A Coloured Canvas

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A Coloured Canvas is a trilogy, Book I Common People. Book II Lions and Eagles. Book III The Rainbow., A Coloured Canvas is not a fictional account of the de Vries and Verboom families but an oral history of events beginning early in the twentieth century in impoverished Friesland. There seems to be a common historical thread to the story of Postwar Dutch migrants, the economic depression of the 30's , the five year occupation and destruction of The Netherlands by the Nazi Germans, followed by mass Dutch migrations to the New World including Australia and New Zealand. The de Vries family added more threads then that was common. Wessel de Vries served in the Dutch East Indies Army before WWII and was made a Japanese prisoner of war to work in the infamous Ambon and Hainan prisoner camps. Lidy and her parents were leaders and active in the Dutch Resistance. The de Vries's left the Netherlands in the early fifties to seek a better future in Australia. Tragedy almost followed this migrant family at every corner a bushfire, death of a child by accident. The birth of four more children in Australia was a blessing, including one of whom was transgender a fact accepted by Lidy, as she said herself "this child had a special spot in her heart." Despite the many hardships the family had enormous resilience and was hard working, Lidy completing her BA Social Science Monash University becoming a Social Worker with what later became Dutch Care. With faith in their God and in their Australian future using typically Dutch directness and authenticity readers will find this book extraordinarily moving.