It all began with tulip bulb tea

“My mom always said, they are here today and gone tomorrow and they will break a lot of girl’s hearts,� she said.

But when Manuel Amirault (now deceased) reached into his pocket and took out prayer beads to show her he was catholic like her, she changed her mind.

He walked her to her home in Culemburg, Holland after a street dance celebration in May 1945 and her father invited him in for tea.

“The only tea that we had was made of tulip bulbs. But he didn’t like that tea. He said ‘I’ll go to camp and get good tea’.�

“He returned with a big can of tea, a big can of coffee, a big jar of marmalade and margarine,� she said.

She stopped and gave a heavenly sigh. “Food!�

“He made a pot of tea so strong, you could stand on it.

“That pot of tea lasted us all week, we kept watering it down because we didn’t want to throw it out,� she said.

After a three-week courtship, Amirault proposed. She told him he had to ask her parents for her hand.

Because he didn’t speak Dutch, Amirault placed her arm through his and hummed the wedding march song in front of her parents.

“Oh yes, you can have Nellie. You’re a good boy,� said her father.

Thirteen months later she found herself aboard the Queen Mary, six months pregnant and seasick on her way to join Amirault in Nova Scotia.

She arrived in Halifax on June 15, 1946.

“I saw him on the dock, Oh, didn’t he look debonair, with a nice, big slouch hat on.

“I had a pair of men’s shoes on, that’s all there was to wear and they gave them to me because I was pregnant… and white bobbie socks. Looking back on it now..,� she said with a laugh, “he must have wondered what he had got himself into.�

Her brother had made her a suitcase out of plywood, which contained a pair of pajamas made out of her brother’s old shirts, one pair of underwear, a pair of bobby socks and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“That was it. That was my dowry,� she said.

She told of stopping for bananas in Halifax, a fruit she’d only ever seen pictures of, and buying a whole comb of them.

“I ate every one of them that day,� she said.

They caught the train to Yarmouth, arriving on a beautiful Sunday morning and she attended church in borrowed finery.

The next morning Amirault took her shopping and they bought bedding, nylon stockings, clothing, and smocks.

The two settled down in a house on Prince Street that he had purchased for $1600.

In the years following, Vanderdonk-Muise taught herself how to speak English from reading comic books and gave birth to a family of five.