead of them was so severely drifted they drove the horses and cutter off the road and went through fields to avoid the deepest drifts. There were few fences beside the surveyed road allowance in 1924, making it relatively easy to do that.
It was a long, slow journey home, tiring for the horses punching and pounding their way through the snowdrifts. It was late afternoon when they arrived home. Dad unhitched the horses while his mother, Tillie and Olga, started the fire in the cook stove of the house. The house was as cold inside as it was outside, a long way below zero Fahrenheit. Dad said a major concern was that the potatoes and vegetables in the cellar, their main winter food supply, would be frozen. They dared not open the cellar door to find out until the house had completely warmed up.
In the barn, the milk cows were bawling, not having been milked or fed or watered for 24 hours. In the pig barn, pigs were squealing. In the chicken house the water was frozen solid.
Soon the cows were fed and watered and milked by hand. The pigs got fed and watered and so did the chickens. The horses were happy to be in their own stalls with plenty of hay.
It took a long time for the house to warm up, even with the wood stove roaring. I don’t know what they had for a late Christmas dinner.
In the morning, they opened the cellar door. The potatoes and vegetables were not frozen.
It was a Christmas they would always remember.