Wiikwemkoong veteran, his Liberation Child prominent in Peace Museum display
The story of the Dutch legacy of Private Walter Mejaki
EDITOR’S NOTE—Europe, but especially the Netherlands, is currently celebrating the liberation of their nation from the German-Nazi occupation 80 years ago. Monday, May 5 is Liberation Day in Holland and several Canadian World War two veterans attended the solemn ceremonies. The publicity surrounding the 80th anniversary celebration prompted senior members of The Manitoulin Expositor staff to recall a letter that had been sent from Holland by a ‘Liberation Child’ seeking to connect with his Wiikwemkoong family. The letter was published, the connections were made and this is the story of Walter Mejaki’s legacy, with thanks to the family of Urban Mejaki for sharing family contacts with Walter’s grandson Mike van Ee so this story could be written.
THE NETHERLANDS—Two weeks ago, at the Peace Museum in the Dutch city of Groesbeek, Princess Margriet, representing the Dutch royal family, officially opened a new display.
The display is in honour of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of The Netherlands from five years of German-Nazi occupation and part of that display is a totem pole and a 1945 photo of Private Walter Mejaki from Wiikwemkoong and his Dutch sweetheart, Henrika Herber who was from the city of Utrecht.
Walter Mejaki was part of the D-Day invasion and fought his way across Europe as part of the Canadian forces. The city of Utrecht was one of the many places the Canadian forces liberated and it was there that Wiikwemkoong’s ongoing connection with Holland began.
Walter’s grandson Mike van Ee says the couple likely met on the streets of Utrecht where a war-weary population welcomed their Canadian liberators. In fact, although Mike, who spoke to The Expositor for this story in a lengthy telephone conversation last Saturday, doesn’t live in Utrecht, most of his family (aunts, uncles and cousins) still do.
Part of Walter Mejaki’s living legacy was to leave behind a son, Willy, who eventually took his stepfather’s name when his mother married and so became Willy van Ee, big brother to several half-siblings.
“My dad was the darker skinned one in the family,” Mike says, and eventually his mother explained that his birth father was Walter Mejaki from Wiikwemkoong.
Mike says his father immediately embraced this side of his heritage and that was why, in the mid-1980s, he decided to send an open letter to Mejaki relatives in Wiikwemkoong, via The Expositor (where it was published as a letter to the editor).
Unfortunately, Walter Mejaki had already passed away at the age of 49, but relatives and friends of his late father immediately made efforts to contact Willy van Ee and he made the first of four visits to Canada to get to know his Wiikwemkoong family.
“When he first came, he was met at the airport in Toronto by his late father’s brother, Neil Mejaki,” Mike recalled, and Neil said, ‘you’re part of this family. You look just like my brother (Willy’s late father Walter)’.” This sentiment was soon echoed by Andrew Manitowabi, another Wiikwemkoong second world war veteran who had been Walter’s best friend.
“When Andy met my dad that first time, he echoed Neil’s words: ‘you look like him and you talk like him. But another question: can you play table tennis as well as him?’ Apparently Willy quipped in response, “even better!” and everyone had a good laugh.”
In fact, Andrew Manitowabi made several veterans’ trips to Holland after that and always stayed with Willy van Ee in the town where he and his wife had settled, Sas van Gent, where Mike still lives.
“And there were other Indigenous veterans, and non-Indigenous ones too, who stayed with them on veterans’ visits as the Canadians had also liberated our little Gent.”
Willie van Ee, who was born in 1946, embraced his Indigenous heritage, Mike emphasized. He was a carpenter and mason and so at some point he set out to create a totem pole that would represent his story.
People told him, “but that’s a West Coast thing” but he said he was going to make it, and he did. He carved a symbol of the bear clan into the pole, he worked in hand prints of his two sons (Mike and his brother Roy) and other representations about his feelings about being of Indigenous ancestry. The totem pole also includes a slogan, “Don’t let us be a memory” that Willy van Ee had seen on one of his trips to Canada.
The eagle motif at the top of the pole, with its wings outstretched, is interesting because it has carved into it, on one side, ‘Wikwemikong Anishinabek’ and, on the other side, ‘Sagamok Anishinabek’.
Mike explains that, when his father got his native status and band membership, the band that his grandfather Walter Mejaki was associated with was Sagamok, although he and his family were from Wiikwemkoong. That is a mystery to Mike, who would like to find out why this is. He has learned that, generations ago, the family lived at Beaverstone Bay, near Killarney, and were eventually dispersed to Sagamok and Wiikwemkoong. He has never met any family members from that North Shore community and has been thinking of transferring his band membership to Wiikwemkoong, he told The Expositor.
Willy van Ee, who passed away three years ago in 2022, was one of many Liberation Children in Holland, born to Dutch mothers after the liberation of their country.
“But, as far as I know, we are the only family with known Indigenous ancestry, Indigenous status and band memberships.”
Mike, who works in the private sector in the human resources profession, had a role in creating the new display in the Peace Museum in Groesbeek, working as a volunteer with Dr. Mathilde Roza from Redbuch University in Nijmegan. Dr. Roza is a professor of North American affairs at her university “and she asked me if I would help in her research of the contribution of Indigenous liberators in Holland.” Mike explained. (Groesbeek is a significant place because of the battles that took place in the area and Holland’s largest Canadian war graves cemetery is located near that city.)
“I told her I certainly could because my grandfather was one of them,” he explained, “and that is why the photo (my grandfather Walter and his sweetheart, Mike’s grandmother Henrika) is on display. My father’s, my brother’s and my own band membership cards are also part of the display, as is my father’s unique totem pole.”
Dr. Roza’s display begins prior to the Second World War and includes the story of the residential schools (Walter Mejaki attended Garnier School for Boys at Spanish) as well as the contributions by Indigenous Canadian soldiers in the liberation of Holland. The display at the Peace Museum in Groesbeek will be in place throughout 2025.
Willy van Ee, a carpenter and mason, a man who built his own home and one for Mike’s brother was someone, Mike says, who everyone in their small village would call on if something needed fixing or built, passed away three years ago.
Sadly, he died after a fall from the roof of his own home, on which he had been working. Mike explained it was inconclusive if he died primarily from the fall or from a heart attack which the coroner explained he had also had and “which might have precipitated the fall,” Mike said, explaining that his dad was always busy and the family was not surprised that he “died with his boots on,” (the English version of a similar Dutch sentiment.)
Mike’s most recent visit to Manitoulin Island and Wiikwemkoong was in October of 2024 where he came to spread his father’s ashes. “That was his wish, to be close to his father, Walter Mejaki,” Mike said simply.
That was Willy van Ee’s last trip “home”. His first, with his wife, was in the 1980s, when he met his family here. He received his Canadian citizenship in 2014. (Mike added that he and his brother Roy became Canadians in 2018.)
Willy van Ee had also set out to gain Indigenous status and eventual band membership which turned out not to be an easy task and took him many years to accomplish. Under the old terms of the Indian Act, Indigenous people who joined the armed forces, as Walter Mejaki had done as a volunteer, automatically relinquished their Indigenous status, taken away by the government of Canada. Adding to this the fact that Willy van Ee was born in 1946, out of wedlock, in Holland, and that his father had died before he sought to become recognized as officially an Indigenous person, this was quite an accomplishment and he was finally recognized as an Indigenous person in 1999 and granted that status. He was also eventually granted an Ojibwe name, Nimkii Anakut, “Thunder Cloud.”
Mike is very proud of his Indigenous heritage and recalled that, “once my Dad found out he had native roots, he raised us to be proud of this. I grew up as an Indigenous person, in Holland.
Mike is pleased that his father’s half-siblings are also very proud of their late brother’s heritage and attended the May 1 opening of the display celebrating the contributions of Indigenous veterans to Holland’s liberation. Mike will be hosting friends from Wiikwemkoong when they visit in the late spring.
by Expositor staff
