Liz-Gallaher1

The book "Belonging" explores the concept of belongings and how they connect us to our past and heritage through migration and mortality. The narrator shares personal stories about objects like a pocket watch from the 19th century and a unique copy of Anne Frank's diary. They delve into the significance of each item's story, including a teacup found on a beach and a rare wooden flute advertised online. These objects spark curiosity and lead to uncovering hidden histories and connections to significant events. The premise of the book is it's called Belonging and it's about the things that belong to us and at the same time it's about the way we belong to them and all of the belongings that I'm writing about in the book are things that have traveled so migration is a big part of it and mortality actually so the family tree that you just showed me it's really relevant um family loss um all of those things coming to play when you're looking at say an heirloom or a book that's been in a family for a while or something that you find something that you find in an antique store or a flea market and it says on it that it was made in family family in Suffolk or something I have a pocket watch that was made in Suffolk in the 19th century and and it's come here with me um and so given that so many Canadians are from other places even now and especially you know the 19th century I've just become really interested in the stories that are carried by these objects and because the story started with a book that I came across um obviously it's got a story in it and it happens to be non-fiction it's a diary it's actually this it was a first edition copy of the diary of Anne Frank in Dutch and um so it was published in 1947 and it's called Het Afterhuis I hope my Dutch pronunciation's all right but when I first held that book I realized that the the story of this particular volume how it came to be in my hands was as interesting and as valuable and important as the story that Anne tells in the book because a book that's just rolled off the press it's like the other three thousand in that case maybe two or three thousand that were in that run that print run in 1947 in Amsterdam but the second they leave the book binders and they are purchased and they move into the hands of a family each of the books see has its own story right and what I soon discovered having held this book was that this particular book has a story which is very different from the other books even the books in that same print run so the question then became why does this book have this particular story what is the meaning of it and then I ended up speaking to not only the bookbinder who refused he decided he wasn't going to fix this book because what was hidden in it when it fell apart was so interesting he also decided that he wasn't going to sell this book to a private collector because he felt it should go back to its community and so just the weirdest bit of serendipity he didn't know that I was a reporter for the Jewish Independent and he handed me this book with no knowledge of the work that I did in fact he just handed me this little bubble wrapped envelope and said I think you might find this interesting my son was actually tugging on my sleeve and wanting to leave at this point because I'd taken them on a homeschooling field trip I'd taken them to this bookbinder's workshop which is I mean it's a magical place to start with it's not Rasmussen but very close by at the time it was the old English Bindery and so the you know the bookbinder took out some sheets of gold leaf from this really very it's so fine you can blow it away and he gold leafed my children's thumbs and of course they walked around you know giving a thumbs up for the rest of the day saying I'm not going to wash I'm never going to wash my thumb you know but um my son was done he wanted to leave and the fellow just said it's one more thing I just think you might find this interesting very quiet um went and got this bubble wrapped envelope handed it to me I didn't know what I was pulling out of the bag that was the funny thing it was you know it was like the winner is oh my god this is the first edition published less than two years after she died at Bergen-Belsen oh it's broken though and he said yes but how good's your German so I looked at the words in in the spine and it turned out they were just a little piece of paper that had been chopped out of a piece of scrap that he'd had maybe even on the floor from some Nazi book actually that this man had obviously been obliged to bind during the occupation of Holland and uh the war was over it was 1947 he wasn't about to you know give that to anybody that where it was visible but things were valuable at that stage because they weren't a lot of supplies and don't make the most of things they would use bits of scraps you could plug the spine where it joins the signature so it makes that nice yeah nice round shape right that's perfect and he'd used not just any bit but he'd used the title of a book called Die Falkauten which means retribution or revenge so the book was originally um destined for um German soldiers in the field it was sort of a handy little pocket book to read when you need to keep yourself busy when you're bored because there's a lot of sitting around when you're at war so they published these things and had them bound at the bindery in Amsterdam and this man still had bits of it sitting around now when the book binders saw that this was cut out and stuck in the back of the book um you know his thought was that you know that's no accident right and being a bookbinder himself you know he could tell his third generation bookbinder know that their family's been doing this for 100 years you know I said is that is that a thing that that people do and he said absolutely bookbinders know roughly how long it takes for the glue to become brittle and come apart and apparently for the first print run of Anne Frank's diary had actually used it's about 70 years so once he came across that book others started surfacing from the same print run all of which were coming apart you see and spine was popping off and other copies of the book had pieces of that same German text in them but none of them so far have revealed just a title in this little lozenge shape chopped out and stuck on the back and so that led me to wonder well are there any other copies like this has he done this in any others where are the other copies who owns them where have they gone where have they surfaced and so I started looking and I ended up talking to an antique dealer an auction house actually in New York about one that they've come across and I talked to a fellow also in New York but actually French origin who had inherited a copy of Hector Houston had it rebounded by a bookbinder in Amsterdam and it had belonged to his uncle his great uncle I believe who had been a very interesting fellow was a renowned member of the French resistance during World War II so that family has its own fascinating story but the bookbinder in Amsterdam who I believe repaired his book apprenticed under the bookbinder who's in gas down there that I spoke to so this was a small world and as much as I looked I couldn't I couldn't find another copy that had the same story and and I know this so far because I've been corresponding with a researcher called at the Anne Frank house so I've been in touch with the researchers and with the house and museum itself and in July I was lucky enough to well I was flying back home from a trip and I was offered a flight with a six-hour layover in Amsterdam so I was lucky enough to go to the house and to walk through the exhibit visit the annex with my children which is the first time I've ever been there in my life which is remarkable considering I grew up in England but I'd always wanted to go and eat you can you have to go when you're ready yes readiness yeah I wasn't ready and then I was ready and the opportunity presented itself and it was um I haven't been able to write about it yet but it's a really um extraordinarily moving experience and it was heartening to see how many people were lining up and you have to book to get your spot because it's so full and he gave us the IP passes and from one day to the next they were very kind we were taken to the cafeteria treated to uh you know a drink or a snack and they took great care of us and he showed me a copy of the original book of T.J. Kelton which he now owns the actual book that was sliced out of the Retribution so he managed to source an original copy of the book from that era to find out what it was about I mean it's an appalling book you know published by the Nazis during the war but um you know being as he is a researcher at Anne Frank House you have to have a strong stomach and read some fairly nasty literature he hasn't had it translated yet but it's there and um he's uh he's been a really valuable resource for me and uh the dedication of those things was unbelievable but we'll continue so that with that one book it you know that spine fell open and it kind of broke open these ideas in my mind about how the significance of something is carried just by its it's born in its near existence it's not just in in its value it's provenance its story if the materials are unusual it's been owned by somebody of renown or somebody with an unusual story or it's connected to great events in history you know and that's why I've ended up getting sucked into these other stories in the book one of which is um a teacup with an unusual provenance that rolled up on the shore of the Pacific Ocean when we had that flood move a few years ago the tide was unusually low and you could walk almost all the way out to the marina yeah and I went down to the beach looking at the starfish and um found a fully intact teacup with a stamp on the bottom that said Puerto Rico on it and of course then I had to ask what is a teacup from Puerto Rico doing rolling up on the beach in Horseshoe Bay when the cup was made as I later discovered in about 1963 so how long has it been there that's one of them yes another story and then um another another story in the book uh started when I saw an ad so help me on facebook marketplace for extremely rare wooden flute well you know it's like a red flag for a ball I had to extremely rare wooden flute will oh wooden flute will only sell to flute player oops I know it got me it was like bait right it was a bait posting so I contacted the fellow and um nothing wrong with putting what you mean in your ad well you see well you were there I mean that was pretty amazing wasn't it it's great something so we get to meet this fellow in his building in West Van and um this extremely rare wooden flute's short it's not a transverse concert flute which is you know this big it's like that so it's not a piccolo it's not a flute but it's wooden and you know I have a thing for little wooden boxes and wooden flutes and I'm just going this is delicious I need to try this and lovely fellow said sure you know have a go and this building that he lives in has very high ceilings and I think the floor's made of marble the acoustics in there are outstanding so I'm playing this thing and it's got the most the notes travel like nothing I've ever heard down low notes are tricky but you know low notes are going to be difficult especially in an old slightly cracked instrument that's been made in 1898 in Glasgow so you know but the the upper notes I mean they would have carried they would have carried to UBC that's where they were so powerful anyway so we sit down we chat the guy and sort of this is the best thing about some of these stories and this is what I really want to convey in the book it's just the moment the excitement that you feel when a story comes out and you're sitting there going wait a minute there's more this is not just this is not just some old bit of whatever that you're getting rid of because nobody plays it turns out so the fellow is related to a Victoria Cross recipient one of the very few from here who was originally from Scotland and was even in Scotland at a young age prior to the age of 13 quite an accomplished bagpipe player so when you recognize this story you know push the golden buzzer let me know that you anyway so the fellow emigrated here with his family emigrated I should say with family his father got a job he ended up in Chilliwack and then he joined the C4th regiment when it was founded by a group of Scottish men for the first world war and volunteered joined up became a piper and actually petitioned his commanding officer to pipe the men over the top at the Somme in 1916 when they were trying to recapture a very yes dangerous position and actually he helped the injured back off the battlefield and came back safely but he realized that he had dropped an instrument and he went back to pick up his bagpipes and perished and was missing presumed dead so the story of his burial was a little complicated there's some tricky there are some convolutions in the story but the bagpipes were found at a separate time dug out of the mud and shipped to Scotland because nobody knew who they belonged to and then many many years later it was established that these were in fact Piper Richardson's actual bagpipes and they have been returned to Canada they are now in the legislature in Victoria and this man was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery and it was his great-nephew that I was sitting next to so the family had a history of playing these instruments and even as a young boy this man told me he was obliged to play the flute because that's what she did and he said he was never very good didn't you know didn't do too didn't couldn't get no out this particular instrument but he knew his music teacher could so of course I bought this instrument had to do some research and it turned out there's actually a fife which is not a concert instrument is in fact um a military device because yes fives were played yeah on the battlefield and they were small right you could yes you could fix in yourself unlike the bagpipe but it was popular originally when it was first created because at the time the munitions technology obviously was very loud and inefficient and those are those top notes that I could hear that was so penetrating those notes could be heard on the battlefield over the sound of the guns so that is why the fife is what it is and when I realized that it was essentially I mean it was it was communication on the battlefield that the fife was like you know an early bagpipe which was designed to instill the man with a feeling of courage and you know it gave some rhythm and it was powerful you know um and so then I found myself asking who played this instrument actually was it also did it also belong to James Cleland Richardson was it his and where has this been and how does this family still have it who was it why is it why is it here and from a fellow Doug who who had this instrument the question came why did they come why do you leave a stable life in Scotland and move to Chilliwack yes in 1913 no yes I think no he was I think 13 when they came it may have been 1909 I'll have to check my dates but why do you come you know so I wrote for C4's armory where he'd been that was his regiment they have a wonderful archive that I can go and look at they don't have any of his artifacts but they they do have a statue that was cast in his honor and I learned that first the bagpipes themselves are in the legislature and that there are artifacts at the yeah Chilliwack museum has them and of all the things they have they have his diary when he was when he was a boy writing and he's on the voyage so for me writing this book about migrations finding an artifact that is tied to an artifact that I have that is tied to a such an important piece of Canadian history and world history and it's while he was traveling to me that's that's gold because the diary was on a ship moving yeah coming here it was it's it's traveled the continent he's you know he brought it with him from Scotland and it came it came here you know versus Anne's diary that was incarcerated effectively you know and then you compare that to the you know the other things that I have I don't know how they survived I have a beautifully bound leather prayer book and my store which belonged to my family which was published in Krakow in Poland and you know bits of it coming apart you can see it was sewn together very badly which tells me it was probably my grandfather's because he was a surgeon and I'm thinking his stitches weren't so great he was not a bookbinder he was good at bodies though anyway so you know that book itself I had to translate what was in find out what it was because there's so many languages in it you know it's in Hebrew but there are other bits of other languages in there and although my family was from Lithuania where there had been a huge Jewish press it was published in Poland and there's a good reason for that too so all of these stories there's the book there's the grandfather clock from 1750 figures in it the teacup that rolled across the ocean you know the flute the fife I know their stories but thrift stores and and antique fairs are full of items for stories like this and we don't know all of them but I do know somebody at Urban Repurpose who gets a real kick out of the stories that come with these things like I once heard about yes I once heard about a a mantelpiece he took apart yes and uh when he took this mantelpiece apart when the house was demolished uh a pharmacy receipt fell out of the back from about 1936 oh cool from McDonald's pharmacy and I think it's still there anyway I mean the prescription's probably not still there but McDonald's pharmacy is anyway you know and he he said to me this is Tom the fellow that the director of the of the story and it's the stories that come with these things that are so amazing and I really I want to write a book that people read and feel inspired to look at what they have and consider their own stories their own journeys and be just as excited about what they mean to them and their families because I think we don't ask questions very often until it's too late um but it's taught me this journey's taught me you know to be a researcher to dig deeper and to find um you know the people and the things that that carry the stories that make us who we are especially as Canadians because stories have traveled the people have traveled all over the place now I think I've got my themes more or less now um but I'm going to be talking to um a cultural geographer an author uh called Minamitani I don't know if you've read her book but it's cultural where different cultures move around and migration is what she knows about what what what moves us physically and what moves us culturally what moves us spiritually we're we're humans we're we move we don't stay in one place and it's you know it's a thing that people are thinking about a lot these days because they're thinking about where who belongs where and what piece of earth without going into detail where do we live where do we belong where do we quote come from I can't count the number of times I would ask you know in England I'd be asked where are you from but you know where are you from from so just say twice because then they're supposed to know that you don't really belong there and they want you to know that but they're still curious they need to remind you yeah and um Minamitani is very much a specialist in concentrating the you know the cultural and spiritual and you know just the theoretical ramifications of you know what happens when people move and they bring their cultures with them and they leave a piece of them behind because I've always thought of people like trees you can pull a tree up by its roots but it won't go the same and I'm very interested in what Dr. Minamitani has to say about the um the movements that people make and how she interprets them in her line of work I'm also interested in talking to a neuroscientist about what what sparks still off in the brain when things matter to us belongings we get attached to things you know and psychologists what is the psychology of belonging somewhere or having things belong to us you know why are there things that we are willing to sell yes like because these are conversations we've been having yes what are you willing to sell what are you not willing to sell and why yeah and what's behind the change that occurs when you realize you've held on to something for long enough and you're ready to let go because letting go is also something that I think grappling with and I really want to get that into this book somehow an aspect of of having focused so much on needing to belong somewhere knowing that I personally didn't feel that I belonged in England moving here migrating belonging here and then I was born in England I grew up I stayed until I was 26 and then I moved there by myself okay and so what is what is it when you let go and you say to yourself well I'm Canadian because I feel more Canadian than English I don't know that I ever really felt English but I've spoken to a gentleman who's now probably in his in his 80s and when I talked to him 20 years ago he said it didn't have a decade he even said he didn't feel Canadian he had a Canadian passport but he didn't feel Canadian and so right did he not belong he raised his children here this has been his home for decades but but I've been able to let go so what what is that and that's why that's why um Dr. Mattani is the one I'd like to talk to about um all these different cultures coming into play in fact it was when I was doing radio with him that I learned the acronym TCK the third culture kids because you're the one culture but your parents come from other places and then you're raised somewhere else again and you end up with this conglomeration of different different to us because you know I have a Hebrew first name an Austrian last name and people say oh so if you're English and I say yes well I was and I tell them it's okay I'm better now and they laugh but yeah I'm yeah right but then I say well you know my my mom was born in oh so you're English okay but you know my dad actually was he was actually born in Egypt oh so you're Egyptian right so I'm not Egyptian because you know we were surprised thrown out so you know he ends up being Israeli oh I see so when you know if they're Jewish they say oh so you're Farsi you're not Ashkenazi well if you notice I have an Austrian last name so actually no we're we're Ashkenazi but you know that was from Ukraine you know as it is and they say oh so you're Ukrainian I said well no we don't actually identify as Ukrainian because um I was raised to think that we were Austrian because when my family lived there it was Austria and Hungary and during World War I it changed hands actually six times but I don't know if it's still counting anyway so my grandparents left Eastern Europe after where they lived was ransacked once again and was handed over to the Romanians and they weren't going to stay for that so my grandmother's family left and they ended up in Austria so I always thought we were Viennese totally thought we were totally not Viennese actually um from a town that was called Chernovitz at the time but it's also been called Chernauti Chernovski and now Chernitzi so that's four names yeah so it's complicated right I'm going to tell you a story please so I sat at that dining room table that's the dining room thank you I sat in that dining room table point stage left let's say I was 10 yes and my grandparents on my mother's side so not these people who were from the south of Ukraine and so they were sitting there and that they're really cool I have pictures of them I'll show you on the way out and grandma was talking and said something about because we're Ukrainian and grandma so ever so gently and respectfully said no dear we're Romanian and she replied no dear ever so respectfully and gently and lovingly no dear we're Ukrainian this went back and forth several times but always with this air of love and respect and that is because they lived at a spot where the border was going back and forth over many years and so my grandfather's birth certificate which I have the original of it's from Romania where I'm thinking grandma's birth certificate might say the Ukraine I'm not I'm not sure sorry yeah it's the Ukrainian certificate and the place where they came from was Chernivtsi they found each other didn't we we always did so interesting or when it was either Chernivtsi or that was the nearest large town so I know I know almost and don't tell me were they from Radaut or Suchava because that's only 14 kilometers but they keep saying town names I might recognize this is not rehearsed I gotta say that this isn't for the record this is not rehearsed really right but they use the German name which means that they left Gregorak was their last name right Gregorak but it means they left they left the city remembering it as an Austro-Hungarian city which means they remember Chernivtsi the way it was described to me okay um it's not that it's not that city anymore ah it's very different yeah I mean the synagogue obviously the massive synagogue is now it's a cinema I think but um it's yeah um um yeah so that's fascinating it is and um it's a small town very near Chernivtsi but they said the word the name so often that I knew it was very close to there and I can't remember it right now what the small town's name was tell me though what do you know when they left okay uh they left at two different times um just a minute Gregorak became um I'm using somewhere between 1910 and 1914 and grandma came in I think something like 1920. So she was badgering the wool. Right and he sent for her he sent her money and that's something that I've always been curious about how did the money get to her did he actually send it in the mail or and the story was told to me that she actually walked from the Ukraine to Calais um and then got on a boat and the money was for the boat and the train then which brought her to Alberta and that's where grandma was because they caught the boat they took the boat to um Halifax and then they took the train yes that's what I've been reading that's what happens with the Richardson family they took the 6,000 kilometers journey to come here having landed in Halifax yeah madness yeah and I was always I've always been interested in families who en masse or even individually like you did come across an ocean now these days we're flitting back and forth on airplanes but 100 years ago they knew at the moment of saying goodbye I mean they really must have known that they'd never see those people ever again like mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers um my grandpa on my dad's side uh they came from Ireland and there were numerous brothers and a sister who came the father came but they left one girl and that was because she was a teacher already and she already had her job there and she was and I think that that one girl was Izzy what spoke to me your name yeah there's quite an argument over whether I was actually named after anybody um but um my dad insisted that they just left the name and I was named after nobody but they left the name hmm and then when my mother remarried uh my dad had died and uh my mother remarried and George's sister's name was Elizabeth and George had known my dad since they were seven years old and George insisted that I was named after his sister and my mother and I knew very well George was so insistent it's a good name yeah it is but anyway uh that was an interesting well bloody down but yeah that connection yes yes and when I think of the tiny town I have also met somebody from very near to turn of it and he was my realtor when I sold my townhouse yes and there's a small town I think called stern of it first anyway here's another one you mean it's close enough storage in it like that doesn't have to be properly but it's okay s-t-o-o his last name is strinatka oh and it comes from us and it comes from that okay then yeah I've lost his peanut butter certificate oh would you look I know exactly where it is no you see there