Person:Jan Stad (10)

BIOGRAPHY: John was born a shopkeeper's son in a backwater town in the Netherlands.

 His ancestors were peat farmers, so John was far from belonging to 

the upper classes. In essence John educated himself since his family couldn't afford to send him to school. He studied under the local principal and got his teacher's certificate. When his fiance Hermina died, John needed a change. He went to Indonesia and rehabilitated several Christian schools as principal and teacher. In Indonesia John met and married Anne Boonstra, another teacher, and all four of their children were born there. Their firstborn were twin girls. There was a problem in the pregnancy that one of the babies, named after former fiance Hermina, didn't get enough nourishment in the womb. As a result, Hermina was weak both mentally and physically, and lived with her parents until their death. Europeans in Indonesia needed to take six months off to recover their health after working a number of years in Indonesia's oppressive climate. When John, Anne and family were due for their second sabbatical, they couldn't go back to the Netherlands. World War Two had begun and the Nazis had occupied their homeland, so John took his family to Houston BC Canada where his brother had immigrated. The ship they sailed in had to be blacked out when it left Indonesia because the Japanese navy was nearby. It wasn't too long before Indonesia was overrun by the Japanese, so we thank God that John's family didn't spend the war in a concentration camp.

BIOGRAPHY: Life in northern BC was hard at first. In Indonesia, with cheap labour and oppressive heat, all westerners had servants. John had a gardener, cook, and a butler who took the children to school on his bicycle.

 In Houston the weather was cold, there were no servants so Anne had 

to learn how to cook, and they lived in a log cabin so tiny that John and Anne had to sleep in a tent until another room could be added.

 One night, Anne woke up and saw a huge head poking through the flap 

of the tent. She screamed "John, a bear!" It turned out to be a curious cow. John served as elder in the local Christian Reformed church. He taught catechism and read sermons when a minister wasn't available. John would sometimes write his own sermons, though he didn't have the seminary degree to permit this. Once when he had lit the woodstove to warm up the church for catechism class, the church burned down. It wasn't feasible to build another church, so from then on the family rode to church in the next town on the back of a flatbed truck. The family moved to several different communities while John tried his hand at a number of occupations including chicken farming.

BIOGRAPHY: You may have noticed that in this genealogy, John and Anne's family have their name spelled "Stad(t)". This is because before the family got Canadian citizenship in 1953, the name was "Stad". John added the "T" to make it "Stadt". Therefore this branch spells its name differently from the others which stayed with "Stad". Why did John change the name? There is another dutch clan which uses the "Stadt" and they seem to have their origins in Groningen. John thought that the two clans were related. Unfortunately, this genealogy hasn't found any evidence for this assumption. But there is a benefit to the change, it more closely maintains the correct pronunciation of this dutch name in english. In dutch, the name is pronounced "stutt", so "Stadt" probably works better in english than the original "Stad" does. "Stad" in dutch means "city", and the old spelling was "Stadt". The germans still use this spelling. So it is quite appropriate for this option to have been taken, even if it may have been for the wrong reasons. And it naturally makes things a bit confusing for genealogists!

BIOGRAPHY: One year in southern Alberta was a disaster. The climate was too hard on John and he caught pneumonia. The children had more than their share of bad health too. The Doctor advised John to move to the coast, so the family moved to southwestern BC. Word got around that a Christian principal was here, so John was invited to start a Christian school in Vancouver. In the next decade, he also started schools in New Westminster and Victoria. His students remember his gripping Bible lessons.

BIOGRAPHY: John retired in 1965, but remained an active member of the church and school community. His hearing was failing and he had a heart valve replaced. Having an artificial heart valve meant that for the rest of life he had to take blood-thinning medication. It is a delicate balance to keep the blood thin enough so that it won't clot on the valve, but not too thin. In 1980 the blood was out of balance and John had a series of strokes. These left him unable to speak and impaired him mentally. He spent his last few years in a nursing home and died in December 1984. He was predeceased by Ann, whose heart gave out in March 1984. She had suffered from angina for many years.

BIOGRAPHY: John and Ann were pillars of their community and were well known in the Christian school movement and Christian Reformed churches in BC.