by Earla Haukness
Earla Trist Haukness, the daughter of Grace Henderson Trist who lived in Amesdale in the 1930's, remembers Christmas at Amesdale. When she was young, every year her family would walk out to Larry Sward's home. It was the one which was further in the woods, and such a long walk for the children's little legs. Nevertheless, the children would get so excited going there because they were sure it was Santa's work shop! It was filled with saw dust, tools, and wooden toys. It even smelled like Santa's workshop!
Amesdale and the North Pole are geographically distant, but the Spirit of Christmas was present in equal proportions. At the annual Christmas concert, then performed in the school, each child received a gift. But one year the sack of gifts turned up one gift short..... so the youngest Henderson sister got the doll, and the older one had to do without. Larry, who had been present at the concert and felt badly for the girl with no gift, so over the following weeks made her a doll and delivered it to her!
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Larry Sward
In the aftermath
of the Great War, a decade long global party began, the “Roaring Twenties”. In the flight to hedonism, everyone sought
to forget what they suffered during the war.
In North America, but also in London, Paris and Berlin, in the wake of
World War I, normalcy returned to politics, jazz music blossomed, the flapper
redefined modern womanhood, and Art Deco peaked. Speakeasies, cinema, short skirts, cocktails,
cigarettes, and convertible cars offered pleasures to forget the pain. Marlene Dietrich, the star of the movies Blue Angel, Desire, and Shanghai Express, exemplified the
glamour.
But life wasn’t
glamorous for all. The “good-times” may
have been “rolling” for the wealthy and glamorous elite, but the farmers and
trade unionists were decimated. After
the booming wheat economy of the early part of the century, the Prairie
Provinces were impoverished by low wheat prices. In the U.S., trade unions that had grown rapidly
during the war years were weakened after a series of failed strikes in steel,
meatpacking and other industries. These
failed in large part due to U.S. Federal Government repression of radical
unionism during World War I.
Farmers,
frustrated with the major political parties’ opposition to free trade, which resulted
in their paying high prices for equipment, and getting low prices for their
produce, turned to Progressivism and Fabian socialist political ideas. This played an important role in the
development of Canada's first highly successful third party, the Progressive
Party of Canada that won the second most seats in the 1921 national election.
Although the Dow
Jones Industrial index increased by a factor of 4.4 between 1921 and 1929, and
the US economy grew at an annual rate of 6%, 40 percent of American wealth was
in the hands of the top 1 percent of American households. The 1920s meant poverty for farmers as
commodity prices tumbled. The price of
wheat fell from wartime highs of 294 cents a bushel in 1920, to 182 cents a
bushel in 1925, to 102 cents a bushel in 1929.
Farmers were ruined, factories closed, and unemployment rose to 25% in
the US. (Paraphrased from Niall Ferguson, 2006, The War of the World). Meanwhile, the governing Liberal Party of
Canada under William Lyon Mackenzie King, reduced spending, as it struggled to pay
off the large debts amassed during the war and during the era of railway over-expansion.
With the “Crash
of 1929”, the “Roaring Twenties” shuddered to a halt. It was against this backdrop of economic turmoil
and social unrest that Larry Swardfager appeared in Amesdale. Like so many of the bachelors who came to
Amesdale, Larry was an enigma. Nothing
was known of his past, and little was said; yet he carried within his heart
convictions born in the aftermath of the "Crash of 1929”.
Over the years,
it has been learned that Larry was originally from Southern Ontario, the son of
a farmer whose first name is believed to have been Amaziah Schwardfagger. Amaziah, who was from Lindsay, Ontario,
married a woman from Agincourt, Ontario1 and had four sons, Edward,
Neil, Fred, and Larry, and three daughters, Bertha, Grace, and Marguerite2. Born about 1900, Larry was 21 years younger
than his oldest brother Edward.
The family was
poor, eking out a subsistence living on what his brother Edward referred to as
a “poor excuse of a farm” with lots of rocks, which the boys were expected to
pick out of the field. His father, who
seemed to be only half-heartedly committed to farming, was one of the early Methodist
ministers in the Lindsay area, and as such dedicated a considerable amount of
time on horseback visiting and preaching, while his sons worked the farm. From photos he is remembered as a stern
looking man, with a long white beard.
The harshness of the man seems to have been a factor in Larry’s choice
to abandon the family farm at a very early age, possibly as young as 14 or 15
years.3
Larry found work
in Detroit as a pipe fitter.4 His eldest brother, Neil remained down
east and eventually became an engineer. At
some point both Larry and his older brother Neil chose to change their names to
"Sward", a less “German-sounding” name, in order to avoid anti-German
sentiments during and after WW1. Although
a product of a German-Canadian father and an Irish-Canadian mother, discrimination
apparently extended to Canadian-born families like that of Amaziah Schwardfager,
whose closest connection to Germany was a grandfather who had emigrated before
Confederation. Edward kept the family
name of Swardfager and moved west to Winnipeg where he was employed by the CNR.
Detroit was
hard-hit by the stock market crashed of 1929.
By 1932 only half the automobile workers who were employed in 1929 were
still employed, and at half the wages.5 Frustrated by capitalism,
the dispossessed of the Depression had had enough. On 7 March 1932 five thousand unemployed
workers laid off by the Ford Motor Company marched through central Detroit to
demand relief. Scuffles broke out at the
River Rouge plant in Dearborn and armed police and security men fired into the
crowd, and the Hunger March of March 1932 ended with five workers killed. Days later, at their funeral 60,000 people
sang ‘L'Internationale’, anthem of the socialist, the communist, and the
anarchist.6
The Internationale
(American version)
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be all!
Chorus
'Tis
the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international soviet
Shall be the human race
'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race
We want no condescending saviors
To rule us from their judgment hall,
We workers ask not for their favors
Let us consult for all:
To make the thief disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide, and do it well.
Chorus
Larry’s life
traversed revolutions of the impoverished against the privileged, socialism
against capitalism, and unprecedented global violence. Nineteen-hundred, the year of his birth, and
the year determined by the Astronomer Royal to mark the dawn of the new
century, rather than 1899, ended the most hope-fill century the world had ever
experienced. Within months of his birth,
the Victorian era, characterised by long peace and economic growth, ended with
the death of Queen Victoria; the assassination of US President McKinley, at the
hands of an American-born anarchist, and subsequent inauguration of President
Theodore Roosevelt marked a shift toward Progressivism in North America; Adolf
Hitler was born and Vladimir Lenin came out of exile to visit Russia.
Larry’s
formative years coincided with the end of an era, and the beginning of an era
of unprecedented global upheaval; the bloody death of the “Great Powers”, and
the dawn of new world powers.7 In his formative years the economic
models of capitalism, communism, and fascism were pitted against each
other. The Great Powers fell, the
Bolsheviks gained control of Russia, and the Nazis of Germany. Indeed, Larry
may have been among the 60,000 that in an expression of solidarity, strength
and defiance sung ‘L'Internationale’,
with arms raised in the clenched fist salute of leftist activists, including Marxists,
anarchists, communists, pacifists, and trade unionists.
When times got
tough in Detroit, the Canadian workers were the first to go. Larry was laid-off. Thrown out of work at a very difficult time, he
calculated that his chances of finding work down east were slim. Having lost faith in governments and
capitalism, he reasoned that a life of self-sufficiency in a less populated
area was the answer for him, so he headed north.
He found work doing
fire tower patrol with the Forestry Department, north of the north-western Ontario
town of Sioux Lookout. There he developed
a life-long friendship with Raymond Sugden, who then knew him as Larry Swartz.8
He arrived at the recently organised town of Amesdale in the mid ‘30s. There he acquired a homestead at the north end
of Pelican Lake (now Rugby Lake), probably the one later held by L. J. Fraser.
This homestead, located on a sheltered south facing bay, had a nice dock and
was often the embarkation point for many a canoe trip out on the lake.
Years later,
Larry confessed that his first few years as a homesteader in Amesdale, were
bitterly tough. However, he maintained that his existence during the
"Dirty 30's" was much better than some people's. In a newspaper
article, the Dryden Observer recorded his personal observations on the plight
of the millions of Canadians, unemployed or driven off the land by drought and
low wheat prices:
"He (Larry Sward) watched many friends and acquaintances,
usually older, die from starvation or freeze to death in their weakened condition.
Families from the west drifted through, in search of work and a
square meal for their children. In the meantime, dust that had once been the
soil blew east as the drought intensified, turning the prairies into a
dustbowl.
'Talk of your eclipse!’, says Mr. Sward. "For days on end, the
dust obliterated, blocked out the sun altogether, like no eclipse you could
ever imagine.' "
(Dryden Observer)
In the North he
encountered injustices, but this time he answered
them with his own form of justice. The
story goes that one year, while working for the CNR, the foreman who happened
to be Ukrainian, informed him that work was slowing down and he would have to
lay Larry off. The following week, when Larry passed by the gang, he counted
the same number of men on the track as there had been when he was there.
Inquiring, he learned that his spot had been filled by a Ukrainian,
coincidentally the brother-in-law to the foreman. So he found the foreman, and
exercising some backwoods justice, grabbed the foreman by the collar and
looking him straight in the eyes, with two swift and well directed blows,
blackened both of them. Larry was strong.
Boy was he strong!
Having been laid
off in Detroit, and then again on the Canadian National Railway, together with
other experiences, clearly illustrated the vulnerability of the working man,
who in those days was subject to the will of the corporations. In an interview
with the Dryden Observer, he later commented on certain labour practices
employed by the Canadian National Railway, saying he'd get 25 cents an hour
(for laying ties). After three months, employees were supposed to get a
three-cent-an-hour increase. But what the train company did was fire their
employees as soon as they reached that plateau. "You could usually get rehired"
he said, "but you'd have to start at the bottom again".
Larry had an
aversion to working for a wage. Besides being unwilling to be in the employ of
another, apparently he also had an aversion to paying taxes to the government. He
had seen the introduction of personal income tax in 1917. Originally, presented
as a temporary measure to fund the war, it later became a permanent feature of
the Canadian tax system. By the end of the Second World War, direct taxation
and income taxation had grown from providing 10% of Canadian government
revenue, to an astonishing 90%.
A great number of
changes occurred during Larry’s life. Having lived through two world wars, and
the Great Depression, he observed a lot of human suffering. He personally
suffered through the lean years after the "Crash", experienced
unemployment, observed the impact of grinding poverty's impact on men and
families, and the devastation of both wars. These events left a lasting
impression on Larry's view of the world, and he formed strong opinions. He
stated that he had no desire to return east, nor did he demonstrate any
interest in rejoining mainstream society. His experiences with business and politics
apparently caused him to consider the merits of alternate economic models to
imperialism and capitalism. Like many people of his day, in both North America
and Europe, Larry was hopeful that the political changes that were occurring in
Russia and Germany might offer the world alternative economic and political
models.
At the time
Larry wasn’t alone in his hope for a new world order. The playwright and ardent socialist, George
Bernard Shaw, had written many brochures and speeches for the Fabian
Society. On his return trip from Moscow
in 1931, after an audience with Stalin, he stated:
“If this great communistic
experiment spreads over the whole world, we shall have a new era in
history....If the future is the future as Lenis foresaw it, then we may all
smile and look forward to a future without fear’. So captivated was Shaw by the dream of state
socialism, the he claimed “Were I only 18 years of age, I would settle in
Moscow tomorrow. Stalin has delivered
the goods to an extent that seemed impossible ten years ago. Jesus Christ has come down to earth. He is no longer an idol. People are gaining some sort of idea of what
would happen if He lived now”9
Based upon the
Great Depression, apparently the defunct capitalist model had failed. Globalisation was over. Free trade was dead, and protectionism swept
across the world. John Maynard Keynes
wrote that “The theory of output as a whole...is much more easily adapted to
the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production
and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free consumption
and a large laissez-faire.” The American
Dream had turned into a nightmare, and totalitarian regimes with planned
economies offered an alternative to the vagaries of a market based economy. (Paraphrased from Niall Ferguson, 2006, The
War of the World )
Through the war
years, Larry’s endorsement of the totalitarian regimes of German and Russian put
him at odds with some of the local residents of Amesdale, whose boys were
posted overseas during the Second World War.
The life in the
bush that he chose for himself wasn't an easy one. As he approached his 78th
birthday, he confessed that upon arriving in Amesdale, he "was a little
green then. No gun, no snowshoes, no knowledge of the land." Nevertheless,
he learned to survive. He learned the craft of snowshoe making, how to hunt and
live off the land, to make bannock, can his own food, and could fry fish
fillets so they didn't curl up in the pan - all in preparation against a
depression he was convinced was in the offing. His decision to live
independently in the bush was apparently a calculated one, but he clearly loved
that life, and "continued to maintain a zest for life matched by
few".
Larry Sward
certainly wasn't your typical homesteader, or backwoods bachelor. Nevertheless,
he established himself in the community and learned the necessary survival skills,
and gained a reputation as a fine hunting guide, although he didn't care much
for fishing. During hunting season he would take American hunters on long canoe
trips into the bush to find game. Some of his clients were guests of MacDonald
Lodge in Quibell, Ontario, but he also did freelance guiding for clients
obtained through connections. As a fine backwoods artisan, he supplemented his
income with the construction of snowshoes, which he sold for a dollar a pair,
and the cutting of cordwood for 60 cents a cord, after expenses.
After the
depression, Larry moved further into the bush. Perhaps there was too much
traffic through his homestead on the north end of Pelican Lake
Larry's cabin
was very close to the lake, beyond a creek that flooded every spring, took out
the foot bridge. The cabin was
constructed of large logs with a white chinking between each log. It was a long structure, reminiscent of an
Iroquois longhouse; there were no interior walls, just one large room. The entrance was on one end of a side. To the left of the entrance there were
windows, and around the right corner of the entrance was the end of the cabin
that faced the lake. The inside of the
cabin housed two large table saws placed side by side, 12 feet long and 8 feet
wide. One had a 2-3’ diameter blade that
was for ripping rough cuts, and the other had a blade for fine cuts. There were snowshoes on the wall, and some
canoe paddles. There was a sink for dishes, and a bed at the other end of the cabin. The roof was a low pitch so he could easily
scrape the snow off in the winter. 10
The saws must
have been transported by rail to a certain point, then by team to the lake, and
freighter canoe to the cabin. Owing to
the sheer weight and size of the saw tables, he would have required help to transport them. He must have had an old generator to power
the saws. Knowing Larry he would have
built the generator himself. 11
Never wishing to
spend money on train fare, as was commonplace during the depression and long
afterward, Larry would “ride-the-rails”.
The destination was often Winnipeg where he greet his brother Edward and
family with a characteristic salute of defiance and solidarity; both arms in
the air, and fists clenched.12 Somehow,
he managed to transport washtubs or blueberries for Edward’s wife Annie May,
would then spend days cleaning and preserving the berries. Thanks to Larry there was never any shortage
of blueberry jam in the Swardfager home.
Visits from this
colourful character from the backwoods of North-western Ontario delighted some
and were tolerated by others. Larry’s
young teenage grand-niece Donna Hutchens, who lived at her grandparents home
with her mother, Myrtle, was awestruck. She
remembers him as an extremely attractive man with delightful stories of the
wilds from whence he came. These were
stories of survival in the bush, as well as humorous stories of a pet pig capable
of balancing on a tottery stump, and pet
snakes that ate dead insects from Larry’s hand.
She also recalls him attracting the uninvited attention of Myrtle’s
single girlfriends every time he came to town.
He was a social man, self-assured and very comfortable with himself, and
very intelligent. Myrtle was somewhat of
an intellectual, being employed at the University of Manitoba. Consequently political discussions would ensue
with Larry being quite capable of clearly articulating his views on democracy,
and making speeches on government. On
the other hand, his sister-in-law Annie tolerated him; her conservativeness and
his colourfulness didn’t mix real well.
Larry and
mainstream society had parted company years earlier when he learned he couldn’t
change society, so chose to live life his way in Amesdale instead. He was a back-woodsman at heart, never quite
at ease in the city. He didn’t do well
with traffic lights or broad streets like Portage Avenue, which he perilously
jaywalked, with his young niece in tow. Payphones were complicated. History, personal circumstances and
considerable thought had shaped Larry’s view of the world and he equipped himself
for what he viewed as the most likely outcome. Convinced that capitalism would
fail, he took measures to prepare. He
suggested that Annie keep a reserve of food in the basement just in case things
went bad, and he had a stash of food in the bush, just in case. He may have seemed a bit eccentric, but
wasn’t “bushed” in anyway.
Larry may have lived a solitary life, but life
was not entirely without romance. In
Winnipeg, Larry had made a lady friend named Marie. A lady remembered as attractive in her
flowing mauve dress and huge mauve picture hat13. She may have been a school teacher, as each
summer she would spent much of July and August with him at the lake. Larry reciprocated with visits to Winnipeg as
well. However, there seems to have been
a falling out at some point, and apparently on one of her visits Larry heard
her coming and headed out the door of his cabin, into the bush, where he hid
out for a few days.
Originally,
guiding was his profession, but as he grew older he focussed more of his
energies on his recognised skills as a backwoods craftsman. He added an
extension to one end of his cabin which became his woodworking shop. He made a
variety of wooden crafts, and acquired quite a reputation for his beautiful
woodwork. To the construction of snowshoes which had long been his specialty,
he added furniture, brick moulding, toys, and sleighs out of red-rock elm.
However, his most remembered s crafts were his "sausage dogs". These
wheeled double-articulated dachshund-like dogs-on-a-string, linger in the
memories of every Amesdale child; they all had one.
He also had a
soft spot for Harriet Radford, his "neighbour", who lived just east
of the road leading from the airport to town. One day he commented to the widow, who was
then in her late sixties, that she needed a good pair of snowshoes. He commented
that a woman of her age shouldn't be trudging through deep snow, one and a half
miles, twice a week, to do her shopping at the general store without snowshoes.
Harriet, always willing to try something new, took him up on the offer, and
Larry made her a fine pair of lightweight wooden snowshoes, perfect for a
senior. For the next ten years Harriet put those shoes to good use. They not
only transported her on her weekly shopping trips to "town", but she
also used them for recreation, right up until the year of her death at 84
years. Whether it was snowshoes or dogs-on-a-string, Larry’s crafts made a
difference in the lives of people living in the area.
He also crafted
a rifle he referred to as an "over and under". The upper barrel was a 22 cal., and the
bottom barrel was a shotgun. He could
use either barrel depending on what game he was hunting.
Harriet
Radford's young niece from Dauphin, Irene Abrey, fondly recalls her visits to
Larry's immaculate cabin. When down visiting family in Amesdale, Irene and her
cousin Fred Radford, would be invited to dinner and walk to Larry's cabin
around the lake. “He was a good cook! Larry was an interesting man, who besides
making fine meals and snowshoes, made canoe paddles, and even canned his own
meat, vegetables and fruits”.14
Certain risks
accompanied the solitary life of the backwoods bachelor. Contrasted against the
lives of the other members of this closely knit community, these men of
undisclosed pasts and guarded presents lived solitary existences. In
communities where families became intertwined through marriage and social
interaction, the "bachelors" were always somewhat on the periphery;
never alienated by the local community, but rather by personal choice. Cold
winters and long northern nights and perhaps ghosts of undisclosed pasts caused
some to turn inward, distancing them others. Some turned to drink, while others
went mad. Occasionally they died alone, their frozen bodies discovered by a conscientious
passer-by. Larry seemed to keep busy; actively engaged in a number of industrious
projects.
Being busy and
alone presented its risks set of hazards. After a long winter, Larry suffering from a hardy
dose of spring fever, undertook the construction of a new structure on his
place. It was to be a building with an
upper level of some sort. Fred Radford,
interested to see how the work was coming along decided to check in on
Larry. He found him prostrate in his
cabin suffering with broken ribs and other injuries associated with the fall
from the upper level. He was in so much
pain that he couldn’t rescue himself. With Larry in considerable pain, Fred hauled
him down the path and out to the road’s nearest approach to the lake, where he had
managed to manoeuvre his truck. Upon
reaching the station, the dispatcher was called to send a doctor to tend to the
injured. With a shot of morphine, the
doctor shipped Larry off to Winnipeg to recover. He was indeed a fortunate bachelor to have someone
looked in on him that spring day.
Following the
accident, a period of convalescence was spent in Winnipeg at the home of his
brother Edward, a loving and gentle man, Larry’s nearest relative and the one to
whom Larry turned. When time passed with
no word from Larry, as it often did, Edward worried for the safety of his
younger brother. Although content with
the life he had chosen for himself, perhaps envied Larry’s independent
lifestyle. He was always there for
Larry, as he was on the occasion of his accident. Due to the severity of the injury and his
lack of mobility due to heavily bandaged ribs, Edward fussed over him, which of
course would annoy an independent sort like Larry, to no end.
During his
recuperation and afterwards, Larry would sit out in the yard with Edward and
his grand-niece, Donna Hitchens, telling stories of his life in Amesdale, and Edward
would look rather wistful. It must have
seemed an adventurous life of freedom to the settled family man that Edward had
become. To a young girl like Donna, this
uncle, who would show up periodically to stay a few days in Winnipeg, was
certainly a colourful figure. He
endeared himself to the children with gifts of double-jointed wiener dogs and
to sister-in-law Annie May with huge crates of blueberries. Then when the city noise became too much for
him, he would again disappear into the Bush.
Everyone in
Amesdale liked Larry. He like has
privacy and independence, but he enjoyed people. He especially liked young people, and always
had time for them; stopping as he would on his way to the store, just to visit
with them. He received a beautiful
plaque from the government for a donation of over $10,000 to the Shriner
Hospital for Sick Kids. Perhaps, he
became aware of the hospital and developed a fondness of the project through is
brother, Edward, who like many of his family were Masons or Shriners; or
perhaps he simply did it out of his love for children. Interestingly, the money was an accumulation
of Old Age Pension cheques which Larry felt he didn’t deserve, reluctantly
received, but refused to spend. Out of
principal, having never worked long enough to pay taxes, he would not use it
for his own benefit.15
To the folks
living in Amesdale, Larry was an enigma.
To a degree, he was a recluse, but a recluse very different from the
many bachelors who lived their solitary lives in the bush of north-western
Ontario. In the words of his niece, he
was a social man, self-assured and very comfortable with himself, and very
intelligent.16 “Larry was a fortunate man; he was one of the few men
in this world who lived his life just as he wanted to”17.
Much later, when
the community of Amesdale was little more than a memory and Larry's fame had
spread, he moved closer to Dryden. In
the nearby community of Richan, he bought the old Women's Institute Building.
There he established his home, again creating his workshop in one end of the
building. From that location he continued to specialise in children's toys and
furniture. However, the Dryden Observer reported that he'd never taken the old
Women's Institute sign down. “I guess
you could say I'm the last of the girls.” Larry grins.
Larry
lost his brother in 1960, and Larry passed away himself in 1990. Ironically, born in a year and an age when
anarchists dreamed of “a stateless society, without government, without law,
without ownership of property, in which, corrupt institutions having been swept
away, man would be free to be good as God intended”18; Larry died
the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union, and
the triumph of capitalism.
(Written by Brian Ames, from memories of
stories told to him by his mother Beatrice Radford Ames, an article from the
Dryden Observer, considerable research, together with valued contributions from several
individuals, in particular, Fred Radford.)
References:
1. Swardfager, Anne,
wife of Walter Swardfager Sr., personal communication
2. Canada,
Ontario, Victoria South County, Lindsay 1891 and 1901 Census.
3. Hutchens, Donna,
Larry’s niece, Larry Swardfagger’s grandniece, brother Edward’s granddaughter.
4. Dryden
Observer, abt. 1978, from Larry’s great grandnephew Walter Swardfage Jr., email
1 October 2006
5. Ferguson,
Niall, The Ascent Of Money, pp243
6. Ferguson,
Niall, The Ascent Of Money, pp243
7. Tuchman,
Barbara W., The Proud Tower, pp98
8. MacFarlane, Bruce
A., email correspondence,
9. Shaw, George
Bernard, Rationalization of Russia,
1931.
10. MacFarlane, Bruce
A., personal email communication, 8 January 2010
11. MacFarlane, Bruce
A., personal email communication, 8 January 2010
12. Hutchens,
Donna, Larry’s niece, Larry Swardfagger’s grandniece, brother Edward’s granddaughter.
13. Hutchens,
Donna, Larry’s niece, Larry Swardfagger’s grandniece, brother Edward’s
granddaughter.
14. Durston, Irene
Abrey, personal communication
15. Radford,
Fred, personal communication, dated 5 February 2010
16. Hutchens,
Donna, Larry’s niece, Larry Swardfagger’s grandniece, brother Edward’s
granddaughter.
17. Thompson,
Irene Paradis, personal communication
18. Tuchman,
Barbara W., The Proud Tower, 1962,
pp. 63.
Train Accident
By Gerald Lynch
Myron Thompson got hit by a train. It was the winter of 1948 and I was working at the Amesdale general store for my uncle Gordon Ames. I don’t know where Beatrice and Gordon were, but I was home alone. There was a bit of a wind that night, and there was a train coming down the tracks. It was being pushed, so it didn’t whistle at the rock cut because it didn’t see the rock cut.
Myron had been in Dryden, and the road was plowed as far as Dmytriw’s
place, and that was entrance going over to Myron and Roy Thompson's homes were located. So Myron had turned around and he was backing
across the track toward their entrance when the train hit him and drove him
right through the car. He and his ’33 Chevy
were thrown against the signals, and he got it right across the chest. I think he had a fractured skull, a bad
knee.
Anyway, Roy come running over to the house, and he said
“Open up the gas pumps, Myron just got hit by the train.” He had Joe Dmytriw’s car. He
said “Go get a truck, and follow us”.
You see there was fresh snow. So
I got Mike Premack, and Mike and I followed them, and we didn’t go very far and
we caught up to them. They were driving
so dog-gone slow, about 15-20 mile an hour, I couldn’t figure out if they were
going so slow. But when we got to the
hospital I jumped out of the truck and went over to the car, and went to help
lift Myron out, and I grabbed his legs and he just screamed – shock. But he was a big fellow, they strapped him
onto that table.
I will never forget that sight. It broke his heart losing that yellow ’33
Chevy. Railroad had to pay him.
The Biffy
Privy, john, biffy, crapper, or backhouse, whatever you call it, the outhouse was an essential architectural feature in Amesdale.
by Beatrice Ames
"We had a 'biffy' about 50 feet from the house, which was normal in country homes. On those cold winter days, it was a cold spot to go to in -50F temperatures . No one stayed there longer than necessary. 'Toilet Paper?' What's that! We always used the old Eaton's and Simpson Sears catalogue. The black and white pages were best. The coloured ones were shinny and stiff - it took a lot of rubbing between your hands to soften them up!
We received the weekly Free Press and Prairie Farmer, and these went to the toilet, and served as toilet tissue. As you waited, you could re-read the 'funnies'
For Christmas, we always enjoyed the box of
Japanese Oranges, and sometimes George and Bill brought us an extra one at
Christmas time. The wrappers were always
soft, and were left in the biffy outside.
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