52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 20 Prompt - Nature

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 20

Prompt – Nature

Nature is a formidable force. No one would know that better than the immigrants and settlers who came to the Canadian prairies. It's beauty is breath taking and beckons to all who see it. However behind it lurks the dangers that can imperil life and limb. 

1950 Circa George and Helen (nee Peters) Heide

Source is the GRanDMA (Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry) database, the source of which is the California Mennonite Historical Society (CMHS).

My father's older sister, Helena Peters (1904 - 1994) married Gerhard (aka George) Heide (1906 – 1988). They married July 25, 1925 in Hague, Saskatchewan. Uncle George decided to write out his history for his family. What a beautiful legacy. I am not sure when he wrote this. It is rich in detail of his and Helen and their childrens' lives as he homesteaded their land in Pierceland, Saskatchewan. Pierceland is within the  Canadian Boreal Forrest. 

Pierceland is near the Saskatchewan Alberta border south of Cold Lake and north of Beaver River. Uncle George's story explains nature at its rawest. He and his wife took it on and despite it all thrived. Enjoy his story. It really belongs in the history books.

“Our story starts in Hague, Saskatchewan where Helen and I were born. My parents refused to learn English, so got a dictionary to translate German to Spanish & decided that we would all learn the language because we were moving to Mexico. I had no desire to move there because I was dating Helen, & therefore we decided to get married on July 1925. That November, three trainloads of Mennonites left for Mexico, but I and my sister stayed behind. We lived in Hague for a few years, where three of our children were born & then moved on to Fielding, Saskatchewan. My family who went to Mexico have all died by this time except, Isaac and Claus, who still live there. My sister who stayed died in Burns Lake BC. When we moved to Fielding, my brother Bernard, wanted to come back so I sent him the ticket & he lived with us for a few years until we moved to Pierceland. When we moved to Fielding we had a hard time because Helen could speak no English and I very little. We had nothing, but luckily I found a job for $45 a month, top wages at the time. We saved our money and bought a team of horses, a wagon & a hay rack and loaded up everything and moved to Pierceland arriving July of 1932. It took us 28 days with 4 small children to get there. When we first got there we thought we had made a huge mistake, it looked like a desert because of a fire that had gone through in 1919. We had no idea how we would make a living but knew we had to try. We had no tent, so I made a dugout, a deep ridge, 9'x10' with a peaked roof of log poles & sod, where we stayed nice and dry until October when our log home was complete. Actually our log home never was finished because the logs were 36'x38' and far to big to finish so we lived in a small corner with a flat roof which if it rained outside 2 days it rained inside another 2 days. Our son John, Born in Cold Lake was the first of our children to call this his first home. This place was not called Pierceland when we first got here, but in the fall of 1932, Joe Hewlett dragged a granary in and called it the Pierceland Post Office. Mail them came by horse delivered by (Frank Norris) from Cold Lake to Pierceland & Beacon Hill. In order to have meat to eat I had to hunt deer and while doing so at one time I found a beautiful patch of blueberries, which we picked and sold to Jack Manderson's store for 3 cents a pound. This bought us flour, sugar, and supplies for the winter. The next year we dug seneca roots & sold then for 3 cent a pound, which makes a pretty skimpy living. Helen remembers a time when we borrowed our friends team of horses & wagon, with a grain box and crossed the Waterhen River and picked cranberries there for a week straight. When we had a box full we sold them to Jack for 2 cents a pound & he was able to sell them to peddlers there who bought the whole lot for 3 cents a pound in spite of the fact that they were so juicy that the juice was dripping so badly that it looked like blood dripping from the box. Pete recalls a time when after a hard time working that they were rewarded with a bottle of orange pop which then sold for 2 for5 cents. In the early years Helen used to carry bread dough 1-1/2 miles to be baked in our nieghbours oven and then home the same distance. When Anne was born we could not afford milk and so she drank tea from a bottle and not milk. We made our own pablum from flour boiled then drip dried and oven baked, with a little sugar this was pablum. We didn't have a garden that first year so I dug potatoes for 2 neighbors, one gave me a bag of turnips and the other a bag of beets. To this day I can not tolerate eating turnips. The mosquitoes and sand flies where so bad that we built a smudge in a pail & put it on the wagon pole in front of the horses, so that they could move their ears and there noses would not get plugged. The horses died of swamp fever shortly after we moved there and after that we either walked of took the dog team wherever we needed to go. Many times when I was away Helen, with 6 children in tow would row or sail across Jeglum Lake then walk to Pierceland for supplies & back home again a distance of 4 miles each way. After Betty was born on the Indian reservation in April we headed for our own homestead & camped 1-1/2 miles away for a month while I cleared a road to our place. Our homestead was a tent that Helen made out of flour sacks, sewed by hand and the floor was spruce boughs and we put plastic over the baby to keep her dry and warm. By this time I had bushed enough for Isaac Unrau, for him to come & plow a patch of 4 acres for our first real garden & a wheat crop. I had also bushed 10 acres for Henry Keller and for that he gave me a cow that was worth $10. This was our first cow, but it had a desire to run home all the time so Helen had to walk over a mile to milk it morning and evening. Over 75 families moved on to homesteads, each having a quarter section. Some of them were, Kellers, Peters, Unraus, and Harders. The first school, Helen, Mary, George and Pete attended, which was 3 miles away. First teacher was P. J. Moynihan. Trapping was the only way to earn money for food & clothing from 1931 to 1937. My trapping line was from Pierceland to Sicup Lake, a distance of eighty miles, which took me 5 days to reach to far cabin, with back packs weighing over 95 pounds of food, and on the way back this would be replaced with furs. I was usually gone for a month then home for 3 days and back again, which we did for 7-1/2 months each winter. In the fall of 1937 and old fisherman, Isaac Unrau, hired me to teach me how to ice fish with the 12 nets that he had. Then we sold the fish to peddlers that came to the lake. One time while trapping I fell through the ice up to my armpits and being all alone and two miles from camp when I got out I started running, by the time I got to the camp my pants where frozen so solid that I could not bend or brake them. In the spring of 1938 we bought out second cow from Mr. Pollock for $10, money from trapping. After helping Corny Unrau cut logs for a new house he in turn helped me cut logs for a new house which was 20'x20' with a new style cottage roof. Both families moved in by the fall of 1938. I donated three acres of land for a new school house, which was ready in a year and five of our children attended that school. In 1938 we had two oxen, Hummy and Mike. On one occasion when I was hauling a load of sand with the oxen, Ann who was about 4 years old fell off the wagon. I hollered for the oxen to stop but the wagon wheel rolled over her back. We immediately took her to the Cold Lake hospital where she stayed for about 10 days, with luckily no broken bones only bruises. In 1938 I traded the oxen for horses which was the best team I ever had, Tiger and Tony. In the fall of 1940 I had my own fishing outfit and I made a deal with Frank Harder to give him half of my fish for eight shallow nets. I was lucky to be able to catch more fish with these old rags than he did with his new ones. I then had enough money to buy new nets and with 12 nets altogether I was now fishing on Pierce Lake and on Cold Lake. In January of 1941 it was too cold for school so they shut it down and we decided to go on a holiday to Saskatoon, with the horses and a caboose heated by a stove, where 10 of us survived all cozy and warm. Saskatoon was our home for about a month and on our way home the caboose caught fire and we lost all our blankets and other stuff, but as luck would have it our neighbors helped out and we got home in April just before Vivian was born. Plus on the way home all eight kids woke up with the measles. In 1942 I started fishing on Primrose Lake with a full outfit. The first year I had no cabin, therefore, Mary George and I slept in a grain box for five days. We fixed up a cabin which needed a half wall, a window and a door. We used this cabin until the Air Force took over the lake. Later I moved and insulated caboose up and stayed in it, which is still there. That same winter I bought one hundred tons of raw fish for which I paid 10 cents a piece, which made a pretty big pile of frozen fish. It was about 40 degrees F. below or colder but about 3 PM that same day a warm chinook came and was flapping the tails of the fish around, so wanting to save the fish I hired some men to help me shovel snow on the pile and lost only 50 pounds. I sure though I had lost the whole pile but was so very lucky. In 1946 we started getting the Family allowance which sure helped our family of thirteen. I bought my first "pony" tractor in 1949 after trapping. Muskrats were five dollars a pelt and I made $5,000.00 in three weeks, using only one horse and a sled. With this it now took me only 10 days to works the trap line which was about one town line of 24 miles. Tragedy struck our family when our son-in-law, Dan Heinrichs, drowned. We were a Sandy Beach on Pierce Lake having a family picnic. There was our family and Helen, our daughter, and her family. Mr. & Mrs. Khol and their daughter, who was playing on an inner tube when she fell off. Helen's husband, Dan, ran to rescue her but they both lost their lives. Dan left behind, besides Helen, two small daughters, Marlene, Darlene and his unborn son.

In the fall of 1949 we built our new house 18'x20', out of lumber. This house had a bedroom upstairs and later on we added two more bedrooms and a kitchen. Also in 1949 George got his Deputy Game Warden's Badge, which he held until 1972, for a total of 23 years. It was also the years that he had his first heart troubles, as he was driving by car to Saskatoon, with Helen, Jake and Mrs. Ernest Lepine. This was time too when Jake ate too many bananas and Helen had her eye operation. In 1950 George legally began acting as a hunting guide. Many of the hunters were Americans, from California, Michigan, the Dakotas, Montana, Atlanta and Georgia, some also haling from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He usually had 40 or more hunters in a season. In his 23 years of hunting he had only one hunter ever lost, and then only for 24 hours. This was Sid Unrau, a local fellow but his first time in the bush, and one hunter from Battleford, Saskatchwan was lost for 2 hours. I never had any shooting accidents while guiding; after all my preaching on safety and carelessness no one dared to do something dumb. Most of the hunters bagged their game, with several moose dressing over 1,000 pounds Joe Kisch of Saskatoon shot a trophy moose and Mr. Jones of Meadow Lake, Sask., got a moose that dressed over 1,100 pounds, which was also a trophy. George himself shot a moose that dressed around 1,000 pounds in 1949, in the early moose season. George's Partners were, Albert Pahlke, & Ernest Promeau. While setting up camp one year his partners said, how stupid we were to come with no snow and no tracks to follow, They kept this up all evening and I was too angry to say anything. The next morning George told them that they could go which ever way they wanted, but if they went west I would go east. They were just not going in the same direction if they thought that it was sheer stupidity. So they went west and George took of in an easterly direction and out of sight, and started running so that they could not follow him. About a mile east George heard a moose calling, and followed the sound and about an hour later He has his moose. The moose was so big that he thought it might be tough so he cut off a good sized chunk off the hind leg which he took back to camp where the others were waiting. They asked if I had heard any shooting, to which I replied, "No I hadn't heard anyone. They said it could not have been me shooting because it was too fast so he pulled the chuck of meet out of his pack and asked them to cook it to see if it was fit to eat. In 20 minutes it was well done, so since the meat was good he told them to leave their rifles at camp because we had all the meat we needed. We went out and dressed the animal and skidded it back to camp with the horses. The moose was so big that the horses tired out three times while coming to camp. After packing up we camped at Gold Mine Creek for the night where we spread the meat out on sticks to cool as it was really cold in the canyon. When we arrived home the next day we divided the meat but there was more that we could handle, so we let the people in town know. One man in particular, Joe Vanhovard, upon picking up his meat was surprised that it was frozen and asked where my freezer was as it had not frozen in Pierceland. I told him it was the little wooden shed and he was really stumped. Another incident, about 1970. was when George had Harvey Farslow as guide and the hunters were some professors from Saskatoon and a doctor from Norway. Ian Hendersen from Saskatoon and his partner shot a cow and calf one day, so we brought them to camp and dressed them. That night some bears stories were told and low and behold that night some bears dragged the moose hides away. The next morning Ian went about a quarter of a mile into the bush and saw a black object and thinking it was a bear he emptied his .308 automatic into the black spot, then ran back to camp before checking to see what it was that he had shot. At camp he met his partner and wrote a note for me and left it on the table. When Harvey and George got into camp & read the note, Harvey said,"If he shot five shots into the bears chest we may as well wait here." Just then Ian and his partner came back into camp laughing and Ian's partner said, "That bear grew horns into a five point bull moose. Ian looked for his note but since George had put it into his pocket, and Ian not wanting his wife to hear about his bear story, George then gave the note to his partner to give to Ian,s wife. In the early 1930's one of my trips up north to Big Island Lake I spotted a moose rubbing his antlers on a big jackpine, so I shot it with one shot. By the time I got it down to my friend, Louis Pumas, came down from where the moose had chased him and since I thought the moose had more claim on him than I did I gave it to him. Ten days later when I came back Louis had the whole thing sliced and dried and put in a gunny sack, which was the only way he could get it home in one trip on foot. In 1951 Helen, daughter, came home with her new husband, Jake Isaac, and four children. There were 23 people in our house for the winter. Helen, wife was a professional baker by this time and we baked bread every day, 100 pound of flour a week and two big pails of potatoes every day. In 1952 I got my out-fitter,s license and in 1953 Helen and I traveled to Lloydminster to attend the weddings of our two oldest sons, George and Pete. In 1956 the girls came home from British Columbia and tore down the log house. In 1957 a small house was built for Mary and Ike during August before their first son was born, where they lived for a couple of years before moving to Buffalo Narrows, Sask. We then used the house for brooding 200 chicks at a time until it burnt down in 1960 along with the chicks and Ed's Whiskey. We sure had to laugh, because Ed losing all his whiskey made up for us losing all our chicks as the bottles exploded. In 1957 after the three youngest boys helped me earn $350.00 and going to Saskatoon I lost it all to a pickpocket. In 1959 I began mink ranching starting with 60, but due to the fact that I lost so many because of low flying jet planes in the end I lost all the young one year plus 13 old ones that I killed the rest and gave up that business. In 1960 Abe, my brother and his wife from Mexico came to visit us. A few months later out house burnt down as Helen was baking and I in the mink shed saw smoke pouring from the chimney and out from under the roof, as I ran and was only able to save Helen and lost everything else. When the kids got home from school the house was in the cellar. We could not even make coffee. In town I called our sons in Lloydminster, They came that night with blankets and groceries and others donated clothes, groceries, dishes and other necessities. The Eatons Company and the Red Cross also helped us out greatly. It was 1961 when we began building our new house. Poured the cement in the summer and moved in by fall, our first home with a basement. In 1967 our three youngest sons all got married. Mel's in Lloydminster and Jake and Dave's in Saskatoon. I missed Mel's wedding as I was flown to Saskatoon to have a gallstone operation. Lloydminster was the location of our family reunion in 1968, where all our children and their families came except Helen & Mary. Emma the last of our 18 children went to work in Lloyd, then in Saskatoon in the hospital. Helen & I were alone for the first time since 1925. George and Florence moved to Surrey, B.C. in 1969. I acquired a new toboggan in 1970 and on a trip up north it blew a piston 30 miles from Goodsoil. I walked back 23 miles in 2 feet of snow, seven hours by the time I got to my truck and couldn't move my feet enough to drive and could not walk for 2 weeks. 1971 proved what a lucky man I am for I won a battle with cancer of my jaw, where they removed part of the jaw and replaced it with a piece of my rib. Five years later all tests had been negativeS In the spring of 1972 we moved from the farm to the town of Pierceland and we love being close to neighbors and have joined the Seniors Club and met and made many old and new friends. Mel also sold the farm in Barrowman. That fall the boys came home to help me build a 10'x28' extension onto the house. We made a trip to Vancouver the year Helen's mother died at 92 years old and were stranded there for 6 weeks because trains and buses were snowed under and planes were on strike. In 1973 we ended up in Vancouver again when after spending Christmas with Jake and Cheryl then Jack and Kay's for New Years, Then on to Creston, BC. to Mary & Isaac's and then by bus to Vancouver. In 1975 Helen & I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, with 10 of our children coming home, to make this the thrill of our lives, with a repeating of our marriage vows at the United Church in Town and a reception and later on a dance at the Community Hall. As a gift from our family we got our first color television set as well as other things. We are so appreciative of all that was done for us. Helen and I had the opportunity to travel with our daughter Viv and Ed and their family to Mexico in a motor home. We were gone for three weeks and visited with my brothers Isaac and Klaas, whom I had not seen for 50 years, and after seeing how they lived I was doubly glad that I had not gone with them to Mexico, for they were so poor it was worse than living in the 1930's. I was so glad that my family had a better chance to make better lives for themselves. During this trip we also saw, Disneyland, Knots Berry Farm, San Diego Zoo, Hollywood, Universal Studio, Las Vegas, and the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, etc. In 1977 I had a bad nosebleed. A blood vessel had broken. Kay and Jack were visiting us and they drove me to Goodsoil. I was taken by ambulance to Saskatoon. The End.”

Thank you and God bless you Uncle George for writing your story that we all may know of your tenacity, ingenuity, your heartbreaks and your triumphs in your life as a homesteader, settler, trapper, fisher, farmer,entrepreneur,  husband, father, grandfather and the only uncle that I knew. You welcomed our family - the city slickers to your farm in the 1960's.  A memorable experience to say the least. 

Circa 1949 Helen and George Heide & Family

In Loving Memory
Wendy