A tribute to the hard-working Slovenian immigrant Stan Zadel
During the Second World War, the area of Slovenia where Stan Zadel lived with his family was full of German and partisan conflicts. There, he “survived unspeakable horrors,” says son Chris Zadel. “Often, the family was forced to hide under the bridge due to the clashes. Children often came across dead soldiers who were often buried. Sometimes the armaments were scattered. Father and his brother collected stunning grenades for a quick and easy meal. ”
But despite poor beginnings, enemy fire, and escape just because of malnutrition in an Italian refugee camp, Stan had a path that led him to Canada, where he enjoyed a happy life and never lost his work ethic.
Stanislas Zadel, born in Mala Bukovica, Slovenia, was the second of four children of Ivan and Paulina Zadel. “Like many in the early 1900s, Ivan accepted all the jobs he could find to support his family,” says Stan’s daughter Marilyn Garner. “He transported and sold food and hay to other cities and cut, but the most fascinating were the stories of buying, selling and smuggling horses.”
There was always little food, Stan and his siblings, Vincent, Ivanka and Olga, often went to bed hungry. The children in the village broke into the peasant apple trees and their beehives, and Stan’s grandfather taught him to fish in the creek in front of their house. “A little extra protein helped maintain them when other foods were sorely lacking,” Marilyn says.
Due to unpaid taxes, the family lost their home during the Depression and moved into a two-bedroom house on the outskirts of their village. It was attached to a small barn and had some land where potatoes were grown. “They were able to make a living,” Marilyn says. “There were few or no clothes and shoes. The children often wrapped themselves in newspaper to keep warm. They walked a 10-kilometer way back to school and back, sun, rain or snow. ”At one point, Stan was hospitalized for diphtheria.
Stan attended school until the eighth grade. “He was mostly focused on survival and had amazing senses and instincts,” Chris says. “He was able to identify sources of sounds, which allowed him to avoid vehicles and soldiers during the war.”
At the age of nine, Stan started working, and at the age of 12, he traveled up to 60 kilometers to Rijeka (now part of Croatia) and transported wagons of hay and wood products.
With no idea of his ultimate goal, Stan was 16 when he left Mala Bukovica on his own in 1946. traveled on foot mostly at night and hid in barns and bushes during the day. He spent one year in a refugee camp in Novara, Italy. Stan and the others got up at dawn to walk on an empty stomach to the rice fields, where they worked all day in exchange for a bowl of rice. “Dad was literally starving and getting weaker,” Marilyn says.
Desperate to leave the camp, he fled with many friends in 1947 to Belgium – the only country to accept foreign workers – where he lived in a boarding house in Bernissart and worked as a miner. “Mining was a brutally hard job,” Marilyn says. “The temperature was high, the air quality was low and the miners often had to crawl through very tight spaces.”
At the mine, Stan trained as a firefighter and performed rescue duties after explosions. “Rescues were rare,” he says. “The bodies, which were obtained after spraying gas and dust, were essentially mummified from heat and dry air. Sometimes they had to find the corpses of miners who jumped into the shafts. It was a terrible job. “
In 1949, Stan met the seamstress Marianne Jevnikar and they became friends. To avoid the fate of many miners who succumbed to black lungs, Stan decided to try Canada, December 1951 arrived by ship in Saint John, NB. He got a job at a logging camp in northern Quebec, where he cut down trees in the bitter cold.
After a six-month visa, Stan returned to Belgium, where he married Marianne in August 1953. He continued to work as a miner and firefighter until the couple packed two suitcases of clothes and Marianne’s sewing machine and traveled to Montreal, where they arrived. May 1956
Stan, who already spoke Slovenian, French, Italian, German and Croatian, learned English in Canada. “He received everything that was Canadian,” says Marilyn, “while keeping his traditions and languages alive.”
After moving to Toronto, Stan built their first home on Gaydon Ave., where they raised Marilyn (born 1961) and her brother Chris (1974). “He always found time to play with me,” Marilyn says. “My father often took me with him during gardening, fishing, repair and construction.”
Stan was initially involved in landscaping before he learned to trade in bricks. Even after he was hired as a machine operator at General Mills, he took on side jobs – plumbers, tiling, roofing and carpentry – to improve the family’s situation.
After retiring from General Mills in 1990, Stan enjoyed their cottage on Lake Manitouwabing near Parry Sound and fished with friends in remote parts of Quebec. As soon as I was in the water – be it a river or a lake, I would become “childish,” says Chris. “It was like reliving my younger pre-war years.” He loved spending time with grandchildren Ryan and Daniel and helping others with minor repairs, gardening and woodworking. “You could look at a piece of raw wood and figure out which tree it came from,” Marilyn says. “Father’s hands and mind were never at peace.” Stan and Marianne also traveled, returning to Europe and vacationing in Florida, Mexico and Cuba.
He was generous to all and never took last resort, just in case anyone else was hungry and wanted seconds or thirds. “Because he knew what it was like to always be hungry as a child,” says Marilyn, “he identified it with any kind of suffering in modern times due to disasters, wars and famines. During World War II, he developed acute instincts for survival that served him well throughout his life. He never gave up when problems arose and he worked hard every day to improve his family’s life. ”
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