In Holland in October 1945, Elsley and Yeti Foulds were married. It was one of the few days on which city hall favoured celebrants with a red carpet, adding a dash of colour to a war-worn town.
Yeti wore a dress made of army surplus parachute silk. There was money for a fancy gown but there were few dresses in the stores.
In fact, there wasn't much of anything in the stores. Five months earlier the Allied forces, including valiant young Canadians, had liberated Holland from the Nazi yoke. The struggle to rebuild Holland and Europe had begun.
The newlyweds had much in common. Elsley was a carpenter and had endured the hardships of economic depression in the 1930s in Saskatchewan. And, as a trained medic, he had survived the horror of the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. Yeti grew up in Depression-era Holland, when bicycle tires were made of wood for lack of rubber. As a teenager during the Nazi occupation, she watched her father scurry and hide in a cellar to avoid Nazi troops, who marauded the streets seeking to kidnap able-bodied men to work as slaves in their munitions factories.
Elsley was finally demobilized from the army in Regina in 1946 and Yeti joined him in Saskatoon in July of that year. They lived on Elsley's parents' farm for a while. Then, in 1947, they hopped on a train to start a new life in Coquitlam, where Elsley had relatives.
The train trip was not without drama. Their three-month-old daughter had whooping cough and while Yeti breastfed, both kept the baby alive by keeping her air passage clear with their fingers. It was a great relief to find a doctor in Coquitlam who understood the ailment and made the baby well.
The hyper-busy urban dwellers of today will have difficulty visualizing the very rural Coquitlam that greeted the eyes of the young couple. North of Maillardville, dwellings were scattered among the trees. Austin Avenue boasted a chicken farm. What is now Lougheed Highway was mostly bulrushes. But Yeti says a family atmosphere prevailed in the community: no locked doors, sharing to meet needs.
While Yeti set about to make a home for what would be 10 children, Elsley looked for work. The career-oriented of today might be surprised at the lengths to which he went to put food on the table. He plied his trade anywhere and everywhere, including the big Western Canadian mill and city projects. For a time, he bused to the tram in New Westminster, then to Vancouver, then it was a tram all the way to Steveston in Richmond to work in the canneries.
The Second World War has never retreated safely into the past for Elsley and he speaks of it humbly, resolutely but with reluctance. Upon discharge, he says, "We were left to find our own way." Battle had left soldiers troubled and "hardened" in a way they did not want to be.
Nevertheless, Elsley has been a service officer at the Royal Canadian Legion, along with Yeti, for 17 years. His dedication to the well-being of veterans has taken him as far afield as England. Younger Afghanistan vets' participation at the Legion has been spotty but Elsley says this is slowly changing.
Now into their 90s, Yeti and Elsley are as mentally sharp and active as people 40 years their junior. They dwell on Cartier in their 100-year-old home, which now bears a heritage plaque. They radiate an abiding appreciation for the blessings they have. And, of course, they have travelled back to Holland and Europe more than a few times to honour the liberation.
They take comfort in a ceremony in which Dutch school kids, every Christmas, light candles at the graves of fallen Canadian soldiers to let each know he is beloved and admired for his sacrifice.
Your History is a column in which, once a month, representatives of the Tri-Cities' three heritage groups writes about local history. Doug Rolling is writing for the Coquitlam Heritage Society.
