Monday, September 2, 2024
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Yt was the elder sister of the twins Jetske en Anneke born in 1940. She was the sister that inspired Jetske and Anneke. Yt studied nursery in Het Diaconessenhuis, a regional hospital located in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland about 20 km east of Rinsumageest, the place of birth of Yt. She not only learned how to treat hospital patients. From students of her year she also learned how to cook exotic Indonesian style meals. These kitchen exercises had a great impact on the tastes and likes of the family van Dijk including the twins full of admiration for Yt's cooking art.
After completing her studies in Friesland, Yt moved to Canada writing many air mailed letters, that sounded highly attractive to Jetske. During and after completing their nursing education both Jetske and Anneke became practising nurses in Dutch Hospitals. After a few years in the sixties they wanted to enlarge their world and Siem and Yt were willing to lodge them while they were learning (English) and working (nursery) in the Memorial Soldiers Hospital in Orillia.
They were picked up by Siem & Yt in Montreal, after they traveled by steamer from Amsterdam to Montreal. It was a most warm welcome and a magnificent trip of many hours through Quebec and Ontario to Orillia. It was quite an experience for the twins, during their year in Orillia, seeing how Yt managed the busy household with kids; of course they now and then lent a hand. They spent also a very happy weekends and summer holiday on lake Simcoe with the whole family.
In the early seventies, when Siem and Yt were the parents of five children, she and Siem welcomed Jetske and her friend Marian to spend a summer holiday from Orillia. They even arranged a cano track through the Algonquin Park with a few members of Siem’s family.
We, Jetske and her husband Bob, received Yt and Siem and children starting in the eighties as guests from Canada. We had a lot of fun riding on bikes to and from the beach of the North Sea and also eastern style cooking of course. When Jetske gave birth to our son Jelle she did not use her Citroen deux chevaux for a while. Just in that period Yt and Siem borrowed it to make a tour through Holland visiting family and friends. They enjoyed traveling at ease through their birth grounds in a Citroen that hardly made 100 km maximum speed.
Later their kids came over and we could show them the cheese market in Alkmaar and museums in Amsterdam before they traveled further into The Netherlands and the rest of Europe. Jetske found it amazing to see many habits in Yt's children they had borrowed from their mother.
We remember Yt as a source of inspiration for changing your way of life for the better. We also remember her as a person that knew how to keep your spirit, even when life beats you hard
where it hurts most.
We will think of her as a warm, welcoming, buoyant personality of which we will remain deeply impressed.
Jetske & Bob Van der Schaaf - Van Dijk, Alkmaar 2 September 2024
