July 4, 2025
Feature
Harm & Dina: March 21, 1934
Justin & Laura: July 5, 2025
Account of the 1934 wedding day of
Harm & Dina van der Laan,
great-grandparents of Laura
On the occasion of Justin & Laura’s wedding, July 5, 2025, we remember Harm & Dina’s marriage 91 years ago.
Recently Posted Stories
by Herman de Jong
we always gave . . . ach, ja . . .to so many good Christian causes. On New Year’s Day he’d get the shoebox and dump it all on the table . . . all the good Christian causes.
Once in Canada, Dirk Bult quickly climbed the social, church and Christian associations ladders. In all areas, he rose far above the average immigrant. His well-founded opinions were valued on the boards of Christian organizations. At church meetings, he tested the church council against the principles of the Reformed world view.
I brought the conversation to the town gardens where I had first met her father and which we had both enjoyed for so long. But now, Jan Koning was finished.
My son said bluntly, Can’t you do that yourself? (a teensy-weensy bit belligerent, second generation trademark.)
he was a stalwart man fierce eyes under bushy brows. here a foot there a foot as if the zeeland clay still stuck to his wooden clogs
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Recently Featured Memoirs
by Ordinary and Extraordinary People
On the eightieth anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands, Harry van der Laan looks back with the eyes of a child.
Second World War: 1939-1945
In September 1939 the second World War started. I remember that many people were recruited for the army, the number of unemployed started to decline sharply and the economy picked up so at first we didn’t worry much about the war. We were confident that Holland could stay out of the war. I remember there […]
Recent Posts
by Henry J. de Jong
Vennekerk 2023 (4/25/2025) This is the story of our van der Laan reunion worship service, the summer of 2023, in the now abandoned Vennekerk, the church where my parents came of age. …
Another Good Friday (4/18/2025) Herman de Jong’s prose story of “A Good Friday” has been with me for as long as he’s been gone — twenty-one years now. I wish I had known it before then, just as I wish I could have talked to him about it. …
Welcome to Middledom (2/25/2025) I’ve committed to buckling down for a while to translate and reissue the collected works of Herman de Jong in an accessible format and adding in what family histories I have. …
I am Indigenous (6/16/2024) The parallels between indigenous peoples, like those from Canada or northern Holland, are significant. …
City on a Hill (4/11/2024) I can never relive the experience of Amiens Cathedral, even after all the time I spent in its cavernous space that summer of 2023. …
Full Circle (4/28/2023) My father had no idea of his Reformed lineage; that his granddaughter would become a pastor and that he had generations of ‘dominees’ in his family. …
Young and Old Alike (8/10/2020) It was 50 years ago this month that the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) held its first Family Conference in Niagara, Ontario, on the August long weekend. …
The Nature of Things (1/23/2017) The photographs in this exhibition of objects from my mother’s home are equally happy accidents, revealing the nature of things …
Terschelling – A Place in the Heart (7/27/2010) Perhaps my father was lucky. There is a place in the world that he called his own. It’s a wonderful place that he could visit and remember and which never lost its essence throughout his own variegated life. That place is Terschelling …Poems and Prose
by Herman de Jong
Sunday Morning
sit still! how could i have sat still
when all the colours of the rainbow
quite unexpectedly began to
wiggle through the church?
November
The road between Orangeville and Listowel
stretched ahead of me, endlessly. A fine drizzle obscured