In August, FlamboroughToday.com had an opportunity to sit down with George Flosman and his son Rob to hear first-hand about George’s life experiences. Although his health was failing, he was able to relate some of the extraordinary historical events he witnessed.
George Flosman was born in Bohemia in the former Czechoslovakia on April 13, 1937. He and his parents and two older brothers lived in the family mill. When he was a year old, the Nazis invaded the Sudetenland (northwestern area of Czechoslovakia). Residents, especially Jews, started leaving for Prague and Western European countries.
In 1939, the Nazis took over all of Czechoslovakia. George acknowledged how young he was at the time, saying, “I didn’t really know there was such a thing as Jews until the local shoemaker and his family were deported for being Jewish.”
Nonetheless, George had fond memories of living and working on the farm and at the mill. He still had some memories of his childhood in Czechoslovakia and going fishing.
From 1939-1945, the Nazis expected George’s parents to send all the flour they milled to Germany, but they chose to open their mill in the middle of the night to local residents and sell them flour, at great danger to themselves. George’s parents and grandparents were taken to Gestapo headquarters twice for questioning.
To the locals, the family were heroes. Not only did they risk their lives selling flour to their neighbours, but they also refused to profit from the war by inflating their prices; they continued to sell their flour at pre-war prices. After the war, the community hosted a parade to celebrate the family.
In 1945, the Nazis were defeated - but then the Communists came into power three years later. Because they had a farm which the Communists wanted to take away, the Flosman family became the target of the STB (Communist secret police). They also hid a high-ranking Czechoslovakian government minister, Hubert Ripka, at their mill for three weeks, before he was flown out by the French government.
Ripka was not discovered at their mill, but suspicion did fall on the family. A local police officer who was a friend of the family came to warn them that their names were on the list of people to be liquidated and that they needed to get away.
The Flosmans left Czechoslovakia in 1948 and escaped to West Germany. At the time, the border had guard towers and dogs but no solid fence, and they decided to try to get through at night. Their family worked with a few other families to put together the stamps and bottles of whisky they would need to bribe their way through a few checkpoints to get closer to the border.
The truck they were escaping in got stuck in the mud at the border. Whistles were going off, guards came running over and George’s father got his gun out, but then American soldiers showed up and deemed that the truck was just over the border, helping them out of the truck and into West Germany.
At that time, the Americans had set up an International Refugee Organization (IRO) and formed refugee camps on the sites of former Second World War German army camps. The camps gradually filled with refugees from the East, including Poland, Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Hungary, as well as Czechoslovakia. George’s family stayed in that refugee camp in Germany for a year and a half.
For young teenager George, the refugee was “tremendously exciting,” not least because he did not have to go to school. He remembered roaming the countryside. At the time, Germany was rebuilding after the war, so many refugees were employed in the reconstruction efforts. His father was fortunate enough to speak English, and he sent off about 20 letters to embassies to try to find a home. He applied to Canada several times but kept being turned down. His father was persistent and eventually, they did get visas for Canada.
The family travelled to Canada by ship. When they arrived, George did not speak any English, so he had to learn it by immersion. He said that, within about a year and a half, he could speak broken English but it took about four years before he could speak it more fluently and without an accent.
The family first went to West Lorne, near St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1950, because another family they knew had been accepted as agricultural workers. George’s father was able to find a job at a lumber mill and George started school in West Lorne. A Canadian family came to the camp and offered them a “half-destroyed” house with the understanding that his parents would maintain the house.
From there, they moved to Toronto and another couple offered them their spare room, so the five of them were in one room for a while, until his parents could find a better home for them. A lot of Czechs helped one another at this time; another family found a restaurant job for the oldest brother in Toronto.
A family called Springle helped them move to Burlington and Aldershot, and helped the family find work in agriculture. The Flosmans worked on a farm until they could afford to buy their own farm in 1955, on Centre Road near Carlisle, between the 7th and 8th Concessions. It was just a few acres - George referred to it as “a garden" - but It was gradually expanded to 30 acres, and then the family bought another farm.
From Carlisle, George attended the old Waterdown District High School (WDHS) on Dundas Street, graduating in 1954. After high school, he went to Hamilton Institute of Technology (now Mohawk College). He then went to North Carolina State University to study mechanical engineering.
Rob Flosman gently nudged his father to tell the story of how, in 1962, George took part in an anti-segregation protest in North Carolina and marched to a desegregated theatre. George’s only comment: “It was a good time.”
Rob, a well-known history teacher at WDHS and founder of the Waterdown Museum of Hope, is extremely proud of that incident and acknowledges that his father’s experiences were part of the reason for his own passion for history.
It was at university that George met his future wife, Sandra (Clark). They married on June 2, 1963, just a few days after George’s graduation. They rented their first home on King Street West in Hamilton, then built a house in Pleasant Valley, Dundas, in 1965. Their sons Mike and Rob were born while they lived in that house.
George and Sandra were together for nearly 60 years, until she passed in 2022.
After university, George worked as a mechanical engineer at El-Met-Parts in Dundas for about six years, “doing everything.” However, he did not really enjoy working for others so, in 1972, he started a welding business called Efcom Limited in Carlisle (located where the LCBO is today). In the early 1980s, George moved the business to Greensville. In 1984, the family moved to Greensville as well, where they lived for almost 40 years. George did not retire from Efcom until he was 81.
Merton Hambly and George were charter members of the Greensville Optimist Club in 1990. George took the lead in the Club rebuilding the Webster’s Falls Bridge in 2000 and remembered restoring it, “brick by brick.”
Merton recalls how George was involved in everything and “seemed to know what to do and how to do it.”
Many Optimist projects, including the bridge, were worked on at Efcom. Merton remembers George getting his welders to build a food trailer for the Club, which the Club is still using today.
Merton laughs when he remembers that George had to ask him to leave while the trailer was being built because Merton’s instructions were confusing George’s welders!
Just over a year ago, George moved into a retirement home in Dundas, but he was not forgotten by his Optimist pals. Merton reports that, every Monday morning, some of them would pick George up and take him out for coffee and a chat.
After an active, well-lived life, George passed on September 11, 2024.
