As part of Remembrance Week long-time Wolfville resident Mona Parsons was honoured by Canada Post with a new stamp. The stamp was unveiled at the Wolfville Post Office on Monday, November 6th.
Mona was a Valley girl. Born in Middleton (Nova Scotia), she grew up in Wolfville. She studied here, trained to be a nurse and went to New York where she danced in the Ziegfield Follies. Later she met and married a Dutch industrialist. They lead a jetset lifestyle before the jet era. When war came, Mona and her husband joined the Dutch Resistance and hid downed Allied airmen in their attic.
They were eventually betrayed and turned in. The Gestapo came calling. Mona is the only Canadian woman to be tried by the Gestapo. Not surprisingly she was sentenced Mona to death. The Gestapo expected this svelte socialite to beg for mercy. When she refused to plead for her life, the Nazis were begrudgingly impressed and commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment. In prison she and other women knit socks for Nazi troops. She trained the other prisoners how to add a tiny, imperceptible knot that would cause great pain to the wearer.
In the final months of the war Allied bombing provided the opportunity for Mona and a young Dutch aristocrat to escape. They walked across Germany and The Netherlands to find the Canadian line. Mona, who was 5’8″, weighted 87 pounds when she encountered the Nova Scotia Highlanders. Some Highlanders and medical staff knew her from school days in the Valley!
Hers was an amazing life, which Andria Hill-Lehr has detailed in her book: Mona Parsons, from Privilege to Prison. You should read it.
The book, a play, a Heritage Minute and the stamp are part of the way the community has remembered and honoured Mona. The Women of Wolfville also went on a multi-year campaign to raise funds for and commissioned a statue of Mona. The statue is on the theme of joyfulness. On finally making it to the Canadian line in The Netherlands Mona said, “The joy was almost too much to bear.” So for eternity Mona is remembered in his joyful dance pose. Pictured here at the state unveiling with sculptor Nistal Prem de Boer.
Canada Post has printed 1.6 million stamps bearing Mona’s likeness and distributed them to 6,000 Canadian post offices. Mona Parsons was one of the may stories of defiance and liberation.
Allan Lynch, a wandering scribbler 