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, or possibly he just saw an opportunity.  During the Depression, faced with thirty percent unemployment, the Conservative Federal Government of R.B. Bennett, initiated construction of an airport at the south-east end of what came to be known as Airport Lake. In the mid-1930's, upon completion of the construction project by men housed in a 5-dollar a month Relief Camp, Larry moved out to that lake. The camp had been abandoned, so Larry took over the cabin which had housed Larry Pinkerton of Dryden, the foreman for the project. There he lived in semi-seclusion on a picturesque rock point overlooking the south-west corner of Airport Lake. He preferred to be alone, to the hustle and bustle of the community which encroached on him.

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.