During his teen years, Alfred worked as a farmhand and a truck driver, and by the age of 19, he was working in Ottawa for the Canadian Census Bureau. īy the 1920s, living in Winnipeg, father Henry worked as an agent for a steamship company, but the stock market crash of 1929 proved financially disastrous, and the family could not afford to send Alfred to college. Again and again I sought shelter, only to be forced out of it by something new. I was like a ship without anchor being swept along through darkness in a storm. Alfred Vogt found these moves difficult, later remarking:Ĭhildhood was a terrible period for me.
įor the first dozen or so years of his life, van Vogt's father, Henry Vogt, a lawyer, moved his family several times within western Canada, moving to Neville, Saskatchewan Morden, Manitoba and finally Winnipeg, Manitoba. Until age four, van Vogt and his family spoke only Plautdietsch at home. He was the third of six children born to Heinrich "Henry" Vogt and Aganetha "Agnes" Vogt (née Buhr), both of whom were born in Manitoba and grew up in heavily immigrant communities.