The Lakemans are my biological father's side, and they carry a story that ranges from the Dutch East Indies through five continents to a Calgary taxi dispatch office. Most of what follows comes straight from a long email my dad Martin wrote me — it's his story to tell, and he told it well.
Read the full Lakeman story — eleven generations, the Netherlands to Calgary →
My biological father is Martin Gerard Lakeman, born March 30, 1957, at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. The newspaper announcement that ran a few days later read: “Dr. and Mrs. R. Lakeman announce the birth of their son Martin Gerard on March 30th at Holy Cross Hospital.” Martin has two older brothers, Rienk Jr. and Alexander “Lex” Lakeman, both born outside Canada. Martin was the first of the three sons to be born on Canadian soil.
Their father — my grandfather — was Dr. Rienk Lakeman, born October 1, 1918, in Soerabaja (Surabaya) in what was then the Dutch East Indies, before the locals gained their independence and became Indonesians. He earned a doctorate in geology and spent his career chasing oil. His first job out of school was with Royal Dutch Shell in Venezuela in the early 1950s. In 1955 the Venezuelan government nationalized Shell's assets and replaced all the European staff with locals — so the family packed up and moved to Calgary, along with a whole retinue of other ex-Shell employees who ended up forming their own little Dutch-Canadian community.
In 1962 the oil company my grandfather worked for was bought by British Petroleum, and he was offered a position at BP head office in London. So they moved to England. My dad attended a preparatory school there and, in his own words, came out speaking perfect Queen's English. In 1967 they moved again, this time to Kuwait, where my dad attended an American school and from that day on spoke 'Merican. In 1970 they came back to Britain for fifteen months, then off to Singapore for another three-year assignment.
In 1974 my grandfather retired. On the way back to Calgary the family stopped in Holland to visit relatives and stayed for the 1975 New Year's celebration. My dad still talks about it — fireworks for sale to anyone who wanted them, no restrictions, and the whole night sky went bright red, white, and blue. After that they finally settled back in Calgary.
A year or two later my dad met my mom. The story goes like this: my mother had a brief relationship with a guy named Jim, and after it ended, she asked Jim to introduce her to his tall blonde friend. As it turned out, Jim had two tall blonde friends. Mom had her eye on the other one. She got my dad. As Martin puts it: “if it wasn't for Jim, I might never have been your father.”
My grandmother Suzanna Verboom was born September 25, 1918, in Ter Aar, Zuid-Holland, in the Netherlands. The surname is pronounced “ver-BOAM.” She lived to be 100, dying in Calgary in 2018. Her father was a tailor and a barber whose shop was attached to the family home, and he taught her to sew and tailor — she became a most excellent seamstress, and she'll be remembered for her cooking, her impeccable taste, and the unmistakable Dutch accent she never lost.
The Verbooms were a Ter Aar family. Suzanna's parents were Cornelis Verboom and Aagje Donker. Her brother Pieter Verboom married a woman named Kelly and ran a hair salon about a block south of his father's barber shop — he got around on a Vespa big enough to fit himself, his wife, and two daughters. Her other brother Jacob “Yap” Verboom took over the barber shop when their father retired. So somewhere in Ter Aar, the odds are good that Verboom cousins or grandchildren are still cutting hair.
Going back another generation on the Lakeman side: my great-grandfather was Pieter Karel Willem Lakeman — known in the family as P.K.W. — born January 27, 1881, in The Hague. He served as Burgemeester (mayor) in the Dutch East Indies, including postings in Magelang (1929–1934) and Malang (1933–1936). He patrolled his whole district on horseback. He retired to the Netherlands in 1933, when my grandfather was 15. They sailed back to Holland together.
Rienk Sr. also had a brother, Pieter Lakeman, a medical doctor with two daughters.
There's more to fill in here — the wartime years in the Indies, deeper Verboom roots in Friesland, the Timmermans line on the great-grandmother's side that traces back to baptisms in the 1700s. Material for another day.