Our Canada Our Country Our Stories
Page 29
—by Boshdayosgaykwe (Tracey Pawis), Parry Sound, Ontario
Helene’s Gift
A loving husband’s tribute to his wife and her talent
My life truly began when I moved to Canada; I knew that I had found a home in this vast, beautiful country. I immigrated to Canada from Hungary in October 1957 and worked on farms in Saskatchewan for two years. In October 1959, I moved to Red Lake, Ontario, and it is here in this small mining town that I met my wife, Helene.
She was a beautiful young woman from Belgium who spoke Flemish and French. Neither of us spoke English, but we made it work. She arrived from Belgium on April 4, 1960, we met on April 14, I proposed on May 10 and we were married on August 6, 1960. Both our families thought it all was a little too fast and that the only reason could be a baby. It wasn’t—it was true love and eventually the babies would come.
Together we loved Canada and knew we wanted to become citizens as soon as we qualified. Helene gave me our two beautiful children, a daughter, Lorraine, in February 1962, and a son, Jozsi, in April 1963.
This isn’t about our love story or myself, however; it’s an opportunity to honour my wife and her beauty as an artist, while I still can. Time passes, memories fade, talent and skills start slipping away, but traditions shouldn’t. The present is essential for the past to be passed along, and it is through my family’s generational inheritance that my wife’s artistic talents will be remembered, even after she is unable to.
When God asked everyone to stand in line to receive his or her talents, I believe Helene line-jumped a few times. She is an amazing wife, mother, friend and hard worker. But her talent as an artist surrounds me in the home she helped to create for us.
When Helene arrived in Canada, she came with a diploma in seamstress textiles and design. Her dream was to work in the textile industries in Winnipeg and Montreal, but with marrying me so hastily, she followed my career and we settled in Kamloops, British Columbia.
Our quick trip to the altar meant I was to discover her talents as the years went by. Wow, did she amaze me! Helene received her first sewing machine from our best man as a wedding present. It was tradition in those days for many women to make their families the necessary clothing to survive the Canadian weather.
Yet Helene had the background and talent that allowed her to indulge in her “crafts,” as she called them, creating and designing wedding gowns for local young brides, as well as bridesmaid and graduation dresses.
While her focus was on our family, she also worked managing a pharmacy and later as a receptionist for two doctors, so her crafts became her creative outlet. The smiles of the brides and happy moments created by these one-of-a-kind pieces were her reward.
She diversified her skills to include knitting and embroidery; she had the ability to take a design from a piece of wrapping paper and use it as the jumping-off point to create works of art. She was a quick study and soon learned crocheting, lead glass painting and tole painting. She often outshone her instructors, producing works of art that even they were in awe of. As an artist, she radiated happiness and excitement over a completed piece as she proudly displayed it in our home or passed it on to deserving friends and family.
In 1990, we retired to Nanaimo, which gave Helene all the time she needed to follow her passions. More wedding dresses followed: gowns, veils and trains all embellished with lace and embroidered with details that she designed.
Recycled materials were the inspiration for diverse canvases upon which she created beautiful painted West Coast Canadian scenes on old milk cans. These art pieces displayed a vast diversity in scenery and multiple cultures.
As her family grew and aged, she tried to pass on her skills and talents to her daughter and grandchildren. They, like many of us, were often too busy to make time for these moments to sit and learn from the artists among us. With the diagnosis of Helene’s Alzheimer’s, however, time became more precious and everyone wanted to learn what is locked up in Helene’s mind. Her diagnosis saddened the artist inside her but allowed everyone else to take a step back and reach out to that artist to learn from her the joy of a paintbrush or needle and thread. Grandma’s art, once taken for granted, became a sought-after treasure.
One specific piece cherished by Helene is a tablecloth with intricate details inspired by the flora and fauna in her garden. This tablecloth is painstakingly slow to complete, as it requires a lot of time and energy to repeat the pattern the length and width of our large family dining table. The tablecloth has become symbolic in ways beyond what she first intended. It is nearly complete, not just by Helene’s hands but now those of our daughter as well. Thankfully, Helene’s gift—her art—will remain.
—by Josef Mukli, Nanaimo, British Columbia
Towering Over the Prairie
Through years of hard work, what began as a children’s playhouse became a full-fledged lighthouse
The whole idea began with the desire to build a children’s playhouse—it would be made of stone, in the shape of a miniature lighthouse. The original plan was to have two floors, with a deck and railing on top. Well, as construction progressed, the plans grew—to the height of a five-storey building. The finished project is not a miniature but rather a full-sized lighthouse.
During the summer of 2005, I cleared the bush from the site and excavated into the bank of the Valley River to make a level spot large enough for the lighthouse. The riverbank was too steep to access with power equipment, so my excavating tools consisted of a pickaxe, shovel and wheelbarrow.
By fall, after a few backaches and much sweat, the site was ready. The cement forms were built in the shape of an octagon, with eight-foot-deep piles (holes drilled into the ground and filled with concrete and steel) at each corner. A lot of steel went into the cement to support the huge weight that was to go on top of it. A special type of gravel was dumped at the top of the bank, brought down the steep hill by wheelbarrow, and then mixed with cement and water in a small mixer run by a gas generator to produce concrete.
After that, the first eight wall sections were carried down the hill and assembled. I did the majority of the work myself but did have help from family and friends to complete certain tasks, such as carrying those wall sections down the hill and pouring the main foundation at the base of the lighthouse. Although none were qualified tradesmen, my two sons, son-in-law, two nephews, brother and various friends helped out at different points in the building process.
Most of the lumber in the walls came from spruce trees cut in my own pasture and then taken to a local sawmill to be cut into lumber. Oak was used on all exposed areas because of its resistance to rot.
In the spring of 2006, my wife, Reba, and I began gathering stones for the construction of the exterior walls. Reba picked thousands of stones from our fields at seeding time. When she unloaded them, she’d pick out the prettier ones for the lighthouse project, while the rest of them went along the riverbank to help stop erosion. The stones for the lighthouse walls were all washed with a high-pressure washer and hauled down the hill by wheelbarrow to a stockpile. The stones were mainly four to six inches in diameter and it took approximately 1,800 stones per floor. Cementing the stones was a slow process because only one layer could be done in a day. When that layer dried, the next layer was put up. The second floor was added, making the building 16 feet high at that point. As the weather got too cold for mortaring the stones, more stones were gathered and stockpiled for the following year. During the winter months, the interior was finished in knotty pine and stairs were built up to each floor.
The spring of 2007 arrived and I was pleased to find no cracks in the cement floor or the stone mortar. It was now getting too high to be doing stonework from a stepladder, so I built a small crane that pivoted from the centre of the top floor. An electric winch was attached and the winch cable was suspended from the end of the boom and hooked to a cage, which lifted me, 100 pounds of stone and two pails of cement.
That summer, the third-floor sections were pu
lled up by rope and fastened together. Next, I built the observation deck, which extended three feet over the edge of the walls. The crane was moved to the top of the deck and the stonework continued. By fall, the stonework reached 17 feet in height with the wood framework above it, making the structure 24 feet high.
In the spring of 2008, everything was still looking good, so the rush was on to complete the rest of the stonework. The progress was slow, but it was finally completed in early fall. I then applied a coat of stone sealer, which really enhanced the colours of the stone. The crane was no longer needed, so it was disassembled and brought down. The deck was sealed with fibreglass to allow rain to run off it.
The following year, in the spring of 2009, a fourth floor was built on top of the observation deck. Eight glass panels measuring six feet in height were assembled on the ground and the aluminum dome was fastened to the top of them. This section was about ten feet tall and would be lifted and placed on top of the fourth floor. As luck would have it, a large crane was working in our nearby town, so the operator came by, had a look and said he could do it.
On July 2, 2009, the crane pulled in with a crew of five men. The guys were quite eager to do something they’d never done before—how many lighthouses do you see on the Prairies? The crane operator swung the top section above the trees and gently set it on top of the fourth floor. After it was secured in place, the crane installed a ten-foot mast with a beacon on top of the dome. In the end, the total height to the top of the beacon is about 50 feet.
The fourth floor was finished with artificial river rock panels, which were easier to work with and much lighter than real rock. A sign above the door reads Meyer Lighthouse 2005; Indian hammerheads—oval-shaped stones with a groove notched around the middle that a wooden handle can be attached to—were placed on either side of the sign.
Unlike today’s buildings, many of which have a lifespan of about 50 years, I expect this structure to be standing in 200 years. In 2012, it was hit by lightning, which caused some electrical wiring damage, and then in 2013, it survived a tornado. One time, a couple of young engineers toured the lighthouse and asked me if I’d had an engineer design it. I was proud to reply that it had all come from my own imagination.
The Meyer Lighthouse has become one of this area’s best-kept secrets, but more than 300 people sign our guest book every year. We’ve never advertised it and there is no admission charge—it’s been a labour of love and dedication.
—by Robyn Meyer, Gilbert Plains, Manitoba
Journey of Discovery
For this French Canadian, the process of becoming an author began in Yellowknife
The day my father passed away, a few years ago in March, was an eye-opener for me. I realized my own life was crumbling down. I was not happy anymore with my job and my relationship with my boyfriend seemed hopeless back then. I was sad. Lonely. And exhausted.
All my life, when facing tough choices, my father had always asked me, “What would make you happy?” So, I asked myself the same question. The answer came right away: writing and going to the North. Things I had dreamed of doing for years.
So, I quit my job as a French-language radio and TV journalist, packed up my car, and on a sunny but chilly morning in September—all by myself at the wheel—headed to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, a city I had never been to before and knew nothing about.
Eight days, four provinces and three time zones later, I found myself above the 60th parallel on a ferry near a place called Fort Providence, overlooking the majestic Mackenzie River. Shivering on the deck, I had lost my bearings already, but I knew I was on board for quite the adventure.
When I arrived in Yellowknife, just like every newcomer, I noticed the very peculiar beauty of the place right away. Rustic but breath-taking. This city sits, literally, on the Canadian Shield, and it shows. You can see the exposed rock everywhere, with its shades of pink. Yellowknifers say, “You either love the place or hate it. There is nothing in between.” I fell in love with the city right away.
One thing you quickly learn when living in one of the northernmost cities in the world is to be open-minded. It’s not what you’re used to and will never be. It’s normal to have a polar-bear-skin rug and a narwhal tusk in your living room, or to see your co-workers wearing moccasins at the production meeting, or to hear the mayor, at the end of each city council meeting, saying, “Stay warm.”
My first day at work, at CBC North, was a shock. The topics we discussed, well, I had never given them much thought before: food prices, oil prices, the diamond market, Aboriginal elections. I was lost. A stranger in my own country. That’s how the North can make newcomers feel initially. But I learned, and by Christmas, I could produce pieces on any of those topics as if I had been in the North forever.
It started to snow in mid-October as the temperatures were dropping. By the end of the year, it was –40ºC, the lake was frozen solid and snowmobiles were passing by on the streets. It was as dark as dark can be. I had no real problem with any of that; I’m a winter person. There is nothing I like more than cold weather, snow and ice, but Yellowknife’s winters are challenging. If you go out on the lake for a walk and get lost, you’ll die. If you don’t dress warmly enough, you’ll be in trouble. Here, you have to adjust to nature, not the other way around, and that makes you feel humble.
Things for me changed the day I met Julie. She was from Vancouver and had been living in Yellowknife for a couple of years. All of a sudden, I had a friend to talk to. A friend who, just like me, had pushed herself out of her comfort zone. Julie and I would laugh about pretty much everything and, God knows, our laughter saved us from so many things. You never know what you’ll encounter in the North. It could be coyotes roaming around town, an old-school bar fight spilling out into the street or some mysterious-looking stranger from who knows where running away from who knows what. The North really is the last frontier.
On Saturday nights, Julie and I would go for drinks at the Gold Range, a bar in downtown Yellowknife—a rough one. There, I heard so many stories; some sad, others simply beautiful. For instance, I heard how Aboriginal people “call the lights,” by scraping their nails together to imitate the sound of deer hooves, which they claim attracts the northern lights. I also met an Inuk guy who was from a city by the Beaufort Sea. He told me how his culture and language were fading away and how different life was becoming in this part of the world. How kids there, instead of hunting or fishing like their forefathers had done for thousands of years, were constantly on Facebook. It was all they seemed to care about.
Then one day, it struck me like a bolt of lightning—I didn’t want all these stories I was hearing to be forgotten. And I realized that the best way to keep them alive was to write about them, using my own story—my journey from Montreal to Yellowknife—as the foundation. I wrote down everything I had experienced living in this unique, small town up north with its wonderful, brave, funny and sometimes odd people. So I started to write, one page at a time, one chapter at a time, and before I knew it, it became a novel. I called it La saison froide (The Cold Season). To me, that’s what the North is all about—an endless winter with varying degrees of light and darkness, coldness and warmth, where one has to survive the harshness to be able to enjoy the beauty and peacefulness.
Eventually, after almost three years up north, I went back to Montreal, polished up my manuscript and managed to get it published via La Presse publishers, who liked the story. During that time, I also began to host a French radio show about the North. Based in Montreal, I got to travel extensively throughout northern Quebec for the program, which provided the creative spark and new subject matter for two more books, Le retour de l’ours (The Return of the Bear), and Jusqu’à la chute (Until the Fall). I’m still working in French broadcasting, splitting my time between Toronto and Montreal, with book number four on its way.
The North, as you can well imagine, is still in my head and in my heart. I appreciate what it has given me: the power to
free myself of everything that is not essential to my well-being; the strength, patience and confidence to write novels, one page at a time, and thereby change my life for the better; and the humility to see that there is something bigger than our individual selves—this planet, which we all share and should not treat as badly as we do.
—by Catherine Lafrance, Montreal, Quebec
The Art of the Deal
Thanks to one collector, a master carver’s work is returned to his family 85 years after he created it
In the realm of folk art, woodcarving is a popular collectible. The Ottawa Valley was home to a number of folk artists who worked in wood. One in particular, Charles Vollrath from Chalk River, Ontario, was immensely talented; his carvings of wildlife, and angels and other religious items, are highly sought after by collectors. He was active in the 1930s and ’40s producing woodcarvings that he sold to tourists at a roadside stand. From that small stand, his carvings were distributed throughout Canada, the United States and beyond.
Recently, a great-grandson of Charles Vollrath read my book, Folk Art in the Attic, which included a passage about his great-grandfather. As it turned out, Chad Vollrath wanted to find a carving by his great-grandfather to give his father as a gift. It was nice to receive the email, but unfortunately I knew his search was going to be a difficult one. I certainly didn’t have a Vollrath carving in my collection and it had been several years since I had seen one. But I told him I would keep my eyes open and would let him know if I came across any examples of his great-grandfather’s art.