The first surprise came when Hendrika Bruynse went into labour about two months earlier than expected, at the Amsterdam home she shared with her husband, Wilhelmus, and their first child, a two-year-old boy.
It was October 1927 and the couple was expecting Christmas twins. First came Johanna, followed by Maria.
They were followed by yet another surprise: Hennie.
"She was a surprise gift," Maria said of her little sister, adding, "Johanna's the oldest and thinks she's the wisest."
The identical triplets, born at home on Oct. 27, 1927, weighed just nine pounds altogether. Soon after, the ambulance arrived and whisked the sisters to the hospital, where they stayed in incubators (dubbed "Dutch ovens" by Hennie's daughter, Yvonne) for nearly five months.
The feisty trio survived and will gather with about 50 extended family members to celebrate their 85th birthday this Saturday.
Earlier this week, the sisters gathered at Maria's Coquitlam home to welcome Johanna, who had recently arrived from Amsterdam, and assembled on a comfortable sofa to tell the story of their lives.
"All the street went crazy" when the triplets were born, said Johanna.
"In those days, it was a miracle" they all survived, added Maria.
Their father ran a successful plumbing and heating business that allowed the family to have the help of a live-in maid, and their mother went on to have seven more children.
The girls attended boarding school, where they "drove those nuns bananas" playing the kinds of identity pranks favoured by identical multiples. Naughty deeds committed by one girl were often blamed on a sister and, as they grew older, the pranks continued with boyfriends.
Maria recalled the arrival of a new neighbour on their street who chastised their mother for the number of boyfriends her "daughter" was entertaining, and the time Johanna agreed to a date with a boy she didn't care for and gave him directions to pick "her" up at work. He was waiting outside Maria's office later that day and, when the middle triplet realized what her older sister had done, she brought him home and told Johanna her new friend was waiting at the door.
With the onset of the Second World War, Maria used her shorthand skills to transcribe the BBC radio news, which she later typed and copied so that their father, working for the underground, could distribute it.
"It was very dangerous," Maria said. "If the Germans found you with those papers, they'd kill you."
Like many in Holland, the Bruynse family suffered greatly in the war's final winter. Fuel and food supplies had been exhausted, and, with little else to eat, the family resorted to dining on tulip bulbs.
A Canadian soldier who took a shine to the triplets helped when he could with his own army rations and when the Germans finally surrendered, he pedalled their stolen bicycles back to the family one by one.
The family survived and the then-18-year-old sisters were sent to Denmark to recover from months of malnourishment. It was there that they celebrated the end of the war, marching with Allied soldiers in the liberation parade.
Johanna later married and had four daughters of her own, and still lives just outside of Amsterdam.
Maria emigrated to the U.S. and worked for Pan Am in Miami.
The Canadian soldier they'd met years earlier stayed in touch with the family; in 1958 he and Hennie were married and settled in Port Coquitlam. They had two children in addition to two from Hennie's first marriage.
In 1997, a "nice widower" from the Coquitlam Lawn Bowling club where Hennie played took a shine to her. Still happily married, she suggested her identical - and single - sister in Miami.
Maria and Don Fitzgerald were married a short time later and settled in Coquitlam; he passed away just two months ago.
Through it all, the sisters stayed in touch, mostly through letters, more recently by phone.
Maria's airline job meant frequent free flights as well. Their favourite was the flight from Tokyo to Vancouver on Oct. 27 - the time zone change meant the threesome got to celebrate their 67th birthday together twice.
About to turn 85, the sisters who survived a risky birth, a war and, lately, some serious health setbacks, aren't surprised at their own longevity.
"We may be 85," Maria said, "but in our hearts, we're 58."
Times three.
