{"id":14779,"date":"2016-05-12T07:31:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T11:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=14779"},"modified":"2018-10-01T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T17:19:10","slug":"john-verbeek-has-lived-a-life-some-people-would-believe-only-happens-in-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/john-verbeek-has-lived-a-life-some-people-would-believe-only-happens-in-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"John Verbeek has lived a life some people would believe only happens in movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, I will be profiling an extraordinary human being who lives in our community. If you know someone who is doing something interesting with their life, I want to hear about it. Send me an email at <\/strong><\/em>laura.maclean@doppleronline.ca<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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John Verbeek is an amazing storyteller. And not made up, fictitious stories either. I\u2019m talking sit-on-the-edge-of-your seat in anticipation of the next thing that comes out of his mouth. His accounts are real. Many of them being tragic. But they are proof that war is absolute hell. And the crazy thing is, John actually lived through it.<\/p>\n

He lived in a small town in Holland called De Bilt. As a young boy, he played hide and seek and collected matchboxes and stamps. He was just 12 years old when WWII began. John witnessed things that you would believe only happened in the movies. He saw dead bodies on the side of the road, people dying of starvation and he lived about 12 kilometres down the road from a concentration camp. More than once, he and his sister walked more than 300 kilometres with a cart to get food. The trek for food essentials took several days and often resulted in asking a farmer to spend the night in his hayloft.<\/p>\n

\"Living

Living through WWII and the Cold War had a big impact on John Verbeek. You don’t have to forget, says John, but always find it in your heart to forgive.<\/p><\/div>\n

John was about 15 at the time German troops were storming the streets with machine guns. A government regulation required all men between the ages of 16 and 65 to be shipped to Germany to work in factories doing hard labour without pay. He spent a few years hiding out at his aunt\u2019s farm and bypassed being forced to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a scary time,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce, when I was 15, they stopped me on the street, and I was surrounded by German officers with guns that were poking me in the back. They were asking me all sorts of questions, which I couldn\u2019t understand anyway. My knees knocking against each other from fright.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he was 23, he was ready to leave his country. He had already met his future wife and they were engaged. The war created a lasting impression in his mind, and not a very good one. He wanted to build a new life. He knew nothing about Canada except that it was considered the land of opportunity and that the Canadian army were true heroes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were troops who treated us like people instead of cattle,\u201d John says, adding that the Canadian army liberated Holland from the Nazis and to this day he maintains high regard.<\/p>\n

With a suitcase in one hand and a toolbox in the other, he spent nine days travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. John couldn\u2019t speak a word of English that fateful day he arrived on Canadian soil. He started with comic books. Simple words and a stories were easy enough to catch onto, although the slang might not have been too beneficial. He read children\u2019s books and the dictionary was his go-to for words he didn\u2019t understand. He put a red dot beside a particular word as a reference point for ones that he had already looked up and then chastised himself when he looked it up a second or third time.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you hear people say, I\u2019ve been away so long I can\u2019t speak my language. I think they make that up. My wife and I made it mandatory to speak English at home. We knew it was very important to speak the language of the country we lived in. We\u2019d be nothing. Learning a language comes in plateaus. At first you start to learn simple words and then you start learning things about your work. You start to insert other words. For a while it seemed you didn\u2019t learn anything. It all went in spurts and spats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One thing that John did bring to Canada with him was a background in construction. He had attended night school in Holland for eight years, taking courses in subjects like mathematics and architectural drafting. When he lived in Bowmanville, he worked his way up going from a labourer to a project manager. He built numerous high schools, large-scale buildings and even the courthouse in Whitby.<\/p>\n\n\t\t