Dear Editor:
We hear so much today about being tolerant and welcoming to newcomers to our country.
We give them moral support; we help them with their language problems, we arrange for food and shelter, and even provide them with financial assistance.
When I came to Canada as a legal immigrant with a wife and two babies, there was none of the previously mentioned help available or offered.
I left a city in the centre of the Cold War, Berlin, where I had been previously incarcerated by the East German Secret Police under suspicion of being an American spy.
I had reason enough trying to get out, just like people leaving their countries today, escaping from various dangers.
I wish our family would have had the same welcoming offered as refugees receive today. There was no prime minister welcoming a shipload of immigrants stepping ashore in Quebec in 1957, or at any other time.
My son failed Grade 1 because he could not speak or understand the English language well enough. I had to find work – any kind of work – and experienced resentments from some locals.
To many of them the only good German was still a dead German.
On the positive side, several of our new neighbours were kind and supportive, as two of them gladly volunteered to be witnesses at our citizenship ceremony in 1962.
My arrival in Canada happened almost 60 years ago and coming here was the best decision we ever made in our life.
Gerhard Winkler
North Vancouver
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