record it the life stories of people of our time for future generations so i hope you enjoy this oral history two thousand and eleven i'm talking with my o x and then somewhere along well with fourteen hundred they got kicked out of there and they went to and worked belgium and then they moved from there up to another place in germany and then eventually to the and they came up to belgium and holland i don't know the exact reason why my forefathers long time ago left germany but the city they left in germany of rock close to our you know you know close to the us border so in first time and he was from santa c vann means from so so people got their names for many people in those early days didn't have double names just hit single  followers and that just grew larger and larger and larger and pretty soon my great great grandfather incorporated that company and he added on to sons and then they became they're still out there still at horticulture company that have growing operations around the world different places around the world today and they have maybe two or three thousand people who work for them  and i'm still a shareholder in that original company and most of the members of the company today are all descendants of that first company and they are the shareholders it's kind of a close corporation  thousand nine hundred ninety four the first world war there were good boats there and then my grandfather my grandfather he and other salesman traveled to the united states every year of greenhouse operations in the united states and they had big orders there well the first and the first world war started and and of course the other times they stayed neutral ok to russia and then they do that in the turmoil after the first world war then they really established their sales in those companies in those countries and the united states used to be one of their and then the revolution took place and they couldn't get their money out of there because the comet is with the but anyway they got the value of their money out of my by buying a ca they bought one hundred acres of land here from county to grow balls and and and during that time you know times are tough so here they came here with these two young men with but all this property here started going off well another reason why they started here and landed this because a number of people in and out of us years back had left it over this and immigrated to canada because they could get free and so they had a labor saving device which was called pliable whitsitt tied behind a caterpillar and it dug up devolves of this plant off and then they picked up the balls and  that they were mixed up with other competitors who also had the same baskets ah of course so there was very exciting time that they hired over to say ninety people times in the harvest and all the down there and then when the weather got warmer and it started raining and all that water came on top and all the bulbs billie's started rotting because there was still frozen layer percentages are twelve inches down underground and some of the bulbs just couldn't make it but that was they had a terrible loss a lot of sales they could not field or orders and it was pretty bad news so then they growing families that were the dutch companies left lived and went to mount vernon including ours but our company still continued to grow a lot of bulbs here but not like they did for the grew more bulbs and m moved to the tower my father was born and met there and got married and i must also tell you first place that my last name is not just and he would suffer sometimes terribly when the dust of pollen was in the air and so the doctor recommended that he move to a climate that was more not so much dust so he bought a house on marine drive you know and he kept doing this tell he was in his eighty's good he just had to go it wanted to come to work and do something you know so how many brothers and sisters did you have had  eight for the second world war there was a memorable trip for be going across the country by a car and then on it holding america ship from new york to to the old code it took or you know it took a number of weeks those days planes from the factories to the airfields that you know she flew these planes are just a map on her lap no no no no radio or anything like that  other german planes of the air america she was a stronger word woman she was if she was way different from the rest of my uncles or all the various soul and business man you know and she was kind of a hassle free was working very well and then we talked to some other friends and they cut agreed and then they got a movement going and then they needed some of the do research and so on like as well my wife was a librarian by that time and i s easily do that she's really good i'll fix it so she's started digging into the charters of these other other counties that moved through that system and that she came up with she did a lot of work for it and she became involved in it and then and then when it was finished we had presented to the voters and she helped with that and then but it passed and then a number of people asked her well why don't you run for one of the council seats but she always hated public sex but spent but she problem solving and analysis and organization and those things i find very challenging to do and you must have because you ran the show for your job you ran three different times right did you not enjoy campaigning i did not enjoy the campaigning at all you know i think it's so sad t inevitable barbs that were thrown at any politician i remember one that i still think it's very cute when you and your administration under your administration the county do a beautiful remodel job o that helped me through all those years there were such large numbers of people who always appreciated the work i did and they would be very strong supporters and when some of the criticism got a little severe  better better yes it's a you know it's a really nice county up here in the northwest part scott's unique problems and issues all are driving out here to do passionately share it did occur to me that maybe we're getting a few too many building huge service stations everywhere because the canadians are coming down in such large numbers canadians had not authorized see no shift full fledged casinos in british columbia so they came down