Vulgar History Podcast
Canadian Heritage Minute(s): Mona Parsons
March 21, 2025
Ann Foster:
Hello and welcome to Vulgar History: Canadian Heritage Minute(s), minutes. This is a series of mini-episodes that are inspired by the classic Historica Canada, Canadian Heritage Minutes. Those were 60-second commercials about things in Canadian history, and this is a slightly longer thing where I talk about stuff in Canadian history. And that’s because what the fuck is happening? Jesus Christ. Yeah, just for a quick, you know, I really want to get to the story, I want to focus on just the history story I’m here to tell you, which is, like, I’m really excited about. But first, just some updates in this audio journal that is this podcast now apparently.
My name is Ann Foster. I’m a Canadian person. I currently live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory, homeland of the Métis. I was born on the East Coast in Nova Scotia and historically… I’ve always been a history fan and I think part of the reason is because I grew up in Nova Scotia which compared to other places in Canada has, kind of, some of the oldest existing buildings because Canada was settled — thousands of groups of people lived on this whole continent before Canada was settled — but Canada as it is now was first colonized by the French and the British in the 18th century and they started from the East Coast and worked their way west. So, the oldest places you’re going to find in Canada are more towards the East Coast, and that’s where I grew up, and there were cool things around where I live. There’s lots of old stone structures, lots of ghost stories, lots of stuff about fishermen and things. There’s also a lot of women’s history I did not learn about, and today, we’re going to be talking about another Nova Scotian person.
But first, an update about Elbows Up, Canada uniting in rage patriotism: still going on, no reason to stop. And my update for you is that it’s bringing some weird feelings up in me and, I presume, in a lot of other people about who we’re suddenly cheering on, who we’re happy to see supporting us. So, recently, King Charles III, who you might know as Camilla’s husband, Diana’s ex, Harry’s dad… Not a man I’ve ever really felt like oh, hooray! He’s the king, and I’m cool with that. Although, I will say that I have a book coming out next year, Rebel of the Regency, a biography of Caroline of Brunswick, and I am waiting for Buckingham Palace to give permission for us to use a painting that they have the rights to in my book. So, like, I’m cool with Charles at the moment. But I’m really cool with Charles at the moment because the British monarch isn’t allowed to, like, make statements about political stuff, but he recently did a ceremonial thing where he was planting a tree, and it was a maple tree with red leaves kind of like the Canada flag. He showed up to this military engagement wearing… So, Canada is part of the Commonwealth, like he is our king, Charles, and he showed up wearing his honorary, like, Canadian military outfit. Like, Queen Elizabeth, his mom, used to do stuff where it’s like oh, she’s wearing this brooch, or she’s wearing this colour and people read into it to be like, “Oh, these are the sort of messages she’s trying to send in as best as she can through her outfits.” And he’s supporting Canada, and I was shocked to find myself heartened and glad, like, never in my life have I ever thought, like, “Oh, I hope Charles steps up for me and for Canada.” I’m just like, wow, Charles and I are on the same team. Wild.
So, every province has a premier, I think in the U.S. your states have, like, governors. So, the premier of Ontario is a guy called Doug Ford who has just been the absolute worst: conservative, just, like, blowhard, just like, not a person I’ve ever had any fond feelings about really. But he’s been sort of stepping up in a way where I’m just like, I’m on the same team, gladly, as Doug Ford and King Charles? Strange. And then there’s a moment where… So, our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, just stepped down. We have a new prime minister who was just sworn in, Mark Carney, and he’s from the Liberal Party, that’s what the party is called. Doug Ford is a conservative person, allied with the Conservative Party and the two of them met for breakfast in like a diner and they took a picture of them smiling together and I was just like “Fuck yeah, boys!” And I’m just like, what am I talking about? How am I cheering for these two, like, white men having a diner meal? But I’m like, yeah. Me, those two guys, King Charles, the whole country of Canada, elbows up! It’s a fucking weird time.
Growing up in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, first of all as a child you read Robert Munsch, Canadian author, his books still popular. And then when you’re in, like, middle school, you would read Gordon Korman books, and you would read Martyn Godfrey books. Maryin Godfrey, RIP, he passed quite a long time ago, but one of his books, and I loved his books growing up, it’s called, I believe, I Spent My Summer Vacation Kidnapped Into Space. It was about this boy and girl, and they were kidnapped into space, and there’s a whole thing where they had to, at one point, they’re in sort of a gladiator arena and they had to face off against these giant space aliens and then they realized like “Oh, wait! These are basically giant slugs. You know how to deal with slugs? Throw salt at them!” And then they defeated them, and that’s how I still to this day remember throw salt at slugs. Is that true? I don’t know.
But I often, sometimes, think about the situation in that book where it’s like, what if I was kidnapped by space aliens, and it was me and one other human? It’s like, it could be somebody who you would never get along 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 when you’re in grade three it’s like, “What if it’s a kid in grade six, you know, some cool, older kid?” where it’s just, like, someone you would never be friends with, someone from a different clique. As an adult, I think, like, what if somebody I have political differences with? But if you’re on this planet in this gladiator arena facing these giant slug aliens, it’s like, you’ve got to band together because the enemy of your enemy is your friend, or whatever. You just inherently band together with the only other human being there and I have thought to myself many times over the last decade that there’s a lot of people that I think, like, probably most human beings I think I could would be cool teaming up with against the slugs, except for some of the people running America right now who I think I would sacrifice to the slugs. Like, there’s some people where it’s just, like, even if we were the only humans and us teaming up stood between me and death, I would choose death over teaming up with some of these people. Like, I can’t bother with it, which brings us to today’s story.
Today’s story… And actually, thank you to my very good friend and Canadian consultant, Marlene, who knows more than anyone I know about Canadian actors, Canadian TV shows, Canadian content. And so, when I was doing the series, I was like, “Who is someone I should talk about?” And she said Mona Parsons, a name I had never heard. I looked it up, and I was just like, “Oh my god! I have to cover this story!” And so, where this story first of all this is the second episode of the Vulgar History: Canadian Heritage Minute(s) and I think sequentially, I want to present different people from Canadian history and then when you put them together in a mosaic you can kind of see the vibe, what this country is about. If you don’t know about Canada, you don’t know about Canadian history, like, I’m going to paint you a picture of the sorts of people who live here and who helped create the country that we now live in, which is a very multicultural country.
This is a story from, it took place in the 20th century, it gets into World War II type stuff and it also shows you that what Mona Parsons exemplifies is that women in Canadian history, people in Canadian history, contain multitudes and when we see something, when we see an injustice, when we see something is shitty, like, the best people in this country, which is a lot of us, want to step up and do the right thing. We are anti-Nazi in this country and she faced off against the Nazis. It’s a classic Vulgar History-type story if you’ve heard my regular podcast that I do. Regular Vulgar History episodes are usually an hour, an hour and a half. Sometimes I get carried away, and it turns into a five-part series, but I like a story with twists and turns and twists and turns it keeps changing and pivoting and this… I’ll tell you the story, I’ll tell you the story and I’ve got it’s all worked up. I will say this is another person there is a literal Canadian Heritage Minute about this. It came out in the early 2000s which was a time at which I was watching less television with commercials so I had not seen it before but I’m glad, just so you know, she’s got the Canada Post stamp and she’s got the Canadian Heritage Minute which is how you know this is a Canadian goddamn legend. Mona Parsons.
I do want to also say that my source for this is MonaParsons.ca which is a website done by a writer called Andria Hill-Lehr who also wrote a book called Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, From Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe, and that’s why we know the story. That’s why there is a Canadian Heritage Minute, that’s why there is a stamp because Andria Hill-Lehr heard about this woman (who lived in the same city where Andria lives) and just started digging and finding this story and, like, because of her dogged pursuit of this we now know the story and now I can share it with you. She has a website, MonaParsons.ca, where I abridged how she tells the story there to share it with you.
So, Mona Parsons— Also, actually, one more thing I want to point out. As I go through these episodes, I want to talk about all kinds of different women from Canadian history, of all kinds of different cultures and ethnicities and experiences, genders and everything. Mona Parsons is a white woman 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 in the dirt doing the work using her privilege to help other people who don’t have that privilege. So, an icon for white women and for everybody.
Mona Parsons was born February 17, 1901, in the town of Middleton in Nova Scotia. Her father was a businessman, and her mother looked after their home and two sons, so she had two brothers. When she was 10 years old, Mona, her father’s business burnt to the ground, which devastated the town, and so, basically, they peaced out of there. They left this town and they moved to Wolfville which is the nearby city which is a city that is still there. While there, Mona attended school at the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary, and while there, she got her first taste of live theatre and performing because touring companies’ amateur performances were put on there and then turns out she was really good. She had a natural gift, and she was trained in acting and in singing. So, this eventually led to her being cast in some of these plays. As a former theatre kid, I vibe with this teenage saga.
When she was 13 years old, World War I broke out. Canada, like all the countries in the world, was involved in this, fighting on the Allies’ side. So, Canada has always been, when there’s— Well, in my understanding, World War I, World War II like Canada really… What we’re feeling now this, like, rage patriotism, I think there was a similar vibe that people just like, “We’re doing this war, and we’re going to do it.” So, she’s 13 years old, and she helped out as best as she could as a 13-year-old in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She knitted socks for soldiers, she engaged in community activities to support the troops and the war effort. I would presume that involved maybe she would do some performances and then donate the money, that sort of thing. Her father and her two brothers enlisted, and her brother Ross was wounded in 1917. This was a real turning point for Mona Parsons; she went from being, kind of like, small town Canadian girl doing theatre to just being like, “Oh fuck.” She had an awakening. She had an aha moment about, like, the world is a bigger place, and injustices were happening, and she wanted to be on the right side of history.
She also saw, at this point, like, so many men went off to fight in the war, so many men died in the war, and the women left at home had to pick up the slack and do all the work. So, she saw that women had to take control of farms and businesses. They took on roles as nurses near the battlefront, and she saw like, “Oh, these are things women can do, and I want a life where I do things, I want more than being a wife and a mother. Maybe I want that too, but I want to be a strong independent woman, and I want to do things to be on the right side of history.” So, she graduated with a certificate in elocution which I believe means just having beautiful speech and singing and giving speeches and things like that, then she went to school in Boston and throughout the 1920s she moved back and forth between Wolfville and the U.S. She took classes at Acadia University, which is still there in Wolfville, then she also taught elocution, like, she was so good she was able to teach it at Central College in Arkansas. And then eventually, do you know where this bitch landed? She landed a role in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York. The Ziegfeld Follies was, like, the musical theatre review. This is, like, the place to be. Think, I don’t know, imagine The Rockettes times all of Broadway times, like… This is the place to be if you want to be a young woman who’s performing. The Ziegfeld Follies, that is it.
So, she got there and she’s just, like, on the big stage in New York City dreaming the dream and just imagine how, I mean, we know she’s skilled; she can act, she can sing, she can dance, she’s also gorgeous. And then when you’re there, you know, wealthy men would go, and they would want to kind of, like, have dates with the women in the Ziegfeld Follies, but she was like, “I want still more.” She wanted roles in plays like she did back in Wolfville, where she wasn’t just kind of like, using her looks and dancing, she wanted to, like, really dig deep and do something she was passionate about.
But before she could kind of shift her focus to doing that sort of acting, she got a telegram, horrible news, her mother back in Wolfville had a stroke. So, she went back home, and shortly after she arrived, her mother had a second stroke and died. Mona was now 29 years old. In those days, I mean, we still have this now, but especially back then, there was a real like, ladies don’t tell their age. But 29 was older for a showgirl in those days, and I think she would also, like a lot of us, when I was around that age, I had a real, like, “What am I doing with my life?” type moment. So, it’s 1929. The stock market crashed, so the world was in a depression. She knew she needed a solid career, and this is really, honestly, similar to how I became a librarian, which is my job, because I was just like, “I want like a career-type job. I want something with longevity, a pension.” She wanted something that would provide stability in tough times.
So, she thought back to the stories she had heard from her family about the nurses in World War I; that’s a way that you can help, that’s a way you can give back, that’s a job at that point in 1929 that women could do. She was also influenced by seeing her mother when she had the stroke and the nurses that she saw who were treating her. So, she enrolled in the Jersey School of Medicine to become a nurse, she graduated with honours in 1935 and landed a job in New York City at Park Avenue ear, nose, and throat specialist. In the first of several coincidences, this man was actually from Nova Scotia as well. The thing about Nova Scotia back then, now a bit, but back then it’s, like, you’re only ever one to two degrees of separation from someone who you both know. It’s a province, but it also feels it’s a small town that’s also a province. So, it’s still the Great Depression, right, but because of her career choice, because of her skills, she was an independent woman embarking on a solid career with a good future living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in North America, New York City.
And then, 1937. Remember, she has brothers. So, one of her brothers at this point was based in Rhode Island, and he called her one day to ask a favour. A guy was just doing a business trip, and he was wondering, like, could you show this guy just, like, tour him around show him all the sights of New York City and she’s like, “Sure.” She’s just game, she’s up for it, she’s happy to do a favour for her brother. So, she met this guy, this business associate, whose name is Willem Leonhardt. Willem was Dutch, and he was a millionaire. His business was selling plumbing fixtures. Plumbing fixtures, so, like, pipes and sinks and things. You know what? Of course you become a millionaire in 1937 from your family business of plumbing fixtures because his family’s business had started a couple decades ago, laying the foundation of modern water and sewer systems in Amsterdam. In Europe especially, there’s a lot of old buildings and old places that want to have running water and his company was the people who are installing that.
Also in this era, Hollywood films were showing bathrooms as these, like, decadent, art deco amazing places to go and so they met, love at first sight. A few days later, Willem had to go on another business trip, he had to go to Mexico, but before he left… So, he went to Mexico, came back a few weeks later, paused in New York City long enough to propose marriage, and she accepted. And in September they got married, well they went to Holland and then they got married. They went for honeymoon along the French and Italian rivieras, and then upon returning to Holland, they purchased land in Laren where they built a three-story dream home surrounded by lavish gardens, and they called the estate Ingleside. Now, did they name this estate after L.M. Montgomery’s book, Rilla of Ingleside? Who’s to say, but that’s another East Coast person; Rilla of Ingleside being the daughter of Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery being the author of Anne of Green Gables. I did an episode of Vulgar History a year or two ago about L.M. Montgomery that you can look up if you want to learn more about her.
So, they’re just, like, living their life, and this is where it reminds me of now because, like, World War I happened. Mona’s like, “I’ve lived through unprecedented times. Now, here we are, amazing, precedented times. Living in Holland in 1937, what could go wrong?” World War II baby is what happened. In May 1940, Holland was invaded by Nazi Germany. Holland surrendered, and the country was occupied for five years, which resulted in the transport or deaths of thousands of its citizens and bringing the nation to the brink of starvation. So, Mona is just there, this, like, Nova Scotian ex-showgirl, and she’s just like, “What the fuck? More unprecedented times? More unprecedented times! World War II? Who knew there would be another one?” But she’s married to this millionaire, she’s a wealthy socialite and she felt it was necessary to find ways to resist and to thwart the Nazi occupation. She wasn’t like, she’s not going to be… You know, like the some of the people in The Sound of Music who are just kind of like, “Oh, you know what? Let them do whatever, we’ll just have parties.” She’s like “Fuck no.” She’s like she’s Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music, she’s ripping the Nazi flag except in her own way.
So, she and Willem, who is also on board with like, “Let’s be on the right side of history,” which is then, is now, will always be the side opposing the Nazis. So, they joined a group of other people who felt the same way and vowed to do whatever they could to counter what the Nazis were up to. This group didn’t have a name at the point, but eventually, we know them as The Resistance. What she and Willem were best able, best equipped to do was to let people hide in their house. So, it’s not an Underground Railroad scenario, but it’s kind of an Underground Railroad scenario. So, they had this beautiful three-story house, and I believe the top floor of the house was where all of their servants lived, and they were like, “What we need to do is we can hide people in that top floor.” So, first, they regrettably had to let their servants go because they had to use the top floor to, like, hide people for the resistance, and that is what they did.
The people who they’re helping to hide, like, what was happening in/near Holland, there’s airplane stuff happening right? There’s the Allies — including Canadian people, British people, American people, I think — they’re flying airplanes over there and but there was, like, Nazi airplanes fighting the airplanes, there’s these airplane battles. So, sometimes the allied flyers, pilots, would the planes would go down and they’d be trapped in Holland so what Mona and her husband were doing— Her and the other people in this network, not just them, there is people from all over walks of life were on board this being on the right side of history, the anti-Nazi side; teachers, farmers, businessmen, professors. So, they gathered false identity papers, ration cards, and civilian clothing, providing accommodation and transportation to get these pilots to coastal villages so they could go back to England. And they’ll get back to England on fishing boats, fishermen are involved in all of this. The fishing boats would take them to the North Sea to rendezvous with British submarines to take them back to England. This is some real spy shit, and they were, Mona and Willem, a crucial part of this. Oh, and this is just clarifying in this as well, so they had to let the servants go not just because they had to have the pilots hide in the top floor but also because they didn’t want the servants to be implicated in case Mona and Willem got arrested, they didn’t want the students to go down with them. So, that is a good reason to fire people, I guess, if you have to.
So, the Nazis… What the fuck is this world? The Nazis, who again, to clarify, are the bad guys in this story, and now, and every story, they were class conscious. Mona and Willem were, like, gorgeous, rich white people, and so they weren’t harassed by soldiers. They were treated with respect because they looked kind of like what Nazis thought people should look like. And the Nazis vibe at this point was they thought once the upper class, once the rich people could be convinced the Nazis were not a real threat, everyone else would maybe stop fighting the Nazis, and the Nazis could take over. What they were doing then is similar to what is happening now. If you get all the rich people on board, maybe everyone else will aspire to be like them and stop fighting. Didn’t work then, not working now, not going to work ever. But because they knew the Nazis were we’re bitches like this, Mona and Willem were just like “We’ll use this to our advantage, we’ll use our privilege to fight the Nazis.”
However, by the summer of 1941 the Nazis started to realize that this plan was not going to work, and they also realized like oh, there’s The Resistance. So, they started to infiltrate the network. They would arrest people, they would interrogate them, but everyone was covering for everybody. But the part that was getting tricky was moving the pilots, the airmen, from the house, to the place, to the fishing boat, to the submarine. It was just getting more and more difficult to move them around. So, they’re having to keep them in hiding sometimes instead of just, like, coming in the house, moving along really quickly, sometimes they would have to hide overnight and the longer they were there, the more risky was that you might get caught.
By September 1941, Mona and Willem agreed that Willem should go into hiding because they thought they might be closing in on them. Mona would remain behind in the house, and with her acting skills and with her beauty, she would be able to just be “Oh, he went off on a fishing trip. Don’t worry about me, totally not a Resistance fighter.” She also stayed behind to care for their two dogs and just to kind of look not suspicious. And their instincts were correct because the Gestapo arrived at Ingleside and brought her in for some questioning. She was subjected to repeated questioning but, you know, she pulled it off. All of the classic things that women do when we want to look dumber than we are; she pretended to be confused, she pretended like “Oh, my German’s not that good,” even though she spoke like fluent German and also Dutch. But then they were, like, “Actually, we have files with details of people that you know. In fact, we just found this guy, this British pilot, who was just staying at your house, and he had a business card in his pocket with your name and phone number on it.” So, she was kind of fucked.
She was put into solitary confinement and she was held for three months without charge in this terrifying situation. And then one day, some guards came in, and they’re like, “Guess who’s on trial today? You are,” and she was taken to trial. She didn’t have a consultation with a lawyer, she didn’t know what the charges against her were. The whole trial was being done in German, which she understood but, like, in this situation… She spoke German but, you know, it’s some technical language. But she did understand when they found her guilty and sentenced her to death by firing squad. You might be looking at the length of this episode and realizing the story doesn’t end here, so hang on. This is what’s in the Canadian Heritage Minute.
So, all of her acting training, her elocution letters, being the Ziegfeld Follie, she stood there, cool as anything, she remained calm, she bowed her head slightly, clicked her heels together and all that she said was, “Guten Morgen, meine Herren” a phrase I know from the musical Cabaret. She’s saying, “Good morning, sir,” basically. 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, the chief judge of the tribunal was so impressed he followed her from the courtroom and he was like, “Okay, you’re being transferred to this other prison to be killed by firing squad but I will permit you to appeal your sentence because you’re such a classy broad.” So, she was given writing materials upon her return to the prison. So, she wrote her appeal, and in fact, it worked; her death sentence was commuted to a life in labour camps. This was one month before her 41st birthday, just so we’re all keeping track of how old she was.
So, she was taken with other prisoners to a train station, and then she’s being moved to a different prison, a working concentration camp labour thing. So, she moved to this labor camp where she worked on an assembly line creating plywood wings for small craft and then on the line assembling igniters for bombs. While she was there, she became ill with bronchitis several times, you know, because it’s a prison working camp. So, even when she was in the hospital, she was still tasked with doing more work, and the work that they got her to do was to knit socks for the German soldiers. Remember, she knit socks for soldiers in World War I? So, it’s a skill she had. She derived great satisfaction by breaking the wool frequently when not watched so there would be holes in the socks, and she’d also incorporate large knots of wool in the soles of the socks to make them uncomfortable. Any act of defiance, regardless of how small, was enough to buoy her spirits to help her survive, and I feel like that’s a good reminder for us all. Every little bit of “Fuck you” energy is valuable, especially if it brings you joy.
So, 1945, February 6, all the prisoners in this prison camp were herded onto a train, they’re just switching them to a different labour camp, I guess. While she was waiting to switch to the other train, she suddenly saw Willem, her millionaire husband, among the other prisoners being put on another train. She hadn’t seen him since… Remember, he left at that one point when they thought he was going to be arrested. She didn’t know what had happened to him, she didn’t know if he was alive or dead. So, he had been eventually arrested. Without thinking of the consequences, she ran to him, threw her arms around him, embraced him, and she was able to say, “Have courage, my love,” in Dutch before they were parted again.
At the next prison, I mean, these prisons are all shitty, overcrowded, sleeping four in a cell designed for one, very little food, the toilet was a bucket in the middle of the floor. Things were terrible, obviously. And then shortly after her arrival at this prison, I believe it was this prison, another small group of prisoners arrived. One young woman caught her eye, this was Wendelien van Boetzelaer, a 22-year-old baroness, a university student who had been rounded up because of her involvement in the Resistance. She didn’t initially know that that’s who Wendelien was, but Mona saw, like, this one woman was being treated differently; she’s not allowed to join the other prisoners for meals or exercise, she was being kept in solitary confinement like Mona had been. 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.”
So, at the end of one time when Mona was working in kitchen shift, she slipped a cooked potato into a secret pocket she had sewn into the skirt of her uniform for this purpose, a secret potato-smuggling pocket, and she got the potato to the woman and the woman answered the gift and then they became friends. So, Wendelien later on recalled, 50 years later, what impressed her about Mona even in the situation, you know, where you’re emaciated, like, spirits are broken down, you’ve been in, like, Nazi prison camps for years, Wendelien remembered she had this profound life force. She also had a great repertoire of songs, probably from the Ziegfeld Follies; she knew naughty songs, she knew happy songs, like, she just knew how to keep spirits up. So, together, Mona was like, “Okay, I’ll take you under my wing, here’s how this prison… Here’s what’s up.”
So, the prison director, Mona had discovered, was a lesbian, and as such was not sympathetic to the Nazis persecution of homosexuals. This lesbian prison warden, she had some compassion for most of the women in her charge, although she was not willing to risk her life or position for them. But as long as she was in charge, it’s like, things could be worse, and she took care of the women in some ways. Mona persuaded, perhaps with her beauty and her elocution, this lesbian prison warden to let Wendelien out of the cell to join the rest of the prisoners to, like, incorporate herself with everybody else to take meals and exercise and stuff and then she taught her how to make a potato pocket I guess because when assigned to kitchen duties, both women smuggled pieces of cooked potatoes to share with other women assigned to other tasks in the prison.
Soon, Mona and Wendelien, I’ve never seen this name before… [phonetic] Wen-dell-ee-an, [ph.] Ven-de-leen, they’re like, “We’re going to bust out of here.” We are going to escape from here.” [ph.] Ven-de-leen, (I’m going to say it like that now, I don’t know) was the one who was like, “We are going to get the fuck out of here,” and Mona’s like “How are we going to do that? I’m game but, like, what’s the plan?” And Wendelien was like, “I don’t know, but when the opportunity presents itself, we both have to be ready to seize that opportunity.” And they’re both like, “Got it. We got potato pockets and we’re going to bust out of this Nazi prison. We are Resistance fighters, and we got this.”
So, just after the middle of March of this year, which I think is ’45… Yes. Mona and Wendelien noticed there were more planes than usual in the skies above their prison, so they’re like, “Okay, I guess we’re in the war, and I guess there’s going to be an air attack, probably. So, probably these other planes are, like, on missions bombing some other places, they’re going to bomb us next.” And so, Wendelien and Mona are just, like, “This could be our chance.” So, Wendelien is just like, “Ooh, lesbian prison director, could I have a sweater? Because it’s so cold and I’m so emaciated here in this prison. My rheumatism is, like… Please, can I have a sweater? Please?” And the lesbian prison director let her have it. The real reason Wendelien wanted this was because when the time came to escape, she didn’t want to be out there in her, like, prison garb; she wanted to blend in with the local population and not look suspicious. Because she was able to get the sweater, Wendelien encouraged Mona to ask for her shoes for the same reason. In prison, they were wearing wooden clogs and Mona’s like, “They don’t keep my feet warm, can I please have shoes?” And if the prison director suspected the real reason, she never let on. But I don’t know, I’m picturing, you know, I don’t know a lot of women’s prison wardens but I’m picturing Queen Latifah from the Chicago movie, but Nazi white person version. So, they got the sweater, they got the shoes, and then suddenly, the Allies did, in fact, attack the prison. So, panicking, the director was just like, “Oh my god, my girls! I’ve got to take care of my girls.” And so, she unlocked the prison gates, and she was just, like, “Okay, prisoners, you have a choice. You can either go into the prison’s bomb shelter or take your chances outside amid the active bombing situation and gunfire.” And Wendelien and Mona were just like, “This is our chance,” and they ran outside.
So, they headed in what they thought was towards the west, towards Holland. Without a map or compass, they couldn’t be sure of where they were going exactly. And these two had skills, and I don’t doubt them for a minute, but they’ve been through a lot, they hadn’t been eating a lot, and neither of them, you know, like, an heiress/medical office assistant/showgirl and then this, like, baroness… Did they know how to read the stars? I don’t know. Anyway, as the night approached, they found shelter in the barn of a deserted farm. They removed as much of their prison clothes as they could, buried it in the mud, and then set about to pretend to be non-prisoner, German people. Wendelien spoke German fluently, and so she was, like, “Here’s the plan. We’re going to play…” because Mona was, like, early 40s, Wendelien is, like, 20 years younger. So, it’s like, “We’re going to play an aunt and her niece.” Because Mona spoke German with a Canadian accent, that would be suspicious and make her seem like the enemy. So, it’s like, “You can’t talk, so what we’re going to do is like, you’ll be the aunt, but you’re going to pretend you have a cleft palate and you’re mute and also, you are intellectually challenged. And Mona is just like, “I am an actress. I can perform this role of a lifetime, and I shall.”
So, for the next three weeks, they walked across Germany. Their shoes eventually gave out they had to walk barefoot. They begged for food and lodging at farms along the way, offering their physical labour as payment, which it’s like, don’t know where the strength is coming from, from their inner badassness. They were nearly caught a few times finally reached the village of Rhede on the Dutch-German border. So, they went to see the town burgemeister, which I think is, like, the mayor, who is like, “Where are you from, glamorous young woman and your cleft-palate aunt who is mute?” Wendelien said, “We’re refugees from Düsseldorf, but we lost our identity papers when we fled from our city,” and the burgemeister was like, “Sounds good to me.” So, he gave them new papers and arranged lodging for them at two separate farms. Mona was nervous to be separated, but now she had to pretend to be this cleft palate mute German person without Wendelien there to, like, emotionally support her.
So, she’s taken to this farm lived in by a farmer, his wife, and their six children. She had to share the bed of the eldest girl, who was 12. This girl was not kind to Mona; all the children were mean to her, thinking that she was this, like, cleft palate dummy, but she couldn’t resist what they were doing, she couldn’t discipline them because that would give up the act, she couldn’t talk. Anyway, during the first few days, she could hear that there was artillery fire in the distance, and one day, the artillery fire moved closer until it was all around them. So, the farmer said, “Okay, everybody and you cleft palate aunt, go into the cellar.” Mona, who had been, remember, she had been in solitary confinement that first prison for, like, three months she was just, like, her c-PTSD, she just wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. So, she and the farmer stayed upstairs. At one point, there was a lull in the fighting. The farmer took a plate of food out to a young soldier near the house. As Mona watched, a shell burst, and he and the soldier died. She ran to the cellar with the family, and the two of them were dead in the ditch.
Mona helped the farmer’s wife, even this family had been assholes to her, it’s like, the outer space, space slug situation it’s like, “Well, I guess we’re a team now.” So, she helped the farmer’s wife carry the farmer’s body into the house, laid him on the sofa, and then panicked neighbours came through with news that people the Poles were advancing. Everyone needs to gather what you can and flee into Holland. So, she helped the farmer’s wife. Again! Mona! Helping people, selflessly, and also saving herself. So, they put whatever they could into a cart, and they guided it across this marshy patch in Holland. They spent a cold night in hay in a field until a Dutch farmer collected them to take him to his home.
Once she was back in Holland, Mona was like, “Okay, shake it off. I’m me again, I’m not the cleft palate person. It’s me, Mona. Mona Parsons, glamorous wife of a millionaire Resistance fighter, accredited nurse, ex-showgirl, and I’m also Canadian.” So, she said like “I’m a Canadian. I’m married to a Dutch national. Please help me find the British troops, they will help me.” And one of the first things she did, this is 1945, so for the last two years she hadn’t been able to contact her father who she had been able to get and keep in touch with via the Red Cross, so she sent word to him like, “Guess what? I’m still alive.” So, the Dutch farmer and his wife, nicer people than the last ones, bandaged her badly damaged feet from all the walking on foot for weeks and gave her a pair of wooden clogs to wear. Wooden clogs are going to come up again in the story. They packed her a lunch, and the farmer’s brother took her on the back of his bicycle to where there were some nearby British troops.
Mona went up to them, and they’re just, like, suspicious because everyone’s suspicious of everyone. And she’s like, “You guys, no.” So, first of all, the Dutch farmer’s brother thought these were British troops. Mona went up to them and she’s like, “You guys, I’m from Canada. Please help me, British troops.” And the soldier is like, “Where are you from in Canada?” And she’s like, ‘I’m from Wolfville in Nova Scotia,” and he was like, this is a quote, “My name is Clarence Leonard. I’m from Halifax. We are the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.” Nova Scotians! Only one to two degrees of separation from each other. They’re just like, “Fuck! We’re Nova Scotian, here in the middle of the war in Holland!” So, anyway, she was then taken for further questioning because it’s, like, is she lying? Is she a spy? So, the Nova Scotia guys took her to the British people. One of the British people heard that she claimed to be from “Wolfville, Nova Scotia and he’s like, “Oh, one of my guys had attended Acadia University in Wolfville,” so he went to find this guy, Captain Vincent White. And in fact he did because he had acted with her in some of the plays back in Wolfville and he’s just like “What the fuck is Mona Parsons doing here? This glamorous actress person.” Anyway, everyone’s excited. The Nova Scotia connections coming fast and furious. Basically, it’s just kind of like, she’s having her feet tended to, there are sores, whatever, things are not great foot-wise. But anyway, it was arranged for her to be transferred to a residence for Canadian nurses. She met up there with Captain Robbins Elliot, whose father, back in Wolfville, had been Mona’s family’s physician. It’s bananas to me, people meeting people. It happens today, it happens to me. But for her in the story, it’s just, like, it’s unbelievable really, but this is what happened.
So, while in the hospital she wrote a 34-page letter to her father and stepmother her first communication with them since 1943, like, the Red Cross had I guess communicated telegrams but this is her first— and these letters still exist, and this is how we know a lot of what happened with her. A few days later, her friends arranged for her to have a little journey away from the hospital, a little fun day, a field trip. Along for this ride to cover the story for the Toronto Telegram was a war correspondent named Alan Kent, who was also from Halifax, Nova Scotia. During this trip, she had a tearful reunion with her dog, who survived the war. But utmost in her mind, Willem, like, where’s her husband? Is he alive? Is he dead? What’s happening? Several days went by before her brother-in-law confirmed that Willem had been liberated, he was still alive, he had been liberated from a camp by American soldiers and his services as a translator had been engaged by the American military. So, that July, Mona and Willem were finally reunited in Laren, I presume at Ingleside, because that’s where their house was.
In the early months after the war ended, she received two citations of, like, “She’s great.” The first was on behalf of the British people thanking her for her role in aiding members, like, the airmen who she helped get to the fishermen and the submarines by hiding them in her house. The second was signed by General Dwight Eisenhower, expressing the gratitude of the American people for everything that she had done to help out the war effort. So, she truly had been given a second chance at life, and she was intent on embracing it fully. She and Willem both had to work at regaining their health after everything they’ve been through, and she bounced back better than Willem did. He struggled, he was quite depressed, he ate not much, and he began drinking heavily. In the 1950s, like, they stayed there, her brother Ross and his wife visited in the 1950s, and they were shocked by Willem, by the condition he was in. He did not come downstairs for breakfast. When he rose later in the morning, he just drank from dawn till dusk. Mona wrote at one point that he seemed to be “sadistic,” though she gave no details. In 1956, Willem became gravely ill and he was hospitalized in Amsterdam, and he passed away.
And then, twist upon a twist. In the days following his funeral, Mona learned that Willem had changed a life insurance policy he had to… It would all go to the wife of his best friend. So, she was not going to inherit his money; the wife of his best friend was going to inherit his money. And then she also learned… So, Willem had a son from his first marriage who she had thought was illegitimate, but it turns out he was actually legitimate, and he was entitled to three-quarters of the father’s estate. So, Mona was left with nothing other than the things she personally owned: her clothing, her jewelry, some furniture, and some shares in Willem’s company. And this is why, ladies, it’s important to have your own bank account and your own assets, and I know back in this era, women couldn’t own property and things, but you don’t want to be left like Mona. You can’t assume your husband’s going to not be a shit at the end of it.
So, she had the title to Ingleside, the house of dreams, but without funds like she couldn’t maintain the house, so she had to sell the house. So, she left Ingleside May 5, 1957, moving into a hotel. So, through all of this, and kind of reminding me a bit of last time when we were talking about Viola Desmond, Mona was just like “Fuck this. Holland, I’m over it,” and she left. She went back to Nova Scotia, where she stayed at the Lord Nelson Hotel, a hotel that is still there. I’ve eaten there at the restaurant, The Victory Arms, it’s a good little restaurant. Anyway, so eventually, she settled into an apartment on Inglis Street, which is right in the neighbourhood where I grew up. Never heard of this woman! Never heard of her. Hang on for this next thing. So, on Inglis Street, where she lived, one of her neighbours was an old friend, Major General Harry Foster. A person named Foster living on Inglis Street in Halifax could also describe myself. I mean, Major General Harry Foster, no relation that I know of but, like, everything I’ve just told you about Nova Scotia, like, clearly some relative of mine, must be.
Anyway, Harry, Harry Foster, my ancestor, he was like, “Oh my god, Mona, hey. I remember seeing you at the hospital in Holland,” where he served after the war. Anyway, he’s just like, “Oh, we met. Remember at the hospital that time?” He was retired/divorced, which means single, and the two were just, like, they happily got “reacquainted,” they got married. He supported her legal battle for this whole, like, inheritance bullshit and by 1961, she lost the battle, she did not get any of the money and then three years later, my ancestor Harry Foster died of cancer. So, she is a single lady again. A widow twice over. She lived at their house near the Chester Golf Club until she decided to sell that house but continued to live in it as a tenant. She wanted to travel more, and by 1966, she decided to return to Europe for the first time since she left in 1957. She renewed some friendships and just, kind of like, felt some closure about that whole part of her life.
In 1969, she was in a car accident on the icy roads just before Christmas and she thought, “It’s not great to be living in this rural area that doesn’t have public transit, I don’t want to have to be depending on a car,” when she’s old and living by herself with icy slippery roads. So, she decided to return to Wolfville, where she hadn’t lived for many years, but she’d made many happy memories there. I’ve been there, like, there’s a beautiful downtown, it’s very walkable. So, she got an apartment on Main Street in 1970 within walking distance of the shops and the university, and she thought she might take some courses there, do some senior learning.
As she was aging, at this point she’s in her seventies, she developed emphysema and had some small strokes. Remember, her mother died of a stroke as well. This affected her memory and her ability to speak, but during that time and also prior to that time while she was living in Wolfville, she was just, like, a colourful local person. She’d been a Ziegfeld Follies girl like she had had all these adventures, and she told people her adventures; she’s this, like, kooky older lady in Wolfville. This is where the people in Wolfville today… Or the woman who wrote the book, she talked to people who knew her in the ‘70s. So, it’s like, this is how her story lived on because she was just this local character in this last era of her life. As her health and memory declined, she began to experience nightmares and flashbacks, like c-PTSD, particularly at night. She would have night terrors, she would believe herself to be a prisoner of war once again, and then eventually, she died in the hospital, November 28, 1976, where she is buried in Willowbank cemetery, I believe in Wolfville. Her epitaph reads:
Mona L. Parsons
1901-1976
Wife of Major General Harry Foster
CBE DSO
That is what it says! There is no mention of her own citations, of her own heroism, her own story. The end of that epitaph, where it says “CBE DSO,” those are the citations that Harry got for his military career. He’s not buried there with her, he’s buried with his first wife and Kentville, about 16 kilometres away. People who listen to my regular podcast Vulgar History will know there was a famous episode famous to me, famous to the listeners I did about a French, before France was France, about this queen called Fredegund and her tomb, and she did these incredible things, talk about a twist and a turn. Her grave is just like “Fredegund, she was the mother of a king.” And it’s like [groans]! To see a woman with such a story to just be like… How many women who even get graves, lots of people don’t get graves, but how many people are just like, “Oh, she was the wife of so-and-so,” where it’s like no! She was this whole ass person, like, who she was married to was the least interesting thing about her.
A brief tangent since I’m already rambling, one of the people in my personal life who I consider and will consider an enemy for as long as I live I, I do not wish harm upon him now because he’s already had a downfall that I did not cause but when it happened, I was glad. This is probably, like, 15 years ago, I was at a house party that this guy was also at. He was in one room with some people and I was in the other room and just as I was coming from one room to the room he was in, I overheard what he said, and what he said was “Oh, what’s her face? Joe’s girlfriend,” and at the time and [chuckles] at the now, I do have a boyfriend whose name is Joe. That has not come up on the podcast because it’s not the “My life story” podcast. But when I heard him say “Oh, what’s her name, Joe’s girlfriend,” I was just like, I’m going to destroy this man’s life, like, “What’s her face? Joe’s girlfriend”? That’s the energy of Mona Parsons’s grave to me. At least it says her name, is not “What’s her face, Harry Foster’s wife,” but like to dismiss a woman is like “Oh yeah, like, this accessory to this man.” It’s just like, no thanks.
But this is where the author of where I got all this research from Andria Hill-Lehr who wrote a book Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, From Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe, and she has this website MonaParsons.ca, like, Andria has been advocating to celebrate this woman’s story, and she has had so much success because look at the story!
So, in 2005, Historica Canada released a Heritage Minute on Mona Parsons; it shows her arrest and her eventual escape. In 2017, a statue in her honour was erected in Wolfville, and it’s of her dancing wearing wooden clogs. I told you the wooden clogs were going to come back, and they did. The statue is called “The joy is almost too much to bear,” and that’s a quote from the letter that she wrote to her family at the time that the that Holland was liberated, the joy is almost too much to bear. So, it’s this joyful statue. I love that this is the statue. It’s not, like, her standing there… She wasn’t an army person, she wouldn’t be standing there in an army uniform, she’s just dancing in wooden clocks, joyfully. Just this kind of like kooky, you can see like the vibe of what she was like. And she was a dancer, right, Ziegfeld Follies dancer. Anyway, this statue was advocated for, and the funds were raised for, by the Wolfville Historical Society and the Women of Wolfville community group. The statue was made by local artist Nistal Prem de Boer, who is also Dutch. In November 2023, Mona Parsons was featured on a Canada Post stamp. When I was asking my mother what she knew about this person because it just had never come up in my conversations with my mother, who lives in Nova Scotia, she was like, “Oh yeah, I bought the stamps,” and she still has the stamps because they’re cool stamps.
So, that is today’s extra long Vulgar History: Canadian Heritage Minute(s). Was it an hour? Canadian Heritage Hour. Couldn’t skimp on any of the details. There’s so much more detail on MonaParsons.ca that you can get more. I tried to make it as concise as I could while still celebrating this person. So, if there’s anything that I learned from the story and that I hope you learn from the story, it’s that this woman was an icon, she was a legend, women contain multitudes, your life can have multiple eras. If all that you can do is knit some socks with some knots in them to make someone’s feet uncomfortable, do that. Like, small acts of resistance, I’m just trying to summarize everything we talked about, Nazis are always the bad guys. And basically, don’t fuck with Canada. Thank you.
I’ll be back with some more of these Heritage Minutes. If you have suggestions of women from Canadian history who you want celebrated, who you want to hear me yell about passionately with vocal fry, like, let me know. If you go to VulgarHistory.com, there’s like a “Contact me” email button there, or I’m on Instagram, you can DM me on Instagram @VulgarHistoryPod. Anyway, regular episode coming up on Wednesday and some more of these goddamn episodes until this… Until the horrors cease, I’m going to keep swearing and telling these goddamn stories so everybody knows that Canada is not to be fucked around with. Tits out. Elbows up. Take care.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Learn more about Mona Parsons at monaparsons.ca
Get a copy of Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, From Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe by Andria Hill-Lehr
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