Main Page Chris Bennedsen: Scrapbook of a Life in Letters Timeline
Previous Page 6
Memory
Next Page
Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8
A Dane in Canada
The Immigrant Letter
Collecting a Life
Constructing Memory
Bringing It All Together
The Immigrant Letter
Yet, while Christian’s correspondence was voluminous, it was not unusual. Many of the tens of millions of migrants from Europe who came to North America during the nineteenth and the early and middle part of the twentieth century recounted their experiences in letters to their families and friends back home. The hard facts of distance and separation made letter writers out of many emigrants, as they tried to maintain the relationships they had left behind and to make sense of their new lives.

The Bennedsen collection is interesting in one important way, however. In later years, Chris brought back from Denmark many of the letters he had sent to family and friends during his first years in Canada. In this way we become part of the conversation that Chris had with those he left behind and become privy to both Chris’s experiences and the daily lives of family and friends in Denmark. We see how Chris continued to be linked to his home and his roots, not just how he became part of a new home. There was a Danish life before the new world and afterwards as well.  We can also watch these ties change over time, and how the lives of family and friends left behind evolved.

- 2 -
Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8
Previous Page Introduction Timeline Next Page
Introduction | 1. Spandet | 2. Settlement | 3. The Colangelos | 4. A Dane in Little Italy | 5. Work | 6. Memory
Further Reading | Credits | Contact Us