Vulgar History - Canadian History (part 2)： WWII Resistance Fighter, Mona Parsons

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00:00:25.400 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, Canadian Heritage Minute, bracket S.

00:00:30.000 minutes um this is a series of mini episodes that are inspired by the classic historic Canada

00:00:36.340 Canadian Heritage Minutes those were 60 second commercials about things in Canadian history and

00:00:41.520 this is a slightly longer thing we're talking about stuff in Canadian history and that's because 0.96

00:00:46.760 what the fuck is happening Jesus Christ yeah just for a quick you know I really want to get to the 0.92

00:00:53.300 story I want to focus on just the the history story I'm here to tell you which is like I'm 0.99

00:00:56.620 really excited about. But first, just some updates in this audio journal that is this

00:01:02.300 podcast now, apparently. My name is Anne Foster. I'm a Canadian person. I currently live in

00:01:07.280 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory, homeland of the Métis. I was born on the

00:01:12.900 East Coast in Nova Scotia. And historically, I've always been a history fan. And I think

00:01:18.880 part of the reason is because I grew up in Nova Scotia, which compared to other places

00:01:23.060 in Canada has kind of some of the oldest existing buildings because Canada was settled. Thousands

00:01:29.060 of groups of people lived on this whole continent before Canada was settled. But Canada, as it is

00:01:33.840 now, was first colonized by the French and the British in the 18th century. And they started 1.00

00:01:39.940 from the East Coast and worked their way West. And so the oldest places you're going to find in

00:01:43.780 Canada are more towards East Coast. And that's where I grew up, comma. And there were cool

00:01:49.420 things around where I lived. There's lots of old stone structures, lots of ghost stories,

00:01:52.520 lots of stuff about fishermen and things. There's also a lot of women's history I did not learn

00:01:56.200 about. And today we're going to be talking about another Nova Scotian person. But first,

00:02:01.720 update about elbows up, Canada uniting and rage patriotism still going on. No reason to stop.

00:02:09.380 And my update for you is that it's bringing some weird feelings up in me and I presume,

00:02:15.860 and a lot of other people about who we're suddenly cheering on, who we're happy to see

00:02:20.620 supporting us so recently king charles iii who you might know as camilla's husband diana's ex

00:02:29.120 harry's dad not a man i've ever really felt like oh hooray he's the king and i'm cool with that

00:02:38.860 although i will say that i have a book coming out next year rebel of the regency a biography of

00:02:43.580 carolina brunswick and i am waiting for buckingham palace to give permission for us to use a painting

00:02:49.100 that they have the rights to in my book.

00:02:51.100 So like, I'm cool with Charles at the moment,

00:02:53.820 but I'm really cool with Charles at the moment

00:02:55.340 because he, the British monarch

00:02:58.020 isn't allowed to like make statements

00:02:59.140 about political stuff,

00:03:00.160 but he recently did a ceremonial thing

00:03:03.180 where he was like planting a tree

00:03:04.320 and it was like a maple tree

00:03:05.580 with like red leaves,

00:03:06.620 kind of like the Canada flag.

00:03:08.220 He showed up to this military engagement wearing,

00:03:10.860 so Canada is part of the Commonwealth.

00:03:13.480 Like he is our King, Charles.

00:03:15.560 And he showed up wearing his honorary

00:03:18.080 like canadian military outfit like queen elizabeth his mom used to do stuff where it's like oh she's

00:03:24.240 wearing this brooch or she's wearing this color like and people read into it to be like oh these

00:03:27.660 are the sort of messages she's trying to send in as best as she can through her outfits and he's

00:03:32.480 he's supreme canada and i was shocked to find myself heartened and glad like never in my life

00:03:39.220 have i ever thought like oh i i hope charles steps up for me and for canada i'm just like wow

00:03:44.460 Charles and I are on the same team. Wild. So every province has a premier. I think in the US,

00:03:51.320 your states have like governors. So the premier of Ontario is a guy called Doug Ford, who has just

00:03:56.200 been the absolute worst. Conservative, just like blowhard, just like not a person I've ever had any

00:04:05.760 fond feelings about really. But he's been sort of stepping up in a way where I'm just like, I'm like,

00:04:10.940 i'm on the same team gladly as doug ford and king charles strange and then there's a moment where

00:04:18.040 so our prime minister justin trudeau uh just stepped down we have a new prime minister who's

00:04:22.140 just sworn in mark carney and he's from the liberal party that's what the party is called

00:04:27.020 doug ford is a conservative person allied with the conservative party and the two of them met

00:04:32.820 for breakfast in like a diner and they took a picture of them smiling together and i was just 0.99

00:04:36.760 like, fuck yeah, boys. And I'm just like, what am I talking about? How am I cheering for these two 0.98

00:04:41.140 white men having a diner meal? But I'm like, yeah, me, those two guys, King Charles, the whole 0.91

00:04:46.480 country of Canada, elbows up. It's a fucking weird time. Growing up in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, 0.95

00:04:54.160 first of all, as a child, you read Robert Munch, Canadian author. His book's still popular. And

00:04:58.740 then when you're in middle school, you would read Gordon Corman books and you would read

00:05:03.220 martin godfrey books martin godfrey r.i.p he passed quite a long time ago but one of his books and i

00:05:10.020 loved his books growing up it's called i believe um i spent my summer vacation kidnapped into space

00:05:14.980 and it was about this boy and a girl and they were kidnapped into space and there's a whole thing

00:05:18.880 where they had to at one point they're in sort of a gladiator arena and they had to face off against

00:05:23.660 these giant space aliens and then they realized like oh wait these are basically giant slugs and

00:05:27.320 you know how to deal with slugs throw salt at them and then they defeated them and that's how i still

00:05:30.980 to this day, remember, throw salt at slugs. Is that true? I don't know. But I often sometimes

00:05:36.460 think about the situation in that book where it's like, what if I was kidnapped by space aliens and

00:05:40.280 it was like me and one other human? It's like, it could be somebody who you would never get along

00:05:44.860 with. Like as a kid, I'd be like, what if it was a kid in my class I don't like? Or, you know,

00:05:48.500 when you're in grade three, it's like, what if it's a kid in grade six, you know, some like 0.80

00:05:51.820 cooler, older kid where it's just like someone you would never be friends with, someone from a

00:05:55.160 different clique. And as an adult, I think like, what if it's somebody I have political differences

00:05:58.800 with but if you're on this planet in this gladiator arena facing these giant slug aliens it's like

00:06:04.880 you gotta band together because the the enemy of your enemy is your friend or whatever like you

00:06:10.520 you just inherently band together with the only other human being there and i have thought to

00:06:15.940 myself many times over the last decade that there's a lot of people that i think like probably

00:06:24.380 most human beings i think i could would be cool teaming up with against the slugs except for some

00:06:29.920 of the people running america right now who i think i would sacrifice to the slugs like there's

00:06:35.480 some people where it's just like even if we were the only humans and us teaming up stood between 0.88

00:06:40.000 me and death like i would choose death over teaming up with some of these people like i

00:06:45.200 can't bother with it which brings us to today's story because today's story and actually thank

00:06:53.180 to my very good friend and Canadian consultant, Marlene, who knows more than anyone I know about

00:07:00.300 Canadian actors, Canadian TV shows, Canadian content. And so when I was doing this series,

00:07:06.080 I was like, who's someone I should talk about? And she said, Mona Parsons, a name I had never

00:07:10.760 heard. I looked it up and I was just like, oh my God, I have to cover this story. And so where this

00:07:15.400 story, first of all, this is the second episode of the Vulgar History Canadian Heritage Minutes.

00:07:20.620 And I think sequentially, I want to present different people from Canadian history.

00:07:27.200 And then when you put them together in a mosaic, you can kind of see the vibe, what this country

00:07:32.380 is about.

00:07:32.980 If you don't know about Canada, you don't know about Canadian history, I'll paint you

00:07:37.600 a picture of the sorts of people who live here and who helped create the country that

00:07:43.280 we now live in, which is a very multicultural country.

00:07:45.680 This is a story from, it took place in the 20th century.

00:07:48.880 It gets into World War II type stuff. And it also shows you that what Mona Parsons exemplifies

00:07:55.420 is that women in Canadian history, people in Canadian history, contain multitudes. And when

00:08:02.600 we see something, when we see an injustice, when we see something as shitty, like the best people

00:08:08.800 in this country, which is a lot of us, want to step up and do the right thing. And we are anti-Nazi

00:08:15.980 in this country. And she faced off against the Nazis. And it's a classic vulgar history type

00:08:24.820 story. If you've heard my regular podcast that I do, regular vulgar history episodes,

00:08:28.900 usually an hour, an hour and a half. Sometimes I get carried away. It turns into a five-part

00:08:32.740 series. But I like a story with twists and turns and twists and turns. And it keeps changing and

00:08:37.160 pivoting. And this is... I'll tell you the story. I'll tell you the story. Now I've got this all

00:08:41.340 worked up. I will say this is another person. There is a literal Canadian Heritage Minute

00:08:45.440 about this. It came out in the early 2000s, which was a time at which I was watching less

00:08:49.540 television with commercials. So I had not seen it before, but I'm glad just so you know, she's got

00:08:53.740 that. She's got the Canada Post stamp and she's got the Canadian Heritage Minute, which is how

00:08:58.100 you know this is a Canadian goddamn legend. Mona Parsons. And I do want to also say that my source 0.99

00:09:04.800 for this is monaparsons.ca, which is a website done by a writer called Andrea Hill Lair, who

00:09:11.460 also wrote a book called Mona Parsons, From Privilege to Prison, From Nova Scotia to Nazi

00:09:16.140 Europe. And that's why we know the story. That's why there is a Canadian Heritage Minute. That's

00:09:19.960 why there is a stamp. Because Andrea Hill Lair heard about this woman who lived in the same

00:09:24.980 city where Andrea lives and just started digging and finding this story. And because of her dogged

00:09:30.120 pursuit of this, we now know the story and now I can share it with you. And she has a website,

00:09:35.400 monaparsons.ca that, or I abridged, um, how she tells the story there to share it with you. So

00:09:41.780 Mona Parsons also actually one more thing I want to point out, which as I go through these episodes,

00:09:46.700 I want to talk about all kinds of different women from Canadian history of all kinds of different

00:09:50.380 cultures and ethnicities and experiences, genders and everything. And Mona Parsons is a white woman. 0.98

00:09:58.240 And this is like the sort of white woman I aspire to be, which is someone who is helping, someone who is not just an ally, someone who is an advocate, someone who is an alibi, someone who is an accessory, like someone who's just like in the dirt, doing the work, using her privilege to help other people who don't have that privilege.

00:10:22.780 So an icon for white women and for everybody. Mona Parsons was born February 17th, 1901 in the

00:10:30.240 town of Middleton in Nova Scotia. So her father was a businessman and her mother looked after 0.96

00:10:37.020 their home and two sons. So she had two brothers. When she was 10 years old, Mona, her father's

00:10:43.520 business burnt to the ground, which devastated the town. And so basically they peaced out of

00:10:49.020 they left this town and they moved to Wolfville, which is the nearby city, which is a city that

00:10:54.160 is still there. And so while there, Mona attended school at the Acadia Ladies Seminary. And while

00:11:00.540 there, she got her first taste of live theater and performing because touring companies, amateur

00:11:06.240 performances were put on there. And then she turns out she was really good. She had a natural gift

00:11:11.180 and she was trained in acting and in singing. And so this eventually led to her being cast in some

00:11:16.400 of these plays and as a former theater kid i vibe with this um teenage saga when she was 13 years

00:11:23.240 old world war one broke out canada like all the countries in the world um was involved in this

00:11:30.960 um fighting on the allies side and so canada has always been when there's well in my understanding

00:11:38.680 world war one world war two like canada really what we're feeling now this like rage patriotism

00:11:44.500 I think there was a similar vibe that people are just like, we're doing this war and we're

00:11:47.300 going to do it. So she's 13 years old and she helped out as best as she could as a 13-year-old

00:11:53.500 in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She knitted socks for soldiers. She engaged in community activities to

00:12:00.140 support the troops and the war effort. I would presume that involved maybe she would do some

00:12:03.860 performances and then donate the money, that sort of thing. Her father and her two brothers enlisted

00:12:08.320 and her brother Ross was wounded in 1917.

00:12:12.380 And this was a real turning point for Mona Parsons.

00:12:14.580 She went from being kind of like small town Canadian girl 0.99

00:12:18.520 doing theater to just being like, oh fuck, 1.00

00:12:21.000 like she had an awakening. 1.00

00:12:23.020 She had an aha moment,

00:12:24.240 but like the world is a bigger place

00:12:25.680 and injustices were happening

00:12:27.100 and she wanted to be on the right side of history.

00:12:30.400 So she also saw at this point,

00:12:32.640 like so many men went off to fight in the war,

00:12:34.260 so many men died in the war

00:12:35.640 and the women left at home had to pick up the slack and do all the work. And so she saw

00:12:40.500 that women had to take control of farms and businesses. They took on roles as nurses near 1.00

00:12:46.340 the battlefront. And she saw like, oh, like these are things women can do. And she was like, I want 1.00

00:12:51.160 a life where I do things. I want more than being a wife and a mother. Maybe I want that too,

00:12:57.520 but I want to be a strong, independent woman. And I want to do things to be on the right side

00:13:02.240 history. So she graduated with a certificate in elocution, which I believe means just having

00:13:09.040 beautiful speech and singing and giving speeches and things like that. Then she went to school in

00:13:14.000 Boston. And through the 1920s, she moved back and forth between Wolfville and the US. She took

00:13:21.240 classes at Acadia University, which is still there in Wolfville. And then she also taught

00:13:26.580 elocution. She was so good. She was able to teach it at Central College in Arkansas.

00:13:31.240 and then eventually do you know where this bitch landed she landed a role in the Ziegfeld Follies 1.00

00:13:37.660 in New York the Ziegfeld Follies was like the musical theater review this is like the place 0.97

00:13:45.760 to be like I think I don't know like imagine like the Rockettes times all of Broadway times

00:13:51.740 like this is this is the place to be if you want to be a young woman who's performing the Ziegfeld

00:13:57.620 Follies. That is it. And so she got there and she's just like on the big stage in New York

00:14:02.280 City, like dreaming the dream. And just imagine how, I mean, we know she's skilled. She can act,

00:14:06.640 she can sing, she can dance. She's also gorgeous. And then when you're there, you know, wealthy men 1.00

00:14:11.780 would go and they would want to kind of like have dates with the women in the Ziegfeld Follies. But

00:14:15.620 she was like, I want still more. She wanted roles and plays like she did back in Wolfville, like 0.60

00:14:22.340 where she wasn't just kind of like using her looks and dancing. She wanted to like really

00:14:26.980 dig deep and do something she was passionate about. But before she could kind of shift her

00:14:32.640 focus to doing that sort of acting, she got a telegram, horrible news. Her mother back in

00:14:37.300 Willfield had a stroke. And so she went back home and shortly after she arrived, her mother

00:14:41.180 had a second stroke and died. Mona was now 29 years old. In those days, I mean, we still have

00:14:50.040 this now, but especially back then, there was a real like, ladies don't tell their age, but like 1.00

00:14:53.060 1929, was older for a showgirl in those days. And I think she would also, like a lot of us,

00:14:59.600 when I was around that age, I had a real like, what am I doing with my life type moment?

00:15:03.720 So it's 1929. The stock market crashed. So the world is in a depression. So she knew she needed

00:15:12.160 a solid career. And this is really honestly similar to how I became a librarian, which is my

00:15:16.760 job. Because I was just like, I want a career type job. I want something with longevity,

00:15:22.680 a pension. She wanted something that would provide stability in tough times.

00:15:27.140 And so she thought back to the stories she'd heard from her family, but like the nurses in

00:15:31.480 World War I, that's the way that you can help. That's the way you can give back. That's the job

00:15:35.920 at that point in 1929 that women could do. And she was also influenced by seeing her mother

00:15:40.940 when she had the stroke and the nurses that she saw who were treating her. And so she enrolled

00:15:47.480 in the Jersey School of Medicine to become a nurse. She graduated with honors in 1935.

00:15:52.680 and landed a job in New York City at a Park Avenue ear, nose, and throat specialist.

00:15:59.600 In the first of several coincidences, this man was actually from Nova Scotia as well.

00:16:05.340 The thing about Nova Scotia back then, now a bit, but back then, it's like you're only ever

00:16:11.900 one to two degrees of separation from someone who you both know. It's a province, but it's also

00:16:17.800 feels it's a small town that's also a problem. So it's still the Great Depression, right? But

00:16:24.320 because of her career choice, because of her skills, she was an independent woman embarking

00:16:29.220 on a solid career with a good future, living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in North

00:16:34.300 America, New York City. And then 1937. Remember, she's brothers. So one of her brothers at this

00:16:43.400 point was based in Rhode Island. And he called her one day to ask a favor. That guy was just

00:16:48.260 doing a business trip. And he was wondering, like, could you show this guy, just like tour

00:16:52.280 him around, show him all the sites of New York City. And she's like, sure. Like she's just,

00:16:57.060 she's a game. She's up for it. She's like happy to do a favor for her brother. And so she met

00:17:01.540 this guy, this business associate, whose name is Willem Leonhardt. Willem was Dutch and he was

00:17:09.540 a millionaire his business was selling plumbing fixtures plumbing fixtures so like pipes and

00:17:19.640 sinks and things you know what of course you become a millionaire in 1937 from your family

00:17:26.360 business of plumbing fixtures because his family's business had started a couple decades ago um laying

00:17:32.500 the foundation of modern water and water and sewer systems in amsterdam like this is like

00:17:37.180 in Europe, especially there's a lot of old buildings and old places that want to have

00:17:41.840 running water. And his company was the people who were installing that. And so also in this era,

00:17:48.860 Hollywood films were showing bathrooms as these like decadent art deco, amazing places to go.

00:17:54.780 And so, so they met love at first sight. A few days later, Willem had to go on another business

00:18:00.760 trip um he had to go to mexico but before he left um so he went to mexico came back a few weeks later

00:18:07.580 paused in new york city long enough to propose marriage and she accepted and in september they

00:18:14.180 got married well they went to holland and then they got married they went for honeymoon along

00:18:18.000 the french and italian rivieras and then upon returning to holland they purchased land in

00:18:22.060 laran where they uh built a three-story dream home surrounded by lavish gardens and they called the

00:18:27.940 estate Ingleside. Now, did they name this estate after Ella Montgomery's book Rilla of Ingleside?

00:18:35.540 Who's to say? But that's another East Coast person. Rilla of Ingleside being the daughter

00:18:40.520 of Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, Ella Montgomery being the author of Anne of Green

00:18:44.440 Gables. I did an episode of Vulgar History a year or two ago about Ella Montgomery that you can look

00:18:50.760 up if you want to learn more about her. So they're just like living their life. And this is where

00:18:54.420 it reminds me of now. Because World War I happened. Mona's like, I've lived through 0.73

00:18:59.880 unprecedented times. Now here we are, amazing, precedented times. Living in Holland in 1937,

00:19:10.080 what could go wrong? World War II, baby, is what happened. In May 1940, Holland was invaded by 0.89

00:19:17.860 nazi germany holland surrendered um and the country was occupied for five years which resulted

00:19:26.220 in the transporter deaths of thousands of its citizens and bringing the nation to the brink

00:19:30.380 of starvation so mona is just there this like nova scotian ex showgirl and she's just like 0.95

00:19:38.520 what the fuck like more unprecedented times more unprecedented times world war ii who knew there 1.00

00:19:44.540 be another one. But she's married to this millionaire. She's a wealthy socialite. And 1.00

00:19:49.120 she was like, she felt it was necessary to find ways to resist and to thwart the Nazi occupation.

00:19:54.600 She wasn't like, she's not going to be, you know, like the, some of the people in the Sound of

00:19:58.820 Music who are just kind of like, oh, that's, you know what, like, let them do whatever. We'll just

00:20:01.800 have parties. She's like, fuck no. She's like, she's Christopher Plummer in the Sound of Music. 1.00

00:20:05.960 She's ripping the Nazi flag, except in her own way. So she and Willem, who's also on board with 0.89

00:20:12.660 like, let's be on the right side of history, which is then, is now, will always be the side

00:20:18.060 opposing the Nazis. So they joined a group of other people who felt the same way and vowed to

00:20:22.860 do whatever they could to counter what the Nazis were up to. This group didn't have a name at the

00:20:27.780 point, but eventually we know them as the resistance. So what she and Willem were best

00:20:35.320 able and best equipped to do was to let people hide in their house. So it's not an underground

00:20:40.900 railroad scenario but it's kind of an underground railroad scenario so they had this beautiful

00:20:46.840 three-story house and i believe the top floor of the house is where all their servants lived

00:20:50.920 and they're like what we need to do is like we can hide people in that top floor so first they

00:20:56.260 like regrettably had to let their servants go because they had to use the top floor to like

00:21:00.700 hide people for the resistance and that is what they did and the people who they're helping to

00:21:05.580 hide like what was happening in in near holland was um there's airplane stuff happening right

00:21:11.620 like there's that the allies including canadian people british people american people i think

00:21:17.420 they're flying airplanes over there and then like but there was like nazi airplanes fighting the

00:21:21.040 airplanes there's like these airplane battles and so sometimes the allied flyers pilots would um

00:21:27.640 the planes would go down and they'd be trapped in holland so what mona and her husband are doing is

00:21:32.280 they're going to, her and the other people in this network, not just them, there is people

00:21:35.780 from all different walks of life. We're on board this, be on the right side of history,

00:21:39.940 the anti-Nazi side, teachers, farmers, businessmen, professors. So they gathered false identity

00:21:45.500 papers, ration cards, and civilian clothing, providing accommodation and transportation 0.81

00:21:49.560 to get these pilots to coastal villages so they could go back to England. And they'll get back 1.00

00:21:54.640 to England on fishing boats. Fishermen are involved in all of this. The fishing boats

00:21:58.900 would take them to the North Sea to rendezvous with British submarines to take them back to

00:22:03.620 England. This is some real spy shit. And they were, Mona and Willem, a crucial part of this. 1.00

00:22:10.320 Oh, and this is just clarifying in this as well. So they had to let the servants go,

00:22:14.560 not just because they had to have the pilots hide in the top floor, but also because they

00:22:19.600 didn't want the servants to be implicated in case Mona and Willem got arrested. They didn't

00:22:23.740 want the servants to go down with them. So that is a good reason to fire people, I guess, if you

00:22:28.480 have to so the nazis what the fuck is this world the nazis who again to clarify are the bad guys 0.98

00:22:38.500 in this story and now and every story um they were class conscious um they like mona and willem were 0.99

00:22:48.180 like gorgeous rich white people and so they weren't harassed by soldiers they were treated

00:22:53.720 with respect because they looked kind of like what nazis thought people should look like and

00:22:58.460 the whole not the nazis vibe at this point was they thought once the upper class once the rich

00:23:03.160 people could be convinced the nazis were not a real threat everyone else would maybe stop fighting

00:23:08.980 the nazis and the nazis could take over is what they were doing then is similar to what is

00:23:14.800 happening now if you get all the rich people on board maybe everyone else will aspire to be like

00:23:18.840 them and stop fighting. Didn't work then. Not working now. Not going to work ever. So, but

00:23:25.100 because they knew the Nazis were bitches like this, Mona and Willem were just like, we'll use 0.99

00:23:29.660 this to our advantage. Like we'll use our privilege to fight the Nazis. However, by the 0.99

00:23:36.020 summer of 1941, the Nazis started to realize that this plan was not going to work. And they also 0.83

00:23:43.120 realized like, oh, there's the resistance. So they started to infiltrate the network. They would

00:23:48.120 arrest people they would interrogate them but everyone was covering for everybody but it was

00:23:52.520 getting the part was getting tricky was moving the pilots from the airmen from like from the house to

00:23:58.340 the place to the fishing boat to the submarine like it was just getting more and more difficult

00:24:02.080 to move them around so they're having to keep them in hiding sometimes instead of just like

00:24:06.820 coming in the house moving along really quickly sometimes i have to hide overnight and the longer

00:24:11.060 they were there, the more risky it was that you might get caught. By September 1941, Mona and

00:24:18.240 Willem agreed that Willems should go into hiding because they thought like they might be closing

00:24:22.440 in on them. Mona would remain behind in the house and she would kind of, with her acting skills and

00:24:27.200 with her beauty, she would be able to just be, oh, he went off on a fishing trip. Don't worry about

00:24:31.160 me. Totally not a resistance fighter. And she also stayed behind to care for their two dogs

00:24:36.500 and just to kind of look not suspicious.

00:24:40.200 And their instincts were correct

00:24:41.400 because the Gestapo arrived at Ingleside 0.78

00:24:44.040 and brought her in for some questioning.

00:24:46.400 She was subjected to repeated questioning,

00:24:49.140 but she pulled out all of the classic things 0.99

00:24:52.960 that women do when we want to look dumber than we are. 1.00

00:24:57.900 She pretended to be confused. 0.99

00:24:59.520 She pretended like, oh, my German's not that good,

00:25:01.120 although she spoke fluent German and also Dutch.

00:25:03.620 But then they were like,

00:25:04.580 uh actually we have files with details about people that you know um in fact we just found

00:25:10.480 this guy this british pilot who you who's just staying at your house and he had a business card

00:25:14.660 in his pocket with your name and phone number on it so she was kind of fucked she's put into 0.91

00:25:19.760 solitary confinement and she was held for three months without charge in this terrifying situation 0.93

00:25:26.440 and then one day some guards came in and they're like guess who's on trial today you are

00:25:30.960 and she was taken to trial.

00:25:33.660 She didn't have a consultation with a lawyer.

00:25:35.820 She didn't know what the charges against her were.

00:25:37.880 And the whole trial was being done in German,

00:25:39.240 which she understood.

00:25:40.860 But like in this situation,

00:25:42.920 like she spoke German,

00:25:43.860 but you know,

00:25:44.820 it's some technical language.

00:25:46.160 But she did understand

00:25:47.360 when they found her guilty

00:25:49.940 and sentenced her to death by firing squad.

00:25:53.560 You might be looking at the length of this episode

00:25:55.660 and realizing the story doesn't end here.

00:25:57.920 So hang on.

00:25:59.120 and this is what's in the canadian heritage minute so all of her acting training her

00:26:03.420 elocution letters being the ziegfeld folly she stood there cool as anything she remained calm

00:26:08.960 she bowed her head slightly clicked her heels together and all that she said was guten morgen

00:26:15.920 mine and heron a phrase i know from the musical cabaret she's saying good morning um sir basically

00:26:22.640 And she was so calm and cool about it and took this like so well and was just, I don't know, just beautiful, her elocution.

00:26:31.240 The chief judge of the tribunal was so impressed. 0.63

00:26:33.360 He followed her from the courtroom and he was like, OK, you're being transferred to this other prison to be killed by a firing squad.

00:26:39.880 But I will permit you to appeal your sentence because you're so you're such a classy broad.

00:26:45.060 And so she was given writing materials upon her return to the prison.

00:26:49.240 so she wrote her appeal and in fact it worked um her death sentence was commuted to uh life

00:26:56.520 in labor camps this was one month before her 41st birthday just so we're all keeping track

00:27:02.360 of how old she was um so she's taken with other prisoners to a train station um then she's being

00:27:08.360 moved to a different uh prison a working a concentration camp labor thing and so she moved

00:27:15.480 to this labor camp where she worked on an assembly line creating plywood wings for small craft and

00:27:22.220 then on the line assembling igniters for bombs while she was there she became ill with bronchitis

00:27:27.260 several times but and then you know because it's like a prison working camp so even when um she

00:27:33.300 was in the hospital she was still tasked with doing more work um and the work that they got

00:27:37.500 her to do was to knit socks for uh the german soldiers remember she knit socks for soldiers

00:27:43.340 in World War I, so it's a skill she had. She derived great satisfaction by breaking the wool

00:27:49.640 frequently when not watched, so there'd be holes in the socks. And she'd also incorporate large

00:27:54.360 knots of wool in the soles of the socks to make them uncomfortable. Any act of defiance, regardless

00:27:59.440 of how small, was enough to buoy her spirits to help her survive. And I feel like that's a good

00:28:04.020 reminder for us all. Every little bit of fuck you energy is valuable, especially if it brings you 0.99

00:28:10.640 joy. So 1945, February 6th, all the prisoners in this prison camp were herded onto a train going 0.99

00:28:17.400 to, they're just switching them to a different labor camp, I guess. And while she was waiting

00:28:20.980 to switch to the other train, she suddenly saw Willem, her millionaire husband, among the other

00:28:28.120 prisoners being put on another train. She hadn't seen him since. Remember he left at that one point

00:28:33.220 when they thought he was going to be arrested. She didn't know what had happened to him. She

00:28:35.560 didn't know if he was alive or dead. So he had been eventually arrested. Without thinking of

00:28:40.120 consequentious, she ran to him, threw her arms around him, embraced him, and she's able to say,

00:28:44.920 have courage, my love, in Dutch before they were parted again. At the next prison, I mean,

00:28:51.380 these prisons are all shitty, overcrowded, sleeping four in a cell designed for one, 0.97

00:28:56.940 very little food. The toilet was a bucket in the middle of the floor. Things were terrible, 1.00

00:29:01.460 obviously. And then shortly after her arrival at this prison, I believe it was this prison,

00:29:07.320 Another small group of prisoners arrived.

00:29:09.860 One young woman caught her eye. 0.98

00:29:11.880 This was Wendellian von Boetzlar, a 22-year-old baroness,

00:29:18.520 a university student who had been rounded up because of her involvement in the resistance.

00:29:24.420 She didn't initially know that that's who Wendellian was.

00:29:27.580 But Mona saw like this one woman was being treated differently. 0.97

00:29:30.960 She's not allowed to join the other prisoners for meals or exercise.

00:29:33.760 She's being kept in solitary confinement like Mona had been.

00:29:36.080 And so she tried to make contact, even if only to boost this young woman's spirits and to let her know, like, you know, you have a friend in me.

00:29:43.560 So at the end of one time when Mona was working in the kitchen, the kitchen shift, she slipped a cooked potato into a secret pocket she had sewn into the skirt of her uniform for this purpose.

00:29:55.080 A secret potato smuggling pocket.

00:29:57.540 And she got the potato to the woman and the woman answered the gift and then they became friends.

00:30:02.440 So Wendellian later on recalled 50 years later, what impressed her about Mona, even in the

00:30:07.720 situation, you know, where you're emaciated, like spirits are broken down.

00:30:12.780 You've been like Nazi prison camps for years.

00:30:16.460 Wendellian remembered she had this profound life force.

00:30:19.720 She had, she also had a great repertoire of songs, probably from the Ziegfeld Follies.

00:30:23.420 She knew naughty songs.

00:30:24.740 She knew happy songs.

00:30:25.820 Like she just knew how to keep spirits up.

00:30:28.400 So together, like Mona was like, okay, I'll take you under my wing. 1.00

00:30:31.200 here's out of this prison here's what's up so the prison director mona had discovered was a lesbian

00:30:36.900 um and as such was not sympathetic to the nazis persecution of homosexuals and this lesbian prison 0.90

00:30:43.820 warden um was she had some compassion for most of the women in her charge although she was not

00:30:48.420 willing to risk her life or position for them but as long as she was in charge it's like things 0.69

00:30:52.860 could be worse and that she was like she took care of the women in some ways mona um persuaded 1.00

00:31:00.860 perhaps with her beauty and her elocution this lesbian prison warden to let Wendellian out of 1.00

00:31:06.080 the cell to join the rest of the prisoners to like incorporate herself with everybody else 1.00

00:31:10.600 to take meals and exercise and stuff and she taught her how to make a potato pocket I guess 1.00

00:31:16.920 because when assigned to kitchen duties both women smuggled pieces of cooked potatoes to share

00:31:21.100 with other women assigned to other tasks in the prison and soon Mona and Wendellian I've never

00:31:29.340 seen this name before. Wendelin. They're like, we're going to bust out of here. We are going

00:31:35.160 to escape from here. Wendelin. I'm going to say it like that now. I don't know. Was the one who's 0.99

00:31:40.440 like, we are going to get the fuck out of here. And Mona's like, how are we going to do that? 0.94

00:31:46.480 I'm game, but what's the plan? And Wendelin was like, I don't know. But when an opportunity

00:31:50.860 presents itself, we both have to be ready to seize that opportunity. And they're both like,

00:31:54.960 got it. We got potato pockets. I'm going to bust out of this Nazi prison. We are

00:31:59.060 resistance fighters. And we got this. So just after the middle of March of this year, which I think

00:32:06.580 is 45, yes, Mona and Vindelin noticed there was more planes than usual in the skies above their

00:32:15.160 prison. So they're like, okay, I guess we're in the war. And I guess there's going to be an air

00:32:20.440 attack probably. So probably these, these other planes are like on missions, bombing some other

00:32:26.900 places. They're going to bomb us next. And so Vendeline and Mona are just like, this could be

00:32:32.400 our chance. So Vendeline is just like, ooh, lesbian prison director, could I have a sweater?

00:32:38.200 Because it's so cold and I'm so emaciated here in this prison. My rheumatism is like,

00:32:43.480 please can I have my sweater, please? And the lesbian prison director let her have it. 1.00

00:32:47.540 The real reason Vendeline wanted this was because when the time came to escape, she didn't want to 1.00

00:32:52.000 be out there in her prison garb. She wanted to blend in with the local population and not look 0.77

00:32:56.120 suspicious. And because she was able to get the sweater, Vangeline encouraged Mona to ask for her

00:33:01.940 shoes for the same reason. So in prison, they were wearing wooden clogs. And Mona's like,

00:33:08.620 they don't keep my feet warm. Can I please have shoes? And if the prison director suspected the

00:33:14.240 real reason, she never let on. But she's, I don't know, I'm picturing, you know, I don't know a lot

00:33:18.900 of women's prison wardens, but I'm picturing Queen Latifah from the Chicago movie, but Nazi 0.51

00:33:25.960 white person version. And so they got the sweater, they got the shoes. And then suddenly the allies 0.99

00:33:30.840 did in fact attack the prison. So panicking, the director was just like, oh my God, like my girls,

00:33:37.640 like I got to take care of my girls. And so she unlocked the prison gates and she was just like, 0.98

00:33:41.280 okay, prisoners, you have a choice. You can either go into the prison's bomb shelter or

00:33:45.520 take your chances outside amid the active bombing situation and gunfire.

00:33:51.500 And Vendeline and Mona were just like, this is our chance. And they ran outside.

00:33:55.960 So, they headed in what they thought was towards the west, towards Holland. Without a map or a compass, they couldn't be sure of where they're going exactly. And these two had skills, and I don't doubt them for a minute, but they'd been through a lot. They hadn't been eating a lot. And neither of them, you know, like an heiress slash medical office assistant slash showgirl, and then this like baroness, like, do they know how to read the stars? I don't know.

00:34:22.600 Anyway, as night approached, they found shelter in the barn of a deserted farm.

00:34:26.060 And so they removed as much of their prison clothes as they could, 0.59

00:34:28.940 buried it in the mud, and then set about to pretend to be non-prisoner German people.

00:34:35.080 Vendellian spoke German fluently.

00:34:37.620 And so she was like, here's the plan.

00:34:40.280 We're going to play, because Mona was like early 40s.

00:34:43.080 Vendellian is like 20 years younger.

00:34:44.940 So it's like, we're going to play like an aunt and her niece.

00:34:48.740 Because Mona spoke German with a Canadian accent, 0.77

00:34:51.420 they couldn't, that would be suspicious and make her seem like the enemy. So it's like, 0.93

00:34:56.340 you can't talk. So what we're going to do is like, you'll be the aunt, but you're going to

00:35:00.540 pretend you have a cleft palate and you're mute. And also you are intellectually challenged. 0.95

00:35:07.040 And Mona is just like, I am an actress. I can perform this role of a lifetime and I shall.

00:35:12.760 So for the next three weeks, they walked across Germany. Their shoes eventually gave out. They

00:35:18.080 had to walk barefoot. They begged for food and lodging at farms along the way, offering their

00:35:22.440 physical labor as payment, which it's like, don't know where the strength is coming from,

00:35:26.920 from their inner badassness. They were nearly caught a few times, finally reached the village

00:35:33.060 of Riede on the Dutch-German border. So they went to see the town Burgermeister, which I think is

00:35:40.840 like the mayor who is like, where are you from? Where are you from? Glamorous young woman and

00:35:48.080 your cleft palate aunt who is mute. Um, Vendelin said we're refugees from Dusseldorf. Um, but we

00:35:55.960 lost our identity papers when we fled from our city and the burgemeister was like, sounds good

00:36:01.200 to me. So he gave them new papers and arranged lodging for them at two separate farms. Mona was

00:36:06.580 nervous to be separated. But now she had to pretend to be this cleft palate mute German person 1.00

00:36:12.720 without Vendellian there to like emotionally support her. So she's taken to this farm, 0.98

00:36:17.960 lived in by a farmer, his wife and their six children. She had to share the bed of the eldest

00:36:22.240 girl who was 12. This girl was not kind to Mona. All the children were mean to her thinking that

00:36:29.520 she was this like cleft palate dummy. But she couldn't resist what they were doing. She couldn't

00:36:35.120 discipline them because that would give up the act. She couldn't talk. Anyway, during the first

00:36:39.660 few days, she could hear that there was artillery fire in the distance. And one day, their artillery

00:36:46.240 fire moved closer until it was all around them. So the farmer said, okay, everybody and you,

00:36:51.240 cleft palate, aunt, go into the cellar. Mona, who had been, remember she had been in solitary

00:36:56.580 confinement in that first prison for like three months. She was just like, her CPTSD. She's just

00:37:01.540 like she wouldn't do it like she wouldn't do it so she and the farmer stayed upstairs at one point

00:37:05.920 there was a lull in the fighting the farmer took a plate of food out to a young soldier near the

00:37:10.540 house as mona watched a shell burst and he and the soldier died she ran to the she ran as a seller

00:37:20.000 with the family and the two of them were dead in the ditch so mona helped the farmer's wife even 0.99

00:37:25.840 this family had been assholes to her. It's like the outer space, space slug situation. It's like, 0.98

00:37:32.880 well, I guess we're a team now. So she helped the farmer's wife carry the farmer's body into the 0.94

00:37:37.160 house, laid on the sofa, and then panicked neighbors came through with news that people, 0.68

00:37:42.620 the poles were advancing. Everyone needs to gather what you can and flee into Holland. 0.99

00:37:47.120 So she helped the farmer's wife, again, Mona, helping people selflessly and also saving

00:37:52.960 herself. So they put whatever they could into a cart and they guided it across this marshy patch

00:37:57.580 in Holland. They spent a cold night in hay in a field until a Dutch farmer collected them to take

00:38:05.200 them to his home. Once she was back in Holland, Mona was like, okay, shake it off. I'm me again. 0.85

00:38:11.280 I'm not the cleft palate person. It's me, Mona, Mona Parsons, glamorous, wife of a millionaire,

00:38:17.100 resistance fighter, accredited nurse, ex-showgirl, and I'm also Canadian. So she said, like,

00:38:24.700 I'm a Canadian. I'm married to a Dutch national. Please help me find the British troops. They will

00:38:29.060 help me. And one of the first things she did, this is 1945. So for the last two years, she hadn't been

00:38:33.760 able to contact her father, who she had been able to keep in touch with via the Red Cross. So she

00:38:39.220 sent word to him, like, guess what? I'm still alive. So the Dutch farmer and his wife, nicer

00:38:44.140 people than the last ones, bandaged her badly damaged feet from all the walking on foot for

00:38:49.400 weeks and gave her a pair of wooden clogs to wear. Wooden clogs are going to come up again in this

00:38:54.320 story. They packed her lunch and the farmer's brother took her on the back of his bicycle

00:38:59.900 to where there were some nearby British troops. Mona went up to them and they're just like

00:39:05.540 suspicious, like, cause everyone's suspicious of everyone. And she's like, you guys know,

00:39:09.940 like, okay, so first of all, the Dutch farmer's brother thought these were British troops.

00:39:15.520 Mona went up to them and she's like, you guys, I'm from Canada. Please help me, British troops.

00:39:21.020 And the soldier's like, where are you from in Canada? And she's like, I'm from Wolfville

00:39:25.800 in Nova Scotia. And he was like, this is a quote. My name is Clarence Leonard. I'm from Halifax.

00:39:32.300 We are the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. Nova Scotians, only one to two degrees of separation

00:39:38.700 from each other. They're just like, fuck, we're Nova Scotian here in the middle of the war in 1.00

00:39:42.820 Holland. So anyway, she was then taken for further questioning because it's like, is she lying? Is 0.99

00:39:48.000 she a spy? But then, so the Nova Scotia guys took her to the British people. One of the British

00:39:53.880 people heard that she claimed to be from Wilfield, Nova Scotia. And he's like, oh, one of my guys

00:39:58.820 is from, had attended Acadia University in Wilfield. So he went to find this guy, Captain

00:40:04.280 vincent white anyway and in fact he did because he had acted with her in some of the plays back 0.98

00:40:09.500 in wolfville and he's just like what the fuck is mona parsons doing here this glamorous actress 0.97

00:40:14.040 person anyway everyone's excited the nova scotia connection is coming fast and furious and um 0.96

00:40:20.080 basically it's just kind of like she's having her feet tended to like their sores whatever

00:40:24.120 things are like not great foot wise but anyway it was arranged for her to be transferred to a

00:40:28.640 residence for Canadian nurses. She met up there with Captain Robbins Elliott, whose father back

00:40:34.920 in Wilfield had been Mona's family's physician. It's bananas to me, people meeting people.

00:40:42.540 It happens today. It happens to me. But for her and the story, it's just like, it's

00:40:46.440 unbelievable, really. But this is what happened. So while in the hospital, she wrote a 34-page

00:40:52.520 letter to her father and stepmother, her first communication with them since 1943. Like the

00:40:57.580 Red Cross said, I guess, community telegrams, but this was her first, and these letters

00:41:01.620 still exist.

00:41:02.300 And this is how we know a lot of what happened with her.

00:41:04.560 So a few days later, her friends arranged for her to have like a little journey away

00:41:11.020 from the hospital, a little fun day, a field trip along for this ride to cover the story

00:41:17.100 for the Toronto Telegram was a war correspondent named Alan Kent, who was also from Halifax,

00:41:22.200 Nova Scotia.

00:41:23.040 And during this trip, she had a tearful reunion with her dog who survived the war.

00:41:27.580 but at most in her mind, Willem, like where's her husband? Is he alive? Is he dead? Like what's

00:41:33.300 happening? Several days went by before her brother-in-law confirmed that Willem had been

00:41:37.800 liberated. He was still alive. He had been liberated from a camp by American soldiers

00:41:41.440 and his services as a translator had been engaged by the American military.

00:41:46.500 So that July, Mona and Willem were finally reunited in Laren, I presume at Ingleside,

00:41:53.280 because that's where their house was. So in the early months after the war ended,

00:41:56.120 she received two citations of like, she's great. The first was on behalf of the British people,

00:42:02.380 thanking her for her role and aiding members like the airmen who she'd helped get to the

00:42:07.060 fishermen and the submarines by hiding them in her house. The second was signed by General

00:42:11.560 Dwight Eisenhower, expressing the gratitude of the American people for everything that she had

00:42:15.680 done to help out the war effort. And so it was, she truly had been given a second chance at life

00:42:22.260 and she was intent on embracing it fully.

00:42:24.940 So, you know, she and Willem both had to work

00:42:26.300 at regaining their health

00:42:27.180 after everything they'd been through.

00:42:28.720 And she bounced back better than Willem did.

00:42:31.020 He struggled.

00:42:32.880 He was quite depressed.

00:42:35.040 He ate not much and he began drinking heavily.

00:42:39.940 In the 1950s, like they stayed there.

00:42:42.280 Her brother Ross and his wife visited in the 1950s

00:42:45.760 and they were shocked by Willem,

00:42:47.560 by the condition he was in.

00:42:49.140 He did not come downstairs for breakfast

00:42:50.700 when he rose later in the morning, he just drank from dawn till dusk. Mona wrote at one point that

00:42:56.920 he seemed to be quote sadistic, though she gave no details. In 1956, Willem became gravely ill

00:43:04.580 and he was hospitalized in Amsterdam and he passed away. And then twist upon a twist.

00:43:10.840 In the days following his funeral, Mona learned that Willem had changed the life insurance policy

00:43:16.320 he had to, it would all go to the wife of his best friend. So he, she was not going to inherit

00:43:23.920 his money. The wife of his best friend was going to inherit his money. And then she also learned,

00:43:28.700 so Willem had a son from his first marriage who she had thought was illegitimate, but it turns

00:43:32.360 out he was actually illegitimate. And he was entitled to three quarters of the father's

00:43:36.320 estate. So Mona was left with nothing other than the things she personally owned. Her clothing,

00:43:41.200 her jewelry some furniture and some shares in willem's company and this is why ladies it's 0.99

00:43:48.540 important to have your own bank account and your own assets and i know like back in this era women 0.99

00:43:55.480 couldn't own property and things but this you don't want to be left like mona you can't assume 0.96

00:44:00.900 your husband's gonna not be a shit at the end of it so she had the title to ingleside the house of 0.95

00:44:07.260 dreams but without funds like she couldn't maintain the house so she had to sell the house 0.98

00:44:12.160 and so she left Ingleside May 5th 1957 um moving into a hotel so through all of this and kind of 0.99

00:44:21.340 reminding me a bit of last time when we were talking about Viola Desmond Mona was just like 1.00

00:44:25.940 fuck this Holland I'm over it and she left and she went back to Nova Scotia where she stayed at 0.94

00:44:33.680 the Lord Nelson Hotel, a hotel that is still there. I've eaten there at the restaurant, 1.00

00:44:39.960 the Victory Arms. It's a good little restaurant. Anyway, so eventually she settled into an apartment

00:44:44.820 on Inglis Street, which is right in the neighborhood where I grew up. Never heard of this

00:44:50.300 woman. Never heard of her. Hang on for this next thing. So on Inglis Street, where she lived,

00:44:55.880 one of her neighbors was an old friend, Major General Harry Foster, a person named Foster

00:45:01.480 living on Ingle Street in Halifax could also describe myself. I mean, Major General Harry

00:45:09.200 Foster, no relation that I know of, but like everything I've just told you about Nova Scotia,

00:45:13.060 like clearly some relative of mine must be. Anyway, Harry, Harry Foster, my ancestor,

00:45:19.860 he was like, oh my God, Mona, hey, like I remember seeing you at the hospital in Holland

00:45:24.120 where he served after the war. Anyway, he's just like, oh, we met, remember at the hospital all

00:45:28.860 time. He was retired slash divorced, which means single. And the two were just like, they happily

00:45:33.840 got reacquainted, quote unquote. They got married. He supported her legal battle for this whole

00:45:38.900 inheritance bullshit. And by 1961, she lost the battle. She did not get any of the money. 0.99

00:45:45.820 And then three years later, my ancestor, Harry Foster, died of cancer. So she is a single lady, 0.99

00:45:52.580 again, a widow twice over. She lived at their house near the Chester Golf Club until she decided

00:45:58.940 to sell that house, but continued to live in it as a tenant. She wanted to travel more. And by

00:46:05.960 1966, she decided to return to Europe the first time since she left in 1957. She renewed some

00:46:12.000 friendships and just kind of felt some closure about that whole part of her life. In 1969,

00:46:17.720 she was in a car accident on the icy roads just before Christmas. And she thought,

00:46:23.240 it's not great to be living in this rural area that doesn't have public transit. I don't want

00:46:27.220 to have to be depending on a car when she's old and living by herself and with icy slippery roads.

00:46:33.080 So she decided to return to Wolfville, where she hadn't lived for many years, but she'd made many

00:46:38.780 happy memories there. And there's a beautiful, I've been there, like there's a beautiful like

00:46:42.200 downtown. It's very walkable. So she got an apartment on Main Street in 1970 within walking

00:46:47.680 distance of the shops and the university. And she thought she might take some courses there,

00:46:52.160 do some senior learning. As she was aging, at this point, she's like in her 70s. She developed

00:46:58.980 emphysema and had some small strokes. Remember, her mother died of stroke as well. This affected

00:47:03.740 her memory and her ability to speak. But during that time, and also prior to that time, while

00:47:07.880 she was living in Wolfville, she was just like a colorful local person. She'd been a Ziegfeld

00:47:12.960 Follies girl. She had all these adventures and she told people her adventures. She's this like

00:47:17.100 kooky older lady in Wilfield. And this is where the people in Wilfield today, or the woman who 0.55

00:47:21.640 wrote the book, she talked to people who knew her in the 70s. So it's like, this is how her story

00:47:28.300 lived on because she was just this local character in this last era of her life. As her health and

00:47:33.700 memory declined, she began to experience nightmares and flashbacks, like see PTSD, particularly at

00:47:40.220 night. She would have night terrors. She would believe herself to be a prisoner of war once again.

00:47:46.740 And then eventually she died in the hospital, November 28th, 1976, where she is buried in Willow Bank Cemetery, I believe in Wolfville. Her epitaph reads, Mona L. Parsons, 1901 to 1976, wife of Major General Harry Foster, C-B-E-D-S-O.

00:48:05.540 that is what it says there's no mention of her own citations of her own heroism her own story

00:48:11.440 and the end of that epitaph where it says c-b-e-d-s-o those are um the citations that

00:48:16.880 harry got for his military career he's not buried there with her he's buried with his first wife and

00:48:21.080 kent fell about 16 kilometers away people who listen to my regular podcast vulgar history will

00:48:27.080 know there was a famous episode famous to me famous to the listeners i did about uh french

00:48:32.420 before France was France about this queen called Fredegund and her too. And she did these incredible

00:48:38.040 things. Talk about like a twist and a turn. Her grave is just like Fredegund. She was the mother 0.98

00:48:43.720 of a king. And it's like, oh, like to see a woman with such a story to just be like how many women

00:48:51.800 are in, we even get graves. Lots of people don't get graves, but how many people are just like, 0.89

00:48:55.040 oh, she was the wife of so-and-so where it's like, no, she was this whole ass person. Like who she 1.00

00:48:58.960 was married to was the least interesting thing about her. A brief tangent, since I'm already

00:49:03.760 rambling. One of the people in my personal life who I consider and will consider an enemy for as

00:49:13.260 long as I live, I do not wish harm upon him now because he's already had a downfall that I did

00:49:19.000 not cause. But when it happened, I was glad because this is probably like 15 years ago.

00:49:25.820 I was at a house party that this guy was also at and he was in one room with some people and I was

00:49:30.440 in the other room and just as I was coming from one room to the room he was in I overheard what

00:49:35.180 he said and what he said was oh what's her face Joe's girlfriend and at the time and at the now

00:49:44.880 I do have a boyfriend whose name is Joe that has not come up on the podcast because it's not the

00:49:50.400 my life story podcast but when I heard him say oh what's her name Joe's girlfriend I was just

00:49:55.600 like, I'm going to destroy this man's life. Like what's her face, Joe's girlfriend. That's the

00:50:02.240 energy of Mona Parsons grave to me. At least it says her name. It's not what's her face,

00:50:07.320 Harry Foster's wife. But like to dismiss a woman as like, oh yeah, like this accessory 0.57

00:50:15.720 to this man. It's just like, no thanks. But this is where the author of where I got all this

00:50:21.700 research from andrea hill lair who wrote a book mona parsons from privilege to prison from nova

00:50:26.840 scotia nazi europe and she has this website monaparsons.ca like andrea has been advocating

00:50:31.640 to celebrate this woman's story and she has had so much success because look at the story

00:50:36.020 so in 2005 historica canada released a heritage minute on mona parsons

00:50:41.940 about it shows her arrest and her eventual escape and um in 2017 a statue in her honor

00:50:50.040 was erected in Wolfville.

00:50:52.620 And it's of her dancing wearing wooden clocks.

00:50:56.140 I told you the wooden clocks were going to come back.

00:50:57.760 And they did.

00:50:59.040 The statue is called,

00:50:59.940 The Joy is Almost Too Much to Bear.

00:51:02.320 And that's a quote from the letter

00:51:03.680 that she wrote to her family

00:51:04.880 at the time that Holland was liberated.

00:51:09.180 The joy is almost too much to bear.

00:51:10.280 So it's this joyful, it's this joyful statue.

00:51:12.580 I love that this is the statue.

00:51:14.220 It's not like her standing there.

00:51:15.680 She wasn't an army person.

00:51:16.740 She wouldn't be standing there in an army uniform.

00:51:18.000 She's just dancing in wooden clocks, joyfully.

00:51:21.600 Just this kind of like kooky, you can see like the vibe of what she was like.

00:51:25.260 And she was a dancer, right?

00:51:26.240 Ziegfeld Pauly's dancer.

00:51:27.600 Anyway, this statue was advocated for and the funds were raised for by the Wolfville Historical Society and the Women of Wolfville Community Group.

00:51:38.440 The statue was made by local artist Niestel Prem de Boer, who is also Dutch.

00:51:43.900 and in november 2023 mona parsons was featured on a canada post stamp and when i was asking my

00:51:52.100 mother what she knew about this person it just had never come up in my conversations with my

00:51:55.840 mother who lives in nova scotia she's like oh yeah no i bought the stamps and she still has

00:51:59.360 the stamps because they're cool stamps um so that is today's extra long vulgar history canadian

00:52:08.540 heritage minutes was at an hour canadian heritage hour couldn't skimp on any of the details there's

00:52:15.200 so much more detail on monopersons.ca so you can get more i tried to make it as concise as i could

00:52:21.380 while still celebrating this person so if there's anything that i learned from the story and that i

00:52:25.960 hope you learn from the story it's that this woman was an icon she was a legend women contain

00:52:31.800 multitudes your life can have multiple eras if all that you can do is knit some socks with some

00:52:40.440 knots in them to make someone's feet uncomfortable do that like small acts of resistance i'm just

00:52:47.240 trying to summarize everything we talked about nazis are always the bad guys and um basically 0.99

00:52:57.100 don't fuck with canada thank you i'll be back with some more of these uh heritage minutes if 0.99

00:53:04.900 you have suggestions of women from canadian history who you want celebrated who you want 1.00

00:53:08.960 to hear me yell about passionately with vocal fry like uh let me know i'm on if you go to

00:53:14.520 vocalhistory.com there's like a contact me email button there or i'm on instagram you can email me

00:53:20.460 or dm me on instagram at vocal history pod anyway regular episode coming up on wednesday

00:53:25.140 and some more of these goddamn episodes until this until the horrors cease i'm gonna keep 0.95

00:53:32.620 swearing and telling these goddamn stories so everybody knows that canada is not to be 1.00

00:53:38.160 fucked around with tits out elbows up take care vulgar history is researched written and hosted 1.00

00:53:47.360 by ann foster that's me the editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severn duo the vulgar 0.99

00:53:54.980 history show image is by deborah wong transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of

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Vulgar History - March 21, 2025

Canadian History (part 2)： WWII Resistance Fighter, Mona Parsons

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