Wanderlust

WANDERLUST: "The irresistible and very strong urge to travel."

My Great Grandparents

As I look at and research my family history, I am in awe of the fact that I am only second generation family from Canada. I have been researching my maternal mother's family. The Krikau's.
My maternal great grandmother and great grandfather lived in Prussia in a town called Warrenburg. My grandma McLaughlin was born their as was four of her six siblings. The Krikau's can be traced back to Wolfenhausen, Vitrunkel county of Germany as far back as the early 1700's. This was the time of Catherine the Great. The times were poor. The peasants were treated badly. There was war. These conditions made the time ripe for recruitment of the Germans to Prussia. As I understand it, some of Catherine The Greats' incentives included free travel, freedom of religion, freedom to build churches and church schools. Temporary freedom from taxes and capital for developing a parcel of land in the Prussian Volga region.
According to my grandmother's nephew (John Krikau) who did all this research, not many of these incentives were realized. However the promise was enough for a few adventurous souls, including one of my great great great grandfathers, to move to their new home along the Volga valley.
As the early 1900's came forth, once again there was political, economic, and religious unrest in Prussia. My grandmother's parents must have felt this and took advantage of yet another offer to resettle in "the land of opportunity", America.
They had letters from a first cousin who was established in Canada as a farmer and would sponsor them.
I obviously have never been through war, or persecutions for my beliefs or for that matter I have never been hungry. On some cerebral level I understand this motivation. But many in Prussia were in the same pickle.
What was it that caused my great grandfather to make the journey? Given the times, I am only assuming that it would have been an unilateral decision. What made my great grandfather actually move his wife and 5 small children away from his family and all that he knew?
I like to surmise that along with these motivating factors, their was a huge proportion of an adventurer and dreamer in him. He must have been a sweet talker to convince my great grandmother to go along with him. Or their must have been great love for her not to stay behind while her husband went ahead and got things settled. I am always the romantic.
They arrived in Ellis Island in New York on October 17th 1911. They traveled by train to Rosthern Saskatchewan on the sponsorship of the first cousin. A few years later my great grandfather moved away from the farm to Winnipeg. There is an unsubstantiated story that great grandfather had saved the soul of a person on the ship ride from Prussia. This fellow was so appreciative that he paid for train transportation for him and his family to go to California. However my great grandfather did not realize that there was a 100 dollar head tax for each member of the family. He couldn't afford it and thus stayed in Winnipeg for a few years.
The family moved on to Illinois in 1924. One exception was my maternal grandmother. She stayed in Winnipeg and was married. As an aside this marriage has remained a big mystery in my genealogy research as she divorced him and remarried and no one talked about him.
So my grandma stayed behind because of love. I understand this. My mother was born in Winnipeg. My maternal grandmother and her first husband moved to Saskatoon. She lived her remaining days there.
My mom and dad met, married and lived in Saskatoon all their married life. I was born in Saskatoon along with my 6 siblings.
Bill and I met and married in Saskatoon. We spent one year of our married life in our home city of Saskatoon. I believe the romantic in me said I would follow him to the ends of the earth just to be with him. And thus began our journey following the money and opportunity trail.
We moved to Regina where Bill got his first engineering job out of university. Regina is where my two daughters were born. We moved to Edmonton and now we live in Calgary. I followed.
Bill and I always called these moves our response to the seven year itch. I thought we were the start of the wanderlust generation. But were we?
We were following the dream of something better and probably bigger. The Alberta advantage took us. The land of opportunity; economic improvement and no provincial tax.
The cycle carries on.
Last week Jackie called me. She was so excited and talking a mile a minute. She has decided to stay in Japan. This decision was not a big surprise to me. Mothers just know. After her contract with Jet is finished at the end of July, she is moving to Tokyo. She has one more year left on her Japan work visa and what a shame to waste it.
Jackie loves big cities and do they come any bigger than Tokyo? Her pragmatic side made her realize that she had greater earning potential in Tokyo than in Canada. Apparently, Tokyo has many opportunities for English speaking persons.
Jackie is already looking for accommodation and has some promising leads. I believe Jackie is motivated to stay for the economic side of her life. She is also pursuing the challenge of another foreign big city. She loves the challenge. She is also looking for a new community to find happiness and love.
Globally the world is very small. The modern conveniences such as computers, messaging, phones, and affordable airfare allow for this. Jackie's generation listlessly travels to a new world for adventure and for the opportunity to improve economically.
My family has many generations of re establishing themselves in foreign and unknown places. Maybe the reason for moving away now are no different from those of 300 years ago.
Economic, opportunity, adventure, and maybe love.
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