Yolandi and Elfrieda's father

Yolandi and Elfrieda's father was an elementary-school teacher and civic-minded advocate in East Village, remembered for turning his faith in Canadian history and public education into practical projects. His efforts to create a library and educate the public sit alongside the family's memory of his suicide, which Yolandi later understands as the point at which death ceased to be an abstract subject in their home.

Identity and Public Projects

At thirty-seven, he was teaching in a small prairie town and pursuing an ambitious educational idea: Canadian history placemats for truck-stop restaurants. He designed the cartoon illustrations, word bubbles, jokes, and riddles himself, then had thousands printed. The placemats were meant to engage both children and adults while teaching them about their own history. His concern was not merely that people lacked information; he was pained by what he saw as public indifference, from driving past historical plaques to neglecting Canadian-content rules, citizenship tests, and the national anthem.

That conviction also shaped his response to the town's lack of a library. The town hall resisted funding one, regarding the proposal as wasteful, dangerous, and unmanly. In winter temperatures of forty degrees below zero, he spent weeks walking through East Village with a clipboard and ballpoint pens, knocking on every door to gather signatures. He went out at dinnertime, when residents were home, and sometimes Lottie helped him. Once he had enough support, the town hall agreed to let him proceed.

The Library and His Family

The library began in a tiny, mildewed room in an abandoned school, furnished with second-hand shelves and books. Even so, its opening made him profoundly happy. He hired his teenage daughter Elfrieda Von Riesen as librarian; she carefully organized the collection by making a detailed index card for every book. Father and daughter went to work together and shared numerous plans, making the library both a community project and a sustained collaboration between them.

His interest in history was also personal. Between Christmas and New Year's, he took a train to Ottawa to research in government archives and attend Lester Pearson's funeral. Outside the legislative building, he spoke with a stranger who later invited him to a New Year's Eve party. It was the first such party he had attended. When he recounted the evening at home, Yolandi, Elfrieda, and Lottie listened in awe; Yolandi, then seven or eight, sensed that he was close to tears. She understood his story as that of a man who had lost his leader and needed a friend, and the memory of his unexpressed grief stayed with her.

Suicide and Family Memory

Two days before his suicide, he held Yolandi's hand beside a park fountain at noon and told her that it felt as if the lights were going out. The remembered image gives his death a quiet, intimate precursor: rather than explaining what he would do, he shared a feeling that his daughter could recognize only in retrospect as a sign of his despair.

Later, as Elfrieda faced a life-threatening crisis, Yolandi reflected that her family had once treated suicide as an abstract possibility amid otherwise ordinary troubles. Her father's death marked the change from that distance to a reality the family could no longer keep theoretical. His memory therefore links the sisters' crisis to an earlier loss, while Yolandi's recollection of his hand in hers preserves the personal tenderness within that history.