Canadian blood in her veins

Steely determination took Betty deKock from death's door in a wartime military hospital in the Netherlands to a seemingly ageless active life in Manitoba

By: Alan Small

As the old saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Betty deKock had the will, and she always found a way.

DeKock was born Alberta Johanna Maria Goring on July 18, 1933, in Braamt, Netherlands. Later, her family moved to the city of Apeldoorn, which is 35 kilometres north of the so called "bridge too far" in Arnhem, where the Allies’ first attempt to liberate the Netherlands from Nazi occupation during the Second World War failed in September 1944.

One month later, during a second Allied attempt to liberate the Dutch — largely with Canadian troops — a chain of events began that would bring deKock to Manitoba, where she raised a family.

In October, young Betty and two of her brothers, Theo and John, were scrounging for beechnuts. It was the beginning of the Hunger Winter in the Netherlands and food was scarce. Theo picked up an object that bore German writing. He threw it away as quick as he could, but the unexploded shell blew up, killing him and seriously wounding Betty and John.

There was a Canadian military hospital in Apeldoorn, and Betty was taken there. She was given last rites, says her daughter, Linda Loewen, but doctors and nurses kept her alive and she spent the next three months recovering there.

"The blood transfusions came from Canadian soldiers," Loewen says. "She always went on about having Canadian blood in her veins."

Afterward, she went for physical therapy appointments — she had to learn how to walk again. That included a 30-minute walk to the clinic with her mother, Dina, Loewen says.

"She was such a determined person," Loewen says. "My oma would take my mom for therapy. One leg became shorter than the other because of the explosion, but Oma wouldn’t allow my mom to limp."

The postwar years in the Netherlands were difficult, so the Gorings moved Manitoba in 1951, specifically St. Alphonse, about 170 kilometres west of Winnipeg, where her uncle, Gerry Goring, settled in 1929. By coincidence, Holland isn’t far away.

Betty would meet another Dutch emigré, John deKock, and the two married in 1955 and moved to Middlechurch, just north of Winnipeg.

The deKocks raised five children, Linda, Di, Glen, Chuck and Sue, and moved to a home in St. Vital near Varennes School. It was known for the large garden that deKock tended that almost encircled the house.

DeKock was an avid cyclist throughout her life, and she didn’t give up pedalling when she grew older, says Loewen. She would cycle from St. Vital to Birds Hill Park and back once a week, joining other cycling friends for a ride in the country.

All that bicycling turned her 80th birthday gift — a bike ride in Assiniboine Park with her family — into a booby prize for sons, daughters and grandchildren.

"When Mom turned 80, we wondered what can we do? Mom said she didn’t want more stuff," Loewen says.

For deKock, the bike ride in the park was like a walk in the park and she left the younger members of the family huffing and puffing to keep up behind her.

"I was only 20 then, and I should be young and fit and vigorous," remembers grandson Eric Loewen, who farms with his family in Riverton. "We didn’t plan on a big tour of Assiniboine Park and St. James. We didn’t expect a leg of the Tour de France.

"We would get her to stop and show her the sights just so we could catch our breath. My quads ached for a week."

DeKock’s active lifestyle wouldn’t end there. She liked travelling in her later years, and in 2018 she joined a group in Spain to hike the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage tour. The most popular route starts in southern France in the Pyrenees Mountains and winds its way through towns and villages of northern Spain before winding up at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which many believe is the burial site of the apostle St. James.

The tour group would hike the highlights of the pilgrimage. Fifteen days of highlights. She was 84.

‘She was going to go with a good friend of hers, but at the last minute her friend couldn’t go. Mom was humming and hawing about going but then she said, ‘Why not? Someone might want a roommate," says Linda Loewen. "That was the best trip she took of her lifetime. She never ran out of superlatives about it."

Loewen says she knew her mom wouldn’t allow herself to be the straggler among the hikers.

"I recall her very well from our trip in September 2018," Garry Budin, a tour guide with Spanish Adventures, says in an email. "When we guide I walk with the stronger walkers, and Betty was in my group. Although she was the oldest in our Camino group she was always in the lead with those decades younger than her, in some cases."

Catherine Lavigne, another Camino hiker from Winnipeg on the trip, was similarly amazed.

"Betty and I made unlikely friends, she the oldest and I the youngest members of our group," she recalls. "The first day of the Camino started with a steep ascent, or, as our guide Garry called it, ‘a slight incline.’ Betty, with the agility of an adventurer decades younger than she, was among the first to arrive at the top of the mountain. She looked at the view and exclaimed, ‘Well that wasn’t so bad!’"

DeKock’s family had worried about her safety, but her only concession to her age and their concern was that she promised to take her hiking sticks along.

"Begrudgingly, she carried her walking sticks the whole way," Lavigne says. "But as she put it, ‘I never said anything about using ’em!’"

Shrapnel from the 1944 explosion remained in her legs until the end, Loewen says.

"Sometimes it would move and cause her pain, but she’d never mention it in a conversation," she says. "Advil was all the medication she took."

About a year after returning from Spain, deKock was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and she died Nov. 16, 2019.

"She had this unending energy I’d love to tap into," says her grandson, Eric. "I can never remember her ever being tired."

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall