Six Generations of Calgarians

By Cindy DeJager

My great-grandmother came to Canada in 1909 from Romania (Bessarabia), at the age of eighteen years old. Mary Mix and her sister Katherine lived in a tiny house in Calgary in the little district by the Bow River called Bridgeland. They spoke no English but Mary needed to get a job to support herself so she took work as a housekeeper for an English speaking family. Unfortunately things didn't work out and she was sent home one day with a note; when her sister Katherine told her that she had been fired, Mary cried her eyes out, "I can't go back home, and I can't live here! I wish I would die!"

In 1910, only one year after coming to Canada she would meet Johann Schaupp, also of Bessarabia, and they would marry on November 15th, 1910 in Calgary. Johann worked at the Big Horn Brewery and would walk to work every day through the "park", which is now the Calgary Zoo. They bought a house on 11 A Street N.E. in Bridgeland that they turned into a boarding house for immigrants. Johann and Mary would have five children, the eldest daughter Magdalena, would be my grandmother, born in the Calgary General Hospital in 1911.

With the assistance of the men living in their boarding house, Mary and John built their own house just across the street in 1929. One of those men would be my grandfather, Assaf Lick. He was born in 1908 in Kischelowka, Baraschi, Volhynia, Ukraine and an immigration record shows that Assaf came to Canada on the Empress of France and arrived in Quebec on September 24, 1926. He was 18 years old. It was probably through the church that he heard about the Schaupp boarding house in Bridgeland.

In 1928, only two years later, his brother, Robert, would run away from the Ukraine and come to Canada on the MontRose. He would hop trains across the prairies, and would one day stand on a street corner in Bridgeland asking a stranger if they knew his brother. From a half a world away and many years in between two brothers would find each other.

Assaf met and fell in love with my grandmother, Magdalena Schaupp, and despite her parents disapproval, they would be married in Calgary on October 17, 1933. My great-grandparents, Mary and John, were disappointed because they wanted their daughter to marry a wealthy farmer, they asked, "what can Assaf give you, he has no skills, he is just a poor immigrant?"

However, it wasn't long before they loved and admired him. Assaf would work at the Palliser Hotel in downtown Calgary, first working as an elevator man and then as a painter for 30 years. They were pillars of the community; Assaf and Magdalena would become founding members of the Riverside Baptist Church in Bridgeland, they would receive a certificate from the Canadian Red Cross for making at least 20 blood donations, and most precious of all, a certificate in recognition for their contribution to Alberta's heritage; signed by the Premier Peter Lougheed.

They would build a house on 11 A Street also, and would have a daughter, Lauretta Lick, born in the Calgary General Hospital in 1934.

In 1950 a young man by the name of Geert (Gary) de Jager, came to Canada from the Netherlands. His family fled from Holland to Canada to escape the war.

Gary and Lauretta would marry in Calgary in 1955, and in 1957 I was born, their first child of five, Lucinda (Cindy), born in the Calgary General Hospital.

Two important buildings have been significant through the generations, the Calgary General Hospital and the Palliser Hotel. Four of six family generations were born in the Calgary General Hospital, and it was in honor of her great-grandpa, Assaf Lick, that my daughter chose to get married in the Palliser Hotel in 2001.