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As with most immigrant girls, the young Danes began their lives in Canada as house maids. Before long, Kirsten had become a cook and Christine had opened a Danish Bakery on St. Catherine Street. My mother had been trained to nurse premature babies when they came home from the hospital. With this profession, she worked for the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway and with her charge, toured Canada from coast to coast in the private railway car

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My parents met in 1930. At the time, my father was engaged to a  woman who was back in Norway, visiting her family. As the community watched the progress of my father's interest in my mother, Augusta Jensen, they became alarmed and wrote to his fiancee, advising her to come back immediately. She was kind enough to break off the engagement, knowing my father would have difficulty doing the honourable thing. My mother relented then and accepted his attentions.  In 1933 they married. This prompted Christine to accept the hand of the man with whom she had lived for nine years.  

My godmother never married. I became the apple of her eye and I loved her dearly. My memories begin when I was three years old. I remember spending time with her at the great house where she worked. I would stand at the top of the basement stairs and greet the milkman as he came up, with his clanking milk crate, full of bottles. Sometimes I stayed overnight and  I  remember lying in my godmother's bed, squeezing myself against the wall as she slept.  I was used to having my own space.

She bought me clothes, a fur coat, a dressy ensemble which consisted of a blue woolen coat with a velvet collar, matching leggings, hat and purse. Later this outfit was passed around the neighbourhood and was Sunday best for seven little girls, one after the other. For my twelfth birthday, she gave me two change purses which I still use and a negligee which, although I never did wear it, I claimed as my own.  

Eventually Kirsten decided to emigrate to the States and left for Detroit where she became the cook for Henry Ford. An oft-repeated family story came from the incident when Mrs. Ford told Kirsten, Henry thinks the bills are too high. Kirsten was outraged. She had gone as far as to order the second best salmon to keep the bills down.

 The first time she came to visit us, my father met her at the airport. She arrived dressed in purple from head to toe, including a purple veil over her face.  He was so overwhelmed at the sight that he got the giggles and couldn't control himself. Her style of dressing always bordered on the outrageous. 

It was during that visit she gave my mother the recipe for Modified Mayonnaise, still a family favourite.

Later, Kirsten left the Fords and opened a boarding house for males only which her boarders called Kirsten's Home for Gentlemen. When I was 18, I went to visit her on the train and had a wonderful time, enjoying her cooking and her boarders.