The centre of their community
Aylmer Christian Reformed Church celebrates 75th anniversary
All of the men in the Dresden work crew, in fact the vast majority of all protestant Dutch immigrants, were members of the Christian Reformed Church - and all six of victims were, or had been members of the Aylmer congregation, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this Saturday, June 1, 2024.
In the post-war years, the Christian Reformed Church played a central role in the lives of new immigrants, actively helping them to find housing, work, used cars, and, in one case, trying to find a husband for a grieving widow (she respectfully declined). And despite economic precarity, all five of the families in our story played an active role in their church.
In Aylmer, Jan Bremer (who had once been anything but religious) served faithfully as a Deacon. Jan Oldewening was an Elder. One of the congregation’s first priorities had been the building of a Christian school for their children. Both Jan Oldewening and Dirk Ryksen served on the Building Committee. Oldewening, a skilled tradesman and draughtsman, designed the first school building and later helped build it.
Engagement in church life was not limited to the parents in these families. Wiebrand Hovius was a beloved and admired leader at the young people’s group, which met weekly at the church.
Services were held twice each Sunday, with many families making the long trip there and back twice, with lunch at home in between. Services were usually held in Dutch and hymns also generally sung in Dutch. The Hovius children remember feeling slightly embarrassed about how loud and enthusiastically their father sang.
Many of the children in these families attended the Christian School, situated beside the church and sharing a fence with the local public school. In those early days, some may have felt a bit of a rivalry with the children on the other side of the fence, but those feelings changed when the both groups entered the same high school.
When the tragedy in Dresden happened, the foreman Dirk Rijksen, was living in Byron (now part of London, Ontario) where he attended the local Christian Reformed Church (now called the Talbot Street Church). Three days after the tragedy, a mass funeral was held for all six men at the Aylmer church. Both ministers churches spoke: Jan Gritter, the minister from Byron, and Joseph van de Kieft, from Aylmer. The church was overflowing. After the service, everyone followed a procession of hearses to the Aylmer Cemetary, where the five local men were buried: Wiebrand Hovius (19), his father Enne Hovius (39), Jan Bremer (43), Jan Oldewening (45), and Hendrik Drenth (58). Following the internment ceremony in Aylmer, Dirk Ryksen's body was taken to Byron for a second service and burial in Woodland Cemetery.
The Christian Reformed Church was overflowing on August 17, 1957 for the mass funeral for the six Dresden cave-in victims
The church's engagement continued after the tragedy. The congregations in Aylmer and London initiated a fundraising drive with Christian Reformed Church congregations across the continent. Through these efforts, the church was able to provide each of the widows with $3,200 to help them secure or pay down their mortgages.
Most of the people we have interviewed for this film tell us that their faith was instrumental in helping them meet the challenges of grief and economic adversity that followed the Dresden tragedy. And, when the Aylmer Christian Reformed celebrates its 75th anniversary, many of the children of those families will be there to mark the occasion and honour the role this church has played in their lives.
Mourners file past the coffins in the Aylmer Cemetary