The past is not absent, it has presence. This is what Eelco Runia explains in 'Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation' (2014). It is available and accessible to us in concrete forms, right here and now in our everyday lives, frequently too self-evident to be noticed..."
His column, Krew Kuts, starts with Oyen's health care news for 1965 and onward, and moves to a second theme, my mother Louise Johnston's trip to Red China, which was shrouded in mystery at that time.
Six decades later, her great grand daughter is the manager of the Oyen Hospital and China is the world's factory - for - everything.
Don Johnston, Medicine Hat
"A ... staffing transition occurred in February when Mr. M. Herbach, ... was appointed administrator of the < Oyen > hospital, replacing Maurice Rees ... Mr. Rees < had >occupied that position for ... four years...
... Dr. Head of Cereal was granted admitting privileges to the Oyen Hospital...< joining >... Dr. McCracken of Oyen and Dr. Baker of Cereal...
... For the third year in succession, the .. oral polio vaccine < was available > free of charge."
...Bernie goes on to comment on this and the COVID upheaval - it is worth reading in the Oyen Echo if you are interested.
This brief news item was published in the Hanna Herald on January 28, 1965: 'Mrs. Russell Johnston of Helmsdale will be showing slides and speaking on her tour of China in the Cereal School Auditorium on Saturday, Feb. 6 at 8:00. The event is sponsored by the Cereal Home & School Association, the Helmsdale FWUA and the Naco FWUA.'
On the surface, seemingly a miniscule event. However, this expedition had a significant connection to a much larger national and international story.
The Calgary Herald provided details about the tour under this headline on November 18, 1964: “Modern China Remains Largely Unknown Land.” Following a series of natural calamities resulting in disastrous crop failures in 1959-1961, the reporter noted, China began buying large quantities of wheat from Canada.
Knowing little about agriculture in China, the Farmers’ Union of Alberta/UFA decided at their annual convention in 1962 to organize a farmers’ tour to learn more about China. Its purpose was to increase trade between the two countries and develop greater understanding between these two peoples.
A party of 32 Canadians left Vancouver on September 2nd, 1964, for a three-week tour of mainland China. The group consisted of 7 women and 25 men from five provinces – farm organization leaders, active and retired farmers, two medical scientists, and members of the agricultural press and radio. Mrs. Louise Johnston, president of the Farm Women’s Union of Alberta, was one of the delegates (MTCH, v. 2, 366-368). The tour group visited six major cities, industrial plants, communes, historical shrines, parks and cultural centres. In Peking, (now Beijing), they joined a million people celebrating China’s National Day, Oct. 1.
The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, but Canada refused to recognize it because of its communist political foundations. That was also the year that Pierre Trudeau, then a young lawyer and writer, visited China for the first time. Chinese and Canadian armed forces then became engaged in combat during the Korean war (1950-1953). That conflict also ended the missionary work of the United Church in China that dated back to 1892.
Canadian Agriculture Minister Alvin Hamilton visited China in 1959, setting the stage for the first sale of Canadian wheat to China. In 1960, at the invitation of the Chinese government, Pierre Trudeau and journalist Jacques Hébert, experienced a month-long tour of China, recounted in a book entitled “Two Innocents in Red China”. When he became Prime Minister, his government was one of the first western countries to recognize China, diplomatically, in 1970, two years before Richard Nixon’s well-known diplomatic overture and visit to China.
There was a lot of activity regarding China at the University of Alberta where I was a student in 1964 -65. A student at a desk next to me was from Taiwan, studying the opium wars between Britain and China in the mid-19th century. Professor of Chinese history Brian Evans, born in Taber, had just returned from a trip to China and shared his experience. Chester Ronning, esteemed Canadian diplomat born in China and former principal at Camrose Lutheran College (now Augustana), visited campus. He was engaged in a special mission to Hanoi mediating the conflict in Vietnam.
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"Hi Don... You might want to tell Daryl and Nadine that I very much enjoyed writing about their grandmother. It triggered many memories - so many that I had to cut many parts of the story - Trudeau's 1949 trip and his legacy in that country, my nephew who is the father of a chosen (adopted child) from China, my daughter's visit to the Great Wall, the Chinese laborers who built the CPR, Jimmy Wong's Oyen Cafe in the 1930s, the racist attitudes we had in my youth, etc. Bernie. "