Elly Marie Deeg

Elly Deeg passed away peacefully on Oct. 13, 2021, with her beloved husband Hans beside her holding her hand, in Faith Manor, the long-term care residence of the Holland Christian Homes in Brampton, Ontario. She would have been 97 on Oct. 25, just 12 days away. She certainly had a long and rich life, the last 73 years of which were shared with Hans, and her two boys, Frank and Bart.

Elly was born in 1924 in Jakarta, Indonesia, then called Batavia, the capital of the-then Dutch East Indies. Her mother, Henrietta van Zonneveld, had been born in Indonesia and was one of the Dutch colonials enjoying life in the tropics. Her father, Frits van Zonneveld, while born in Holland, had emigrated to Indonesia to embark on his career with the Dutch trading company called Internatio. They had a son, Robert, born in 1921 in Jakarta, followed by Elly 3 years later. Life in Indonesia for the van Zonneveld’s in those days was comfortable, and pleasant. The family was able to travel on lengthy furloughs to Holland every 7 years, which resulted in a most amazing “round the world” trip for the van Zonneveld family in 1935: by ship on the Pacific and Atlantic, and by rail overland in the US, including stops in Tokyo, San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, and New York City, and finally the Netherlands.

Life in Indonesia changed dramatically with the start of WWII. Japan invaded the country and Elly, her mother and her father all spent the next 4 years in prison camps. Having survived the endless hardships and disease, they were finally liberated in late 1945. They were repatriated back to Holland in early 1946, and were then reunited with Elly’s brother Rob, who had earlier returned to Holland for his studies.
Meanwhile, after Hans too had survived the war and contributed to the Dutch resistance, he resumed his studies in Delft. It was there, at the university library where Elly had started working, that they met, fell in love, got married and started on their life-long journey together.

Soon thereafter, Frank was born in Delft and then the three Deegs“emigrated” to Palembang, Sumatra where Hans had been fortunate to land his first job as a chemical engineer. Again, Elly was happy to return to Indonesia and the tropical life she had enjoyed so much in the 20’s and 30’s. However, given conditions in Indonesia after the war and the country having gained independence from the Netherlands in the meantime, their time in the company town of SungeiGerong was quickly coming to an end. But first, Bart was born there so now there were 4 Deegs about to embark on yet another adventure.

In 1952, the Deegs returned briefly to Holland and Hans began to look for another job – and he was fortunate to quickly find one with Canadian Oil in Sarnia, Ontario. So, in late 1952 the Deegs emigrated again, this time to Canada, where Elly at first found it difficult to get used to Canadian winters. Still, with the friends that Elly and Hans met in Sarnia, many of them also Dutch immigrants and some of whom had themselves also lived in Indonesia, life was once again comfortable and pleasant. And Elly finally had the time to pursue her exceptional talents at needlework and knitting, providing artwork and presents to many for years to come.
Then, life for the Deeg family changed again. They decided to move to Los Angeles in 1957, for Elly to return to a more tropical climate she enjoyed, and for Hans to further his career. But the experiment proved to be short-lived. Schooling for the boys in LA was not up to the Canadian standards they had been used to, the climate turned out not to be as ideal as advertised (too much smog, too hot in the summer, too wet in the winter), and life in LA was too busy and too car-oriented, and it was difficult to make new friends. But Elly seized the opportunity to resume her life-long love affair with dogs, starting with Smoky in 1958 and ending with Skippy in 2014. By mid-1959, the Deeg’s found themselves once again back in Sarnia, where Elly reunited with all their friends and Hans back at work at his former oil company. By this time, with her boys older and at school, Elly had started volunteering at special schools for mentally handicapped children, work that she found rewarding and fulfilling. But, change was once again in the air.

In 1963, Shell Canada bought the Canadian Oil Company, and with that change Hans was transferred to the head office of Shell in Toronto. In summer 1963, the Deeg family moved from Sarnia to Islington, where Elly and Hans lived for the next 51 years. Elly found life in Toronto at first daunting, given its size and busy-ness, but soon Elly and Hans met a whole new set of friends, many of them Dutch, and some also originally from Indonesia. With her boys now older, even if not necessarily wiser, Elly decided to go back to school and she succeeded in earning a diploma in early childhood education from the University of Toronto. She enjoyed many years of enjoyable and satisfying work in her chosen field of early childhood education, making many friends along the way.

By the time Hans was approaching retirement from Shell, first Bart got married in Germany in 1980 to his then-German wife Margaret, and finally Frank joined the betrothed ranks, marrying Kathy in Ottawa in 1986. In the meantime, Bart and Margaret started their own family in Edmonton, and produced the granddaughter Christina and grandson Philip who became the permanent targets of Elly’s (and Hans’) affections and pride.It was now the occasion for Elly to demonstrate another of her many talents: organizing an amazing succession of “Deeg family reunions” – in lovely and scenic locales across Canada, on Holland America cruises in the Caribbean and Alaska, and at great resorts in Cuba. Friends of Frank and Bart used to beg to be “adopted” to enjoy these reunions too!

There would be one more change in Elly’s and Hans’ lives: in 2014 they decided to leave the family homestead in Islington, after 51 years, and move to the Hope Tower of the Holland Christian Homes in Brampton, a retirement complex founded by immigrant Dutch-Canadians and with many of its residents of Dutch origin – a perfect “home away from home” for Elly and Hans. During the 7 years that they resided there, their granddaughter Christina married her long-time sweetheart Lee, and they now have two children, two great-granddaughters: Elly, named after her great-grandmother Elly, and just recently, Daisy. Elly was fortunate to have met them both, in person in Brampton, and virtually via FaceTime.

And so, the circle of life comes around. Elly will always be remembered as a loving, caring, and devoted wife, mother, grandmother and finally great-grandmother. Elly did have a full, rich and adventurous life, and will be fondly remembered by her family, and by all those friends that she met over the years and whose friendship she nurtured and cherished.

A private family service will be held. In Elly's memory donations to Holland Christian Homes would be appreciated by the family.