In Memory

Born February 21, 1917 - Died February 14, 2007

Mary died peacefully in Purdy Residence at UBC on Valentine's Day. Thanks go especially to all the staff at Purdy 2 for their kindness and gentle care.

Mary was born in Gnadenheim, Siberia, moved to Canada in 1926, lived in Winnipeg (East Kildonan) from 1927 to 1937, and then settled in Vancouver. She worked as a housekeeper for several of Vancouver's well-established families for 60 years.

Mary was predeceased by all 10 of her siblings, most recently her dear sister Margaret in January 2007; her husband, Cornelius Wiens in 1984; and her most precious daughter, Catherine Anne (Peter Follert) in 1995. She leaves her sons, James and Wayne (Andrea Lebowitz), and many well-loved nieces and nephews.

Having experienced the Mennonite migration and the Great Depression, Mary became the centre of her family, working tirelessly day and night to provide a better life for her children. She took intense delight in her garden, her home, her friends and neighbours, and lately, her dog, Cookie.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, February 23 at 2:00 PM, at First Baptist Church, Burrard and Nelson, Vancouver, BC. In place of flowers, donations to the Catherine Anne Wiens Memorial Scholarship at Argyle Secondary School in North Vancouver, or to a charity of your choice, would be much appreciated.

Published in the Vancouver Sun on 2/17/2007.

Eulogy

by Andrea Lebowitz

On behalf of the family, I would like to thank you for being here to honour the life of Mary Klassen Wiens.

I met Mary in 1969 and one of the first things that I noticed about her was her elegant and precise language. Her spoken English was made musical by the slight cadence of her maternal Germanic language that could still be heard. How Mary came to learn English is part of the odyssey of her life.

Mary, the seventh child of a family that was to grow to eleven, was born in Siberia Russia on Feb 21, 1917 in a Mennonite village by the name of Gnadenheim — home of grace. The Mennonites, a religious group formed in the Low Countries in the 16^th century, were often persecuted for their faith and continued to migrate in the hopes of finding that home of grace where they could practice their faith and cultivate the land. Eventually, then, they accepted the invitation of Catherine the Great of Russia to settle in the region of Ukraine. No fool, Catherine knew that she would get good value from the hard labour of the settlers.

And, prosper they did, so much so that daughter colonies were sent out to Siberia. Here Mary spent the first nine years of her life and she remembered it as a place of fertility and beauty-- especially the roses in her mother’s garden. But all was not known to a little child, for the colony was once more under threat from the new Russian government and many decided to migrate.

Mary’s oldest brother, John, went out to explore another northern country where farmers were wanted to work the prairies. He made a stake in Saskatchewan and urged the rest to follow. The Klassen parents had eleven children to transport — their own ten plus their first grandchild, the daughter of their oldest daughter who had lost her husband in a typhus epidemic.

Liquidating their considerable assets, the Klassens set out by train across the top of the world and hence by boat down to the port of South Hampton, England, where the story of gaining the English language begins. Because of conjunctivitis, the family was placed in quarantine for several months during which time the children were taught English and drilled in the mysteries of the English verb by their elder brother Isaac.

When all were recovered, more boats and more trains followed until the family joined John in Saskatchewan. In many ways, Mary’s history is the history of European settlement in Canada. From their brother’s farm, they went to Winnipeg where their father got a job working on road building. The depression stalked the land and the family had used its wealth to get to Canada, so it was all hands on deck to work to contribute to the family coffers. The girls who were old enough went into service and Mary began her 60-year career working in the homes of various elites. In summer, the girls did agricultural work, picking hops and other crops.

Many years later, a scholar from SFU, Ruth Siemens, was doing research on young Mennonite women in service in Canada and she interviewed Mary. As Ruth noted, not only did Mary remember the pots and pans she scrubbed but she also conveyed her eager interest to learn about her new country and new situation—both downstairs and up. There was always a twinkle in Mary’s eye when faced with a challenge, and whenever she entered a new situation, she arrived as a worker but quickly became a confidant and friend of her employers.

In 1937, ten years after arriving in Canada, the family once again pulled up stakes to follow another son, this time Isaac of the verb drills, who was moving to the Fraser Valley of British Columbia to join his brother John farming near Yarrow in a Mennonite community. This pattern of two migrations was not unique to Mary’s family which was drawn by the fertile land of the valley.

Here, in Vancouver, Mary met Cornelius Wiens, whose family had come from the original settlements in the region of Ukraine. The young couple married on Dec 6, 1941 as the storm clouds of war thickened. Since Cornelius, like his co-religionists, was a pacifist he was assigned to alternative service working on a farm on Iona Island. And so Mary began her wedded life in a cottage on an island by the sea where she gathered driftwood for the fire and raised a big vegetable garden to feed the family. Even before the birth of her own children, Mary became the little mother to a niece and nephews whose parents had met with adversity. Her first child, James, arrived in 1943, followed by Wayne in 1946 and finally Catherine in 1950.

All of her children remembered Mary as cheerful, capable and a superb cook. Perhaps I can stop just to mention her incredible Paska, an Easter bread rich with eggs and butter. While it was baking, the kitchen was wonderful with the scent of vanilla, and when the loaves came out of the oven, they were so high and so light that they had to be supported lest they fall before they firmed into shape.

But not all was well in the household. Cornelius suffered from mental and physical illness and Mary often took on the whole load of the family. Wayne remembers that she never sat. She would rush in from working outside the home, to cook and clean in her own home.

And a more particular housewife you won’t find. Her home was spotless and her trim little person was always elegant. Her dream, which she realized, was to educate her children so that they would not have to toil as she had.

In 1984, Cornelius succumbed to his mental demons, but Mary picked herself up and continued to remain busy and active. As her children were now adults, she could cut down on her wage work but her habit of service remained and she took up volunteer activities in the outreach mission of this very church.

The blow from which Mary never fully recovered was the death of her daughter Catherine in 1995. Yet, Mary continued to take holidays with Wayne and she became an honourary citizen of another island, Hornby Island, where she vacationed each year and made famous her double chocolate cookies.

As the darkness began to gather, Mary was able to achieve her desire of remaining in her own home because of the care of her son, James. When she was hospitalized for the last few weeks of her life, James and Wayne were by her side. She peacefully slipped away on Feb 14, one week before her 90^th birthday, as Wayne was sitting with her, holding her hand and reading to her from the Bible.

How then do we summarize such a long life? The last of her family and the close of an era. Impossible, of course. But certain themes remain constant: love of family, service to friends and community and hard, hard work. In all she remained elegant and courageous .