KAWARTHA LAKES-Drikus (Harry) Van Oudenaren grew up in Holland in a working-class family. His mother died when he was 2 ½ so he was raised by his older brother and sister. When he was 15, Germany invaded his homeland, then at age 18 “I was shipped up to Germany to a forced labour camp.” Harry survived the ordeal, then was forced to move artillery pieces for the Russian army after his captors fled, then encountered naked concentration camp survivors as he walked home across Germany.
Drikus’ experiences during the Second World War convinced him to leave Europe, “I had made a commitment to myself that if there was ever another war, I would be on the opposite side of the world.” After applying to emigrate, he received a letter from Canadian Immigration saying, “Mr. Cecil Pogue of Bobcaygeon requires your services,” and so he moved to Bobcaygeon. When he arrived in Bobcaygeon, on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, he carried an English phrase book with him and knew only one line, “Good day sir, nice to meet you.” When he arrived, his friend Jaap said that Canadians would have a hard time pronouncing his name, Hendrikus. Being eager to fit in, from that day on he was known as ‘Harry.’ After emigrating he proposed to an old friend Johanna, whose family had a neighbouring farm back in the Netherlands.
Having endured so much during his formative years, Harry appreciated the opportunity to live in Bobcaygeon, perhaps more than the natives who had grown up there. People were curious to meet the young Dutch man in town, and as he learned English, he remembered the stories that people told him. In time, he developed a remarkable knowledge of his new community—he became the man who knew and could recite the oral history of Bobcaygeon. Many locals would call him ‘Mr. Bobcaygeon.’ For Bobcaygeon’s centennial in 1976, he began collecting pictures. “I thought if I could find some old pictures and make some slides of them and show them to people, I could bring back some old memories.” In time, he would amass the village’s largest collection of photographs. In 2026, to mark Bobcaygeon’s sesquicentennial we are sharing Harry’s stories and photographs, beginning with his place of employment, Pogue’s Garage.
Cecil Wesley Pogue “started that garage in 1933, two of his brothers had built it—Wib and Wes.” It was beside Read’s Store, with a passage way in between. “You could drive right through there with a big truck or two cars beside each other.” Read’s would later become Shea’s IGA, then Foodland. The gas pumps out front were pumped manually, “and the gas went into the glasses [which were part of the pumps so customers could see the fuel they were purchasing to be assured of its quality] and sold for 49 cents a gallon. That’s a little different than it is today!”
As a young man Harry had trained as a machinist, but cars were new to him. “I couldn’t even drive a car when I started there—I had never driven a car in Holland before. I learned my trade there, Cec Pogue was a great help for me. He used to give me magazines to take home at night to read through and learn things from. And about two years after that, I had to do my examination and I got my mechanic’s license.”
The door at the front of the building led into the garage. “There were two big doors at the back and a big door at the front,” so cars could drive straight through. “The upstairs was used at one point as the veteran’s hall. The veterans used to have a ladder coming up on the side, and the door was still there later on when I got there, but the stairs were gone.” One the second floor the front “was where Cec Pogue lived and the back of it was used for the veteran’s meetings. There was a stage in there, with a big pole across the front to hold a curtain. By the time that I bought him out, the inside of the garage was just black. The walls were black, the ceiling was black, and the floor was black—soot and dirt.”
“Cecil Pogue had three heart attacks in a row, and I had been working there for 17 years, so I ran his business for three months while he was in the hospital. The hospital in those days was Hillcroft. A couple times a week I had to go down there and tell him how business is going.” When his employer decided to sell and retire, “I bought the business and the inventory out of the building and Wilson Shea bought the building and the property,” so he could demolish the garage to extend his grocery store. “When they tore the building down, the foundation was still there, and they were going to put the new store on that foundation, but they wouldn’t let them, they had to dig it right out six feet down and put in a new foundation.” Today, the former site of Pogue’s Garage is the entrance to Foodland.
This story is a memory and memories aren’t perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that’s not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
50 Oak Street
Fenelon Falls, ON
K0M 1N0
