Heinrich Wolfgang Degemann was born in 1935 in a city called Datteln which is located in the Ruhe Valley, an industrial area in the province of Westphalia. Datteln is a very well known city. It’s the meeting point where all of the canals come together and one can go any direction via those canals.
Wolfgang had a sister named Helen, who was his saviour and mentor. Helen was 7 years older than me and he has a brother that is 2 years younger than me named Gerhard. His life has been filled with adventure.
His grandfather on his Dad's side owned a cabinet factory and was the mayor of Datteln. At one point the factory burnt down. He not only rebuilt the factory, he, at the same time, incorporated the local fire department. Better late than never. He was the fire chief for over 40 years. Then due to the war, they had to close the factory because there were no employees and no power to operate.
In keeping with his legacy, after the 2nd world war, Wolfgang's father started another cabinet factory, though on a smaller scale than his father's. Wolfgang and his brother grew up in sawdust pile of that factory.
Wolfgang's mother’s family lived in a castle 30kms away from his home. They were an upper crust family with a high society outlook and believed that children should be there to be seen but not heard. (Not something that Wolfgang nor his brother enjoyed.) Due to the war and constant air raid alarms, one never travelled too far from an air raid shelter so they very seldom visited his mothers family.
His mother was the head nurse of the local hospital and was on call 24 hours a day because there was a shortage of doctors and nurses. They got compensated by an assignment of nannies and servants which raised my brother and myself. At age 6, he was enrolled in the Catholic school. He remembers it as the saddest day of his life because the nanny made him wear an old, long sleeved, itchy sweater that was a hand-me-down from his mother’s brother, Uncle Benny. On Uncle Benny’s 80th birthday, Wolfgang confided in him that he always held a grudge toward him for that stupid sweater. To which he told Wolfgang that he could fully understand as this sweater was a hand-me-down to him from his Uncle Walter and that he probably suffered more than Wolfgang did.
Our school instruction consisted of a piece of slate that was one square foot in size. On one side were lines for writing and on the other side was divided into squares for math class. We had no paper, pencils or text books and there were 54 kids in multiple grades and only 1 teacher. The teacher gave instructions on a black board.
From 1941 to 1943, Wolfgang spent most of his time in bomb shelters and bunkers and in order to survive, one had to be lucky! For instance, it was a clear sky, 10PM in the evening and search lights would comb the sky looking for enemy planes. If a plane was spotted, all of the other search lights would follow the plane. The artillery guns would shoot into the light in the hopes of shooting the plane down. Wolfgang was standing under a concrete canopy, looking into the sky watching the excitement of the plane maneuvering through the sky trying to dodge the bullets. Of course, the bullets that would be shot into the sky would also fall back to earth. He was standing there peaking out from under the canopy with his sister constantly telling him to get back under the canopy. Wolfgang just kept ignoring her until she finally grabbed his shirt and pulled him back under. At that same moment a piece of shrapnel nicked his forehead. An 1 inch further out and he wouldn’t be here telling you his story!
After the 2nd world war his sister Helen was a nurse and was hired by the 1st Bundes Chancellor of Germany, Adenauer, to look after his ailing wife in Bonn. On the way to Bonn to visit his sister, Wolfgang stopped at the Cologne Cathedral with a friend of his. Wolfgang was a fearless 14 year old at the time. The Cologne Cathedral is a 515 foot tall tower that housed a number of bells at the top of the tower. Tourists would head up the tower to see the bells but Wolfgang discovered an opening near the top where he could climb to the outside of the tower and get pictures of the bombed out city of Cologne. As dumb as Wolfgang, was his friend that took the picture.
At age 14 I entered into an apprenticeship as cabinetmaker and carpenter. At age 16 I was the youngest person ever in our district to finish the apprenticeship and receive my diploma as a cabinetmaker and carpenter. Upon receiving my diploma, I entered a 4 year design and engineering course at an engineering school in Essen. Two years into my engineering school, the German government brought into law that at 18 every male had to serve a 2 year stint in the army. My grandfather’s words kept ringing in my ears – Better a live coward than a dead hero. Bonn was under Canadian occupation and upon Mrs. Adenhower’s death, the Canadian Army sponsored my sister to come to Canada. She worked as an OR nurse in Vancouver. I wrote to my sister in Canada, that I had to join the army and she replied immediately, “Wolfgang, this country is right for you. They are building houses out of wood and plywood.” And she invited me to come to Canada. My sister Helen organized everything and I received a letter from the Canadian consulate in Bremen requesting that I show up on a certain date for a medical. I can clearly remember showing up in Bremen, meeting the doctor and him saying to me, “Oh, you're a Degemann. Take off your shirt”. He listened to my heart and lungs, said, “pull down your pants”, stuck his finger up my groin and said “Cough”. I coughed and he says, “Passed! You can immigrate”. I received my visa to immigrate to Canada. My sister sent me a ticket to take the boat over from Bremen to Quebec, then the train to Vancouver. The ticket cost a total of $144.
Prior to my departure, I won a few bucks in a football toto which I instantly converted into brand new clothes, tools and a first class ticket for a boat ride to Canada. I was on a ship called Beverbray, 10,000 tons, 6 - first class cabins and a thousand immigrants down in the bunker. I looked 15 however I made up my shortcomings by playing piano and composing homemade love songs for the pretty ladies. Being up in the elite section of the boat, I was able to bring girls to the upper deck and eat with the captain. One girl I liked, her name was Maria, not knowing that she would know my future wife, Ida. 50 years later Ida and myself met Maria at the German Club. We’re standing at the bar and Maria says to me, “you know, Wolfgang, every time I was sad, I had to think about you”. What did you think about, Maria? Well, I would think of the love songs you played on the piano and sang to me. Maria, what did I sing? When she sang the songs, my wife Ida says, You know Maria, he sang the same songs for me too.
I arrived in Canada at the apartment my sister had lined up for me on Oak Street and 13th Ave. She shows me where to get what I need, and takes off to Quebec for 10 days. I wake up the next morning and all my money was gone. What do I do now?! I went to the corner of Oak and Broadway and watched the people go by when I spot a guy wearing a trench coat. I figured this guy must be German. He surely would know where the German Club is. So I asked him if he could direct me and he told me to take the bus and where to transfer on Kingsway. I told him that I just arrived yesterday and that someone stole my money and I have to walk there. He said it was too far and he gave me 15 cents for the bus ride. I told the bus driver where I wanted to go and he says, “OK, you sit down”, and he took me all the way to the end of Renfrew and told me, “Ok you sit down here, somebody will come”, and here comes Eddie the conductor who drove me to the German Club. At the German Club the entry fee was 25 cents so I told him that I have no money but I gotta get in so I can make some contacts. I met a guy by the name of Manfred Gallinger. I told him my predicament. He gave me $10 and with the $10 I went back home. I walked to Kingsway, hopped on the bus and found my way back to my apartment on Oak street. The next morning I went to the store and bought myself a pail of strawberry jam, a can of nescafe, a can of carnation milk and a loaf of mcgavins bread and whenever I was hungry, i would take a slice of break and dip it in the pail of strawberry jam. That was my supper for 10 days. Once my sister arrived back home, my world was back to normal!
At the German Club I met a man named Mr. Knull. He gave me a job as a finishing carpenter at a construction site in Williams Lake where I learned how they construct houses out of wood here in Canada. Upon my return to Vancouver and with my newly acquired construction knowledge, I met a man named Ted Schaffer who took a liking to me and hired my newly formed contracting company to frame several small houses for him. Mr. Schaffer became my mentor and advisor. Finding contracting work wasn’t easy because I was young and to make matters worse, I looked way younger than I was. So, I made a deal with Mr. Schaffer, to be my front man. The customer would think that Mr. Schaffer was the owner of my company and that I was his foreman. Mr. Schaffer had a connection with the immigration department informed me that they were looking for a contractor to sponsor an architect from Berlin. I hired him and with the help of the Edelweiss Credit Union, I became a full service, one stop contracting company.
But times were tough. We borrowed from Peter to pay Paul and I mentioned to Mr. Schaffer that I didn’t have enough money to pay my employees and that I already owed my girlfriend money. Ted told me that I could fix that problem. All I had to do was marry her. But I was young. He liked Ida and told me that I should marry her – she was a winner. He gave me some advice. He said, "Wolfgang, think of it this way. There are 50 apples in a bowl and there are 50 children each allowed to pick out one apple. What do you think the last one gets? The rotten apple." He also gave me another very important piece of advice. He said "Wolfgang, never argue with a woman in the kitchen. They get very emotional, grab a knife, go poof, you’re dead and they don’t mean it." I have followed that advice to this day and so far it’s worked.
I became the godfather of Mr. Schaffer’s son Teddy who is now the mayor of the city of Langley.
I purchased a sawmill on the Fraser River called Rusken Timber. I needed this because we had continuous lumber strikes in BC. We produced our own lumber for construction purposes and did custom cutting for Macmillan Bloedell. When the river runs fast in the spring, you can’t bring the logs up stream because the force of the water is too strong so in early February we would hire a tub boat company to pull the log booms up the Fraser River to our saw mill. This would give us the inventory required for the season. On one of those trips, I’m sitting in the boat and all of a sudden I feel a tug on the line and the boat is rocking up and down and I look back and I see the Fraser Street Bridge coming down. Insurance wouldn’t cover the damage so that was the end of my saw mill days. You can all thank me for the newer, much better Arthur Laing Bridge!
And that is where we leave it, until next time, and the next chapter.
For over 30 years, Bruce's work has focused on integrating the ecological requirements of grizzly bears and endangered mountain caribou with human developments. In doing so, he has conducted ecological studies of grizzly bears in several parts of the province and mountain caribou across most of their distribution.
