52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 35
Prompt – At Work
My father, Jake Peters was illiterate
and not well educated. He only achieved Grade 2 or 4 by the time he
was a young teenager depending on which war document you use. I
believe that he grew up in a German speaking family that mostly spoke
German in their home and thus he really didn't have a fair chance at
learning in an all English small town school house. His father was a
farmer and according to my sister, Betty, dad was taken out of school
to help on the farm because his father had a “bad back”'
Jake's pre-war employment was typical
of most men in Saskatchewan in the 1930's. He had odd jobs such as he listed on his Attestation
Papers upon enlistment into the army.
In his 1946 post war evaluation for his
deployment to civil life it was summed up like this.
When dad was asked what he wanted to
do post war he thought he would like to work as a general laborer at
Quaker Oats Flour Mill where his in laws worked. Alas that did not
happen. The evaluation went on to write up the following:
According to my brother Rob, Jake had 3
job offers upon return from the war in 1946. The first was a “Farm
Start Program, the second was a cook at the Bessborough Hotel and
the third was working at Intercontinental meat packing plant. He was
also wined and dined, so to speak, by Joe's Cycle however it would
not pay enough to support him, his wife and two daughters.
He worked one week as a cook at the
Bessborough and didn't like it. He could not read the recipes and he
would not let them know he could not read. Apparently they threw knives at him because he got the order wrong. I wouldn't want
to work in that environment either!
He went on to work at Intercontinental
Meat Packers.
Intercontinental Meat Packers was
founded in Saskatoon in 1940 by Fred Mendel. In Germany, Fred Mendel
came from a family of many generations who worked in meat processing.
In January of 1940 Fred Mendel, his wife and two daughters fled Nazi
Germany and settled in Saskatoon. By June of that same year he
bought Saskatchewan Co-operative Livestock Producers Ltd. On 11th Street in Saskatoon. It became one of the largest meat packing plants in Canada.
The plant had a long history in the family. It was renamed Mitchell's
Gourmet Food. By 2002 the last of the family sold its shares to
Schneider’s ending the almost seven decades as a family run
business. In 2004 Maple Leaf bought out Schneider’s and thus
Mitchell's. Maple Leaf was going to build a new modern meat packing
plant by 2008 which it didn't. Sadly the plant was “deconstructed”
in 2010 to make room for the South Circle drive and new bridge.
Fred Mendel gave returning veterans 5
years seniority if they worked for his company. He paid his
employees a good salary that would support the men and their growing
families. I do not know exactly when he started but it was his job
until his retirement in 1982.
My brothers, Rob and Dennis also worked
at Intercontinental after grade 12 for a year or two. In June of
2017, I asked Rob for some insight into working at “The
Intercon”.
Rob said that he had gotten a job as a
parts driver for Saskatoon Motor's Parts. He started on a Friday.
That night dad came home from the Intercontinental and said they were
hiring 15 guys to start on Monday. Dad spoke to his foreman about
his son looking for a job and dad was told to bring Rob in on Monday
in case some of the new hires didn't show up. Rob didn't want to go
because he had started at the other job. However dad pointed out
that Intercontinental would pay three times the minimum wage he was
working for at the first job. Rob said he was earning $1.10 at the
parts job and Intercontinental paid 3 something an hour. Rob said he
couldn't say no to dad so he went thinking he would make it to his
parts job by it's 9 am start. As it turned out 2 of the new hires
didn't show up and Rob was hired on the spot. He was given a hard
hat, apron, gloves and a knife. Rob wanted to call his other job to
let them know he would not be working there. His foreman said to Rob
that all phone calls were to be made on coffee breaks. So on his 9
AM coffee break he called the parts job to let them know he had another job. Apparently the parts manager was not pleased and yelled at him, but Rob just said he was getting paid three times what the parts job paid and that ended that call.
Rob said that Intercon had two 12
minute coffee breaks and a 30 minute lunch break. That included
travel time between their post and the cafeteria. Everyone would run
like hell to get there. Rob drank coke and of course dad had a coffee with a side of a cigarette.
Rob remembers seeing dad at lunch time
sitting at his lunch table with his buddies. He would be eating a
sandwich, drinking coffee, smoking and playing cards at the same
time. Dad bet 25 cents per hand and would often win bringing home
the winnings to help pay for the groceries for his growing family. Rob felt that dad was
well respected at work. He was a man of few words but when he did
speak everyone listened.
He was known as Jack Peters at work
because dad couldn't write that well and they interpreted his name as
Jack when he wrote it out. Dad never corrected them.
Rob did many many jobs at the plant.
At one time he worked along side of dad, “boning the beef or ham”.
Dad helped Rob sharpen his knife. Dad was very proud of his sons at
work.
Rob recalled an incident where Dennis
was hurt on the job and taken to the hospital. When dad was told he
dropped his knife and went with Dennis to the hospital. How did he
hurt himself? Believe it or not a freshly dead sow on a hook fell on him and the hook
caught the corner of Dennis' eye. He needed several stitches.
I remember dad coming home from a bad
day at work with white sometimes blood stained gauze finger bandages.
Well thank goodness he retired with all his digits intact however he
had many stitch scars from his knife slipping at work.
Many years
later, I worked in a busy walk in clinic in Calgary. At least once a
week I would have to bandage up someone's finger. It always took me
back to when dad would come home with his finger tightly wrapped and
the gauze tied at the wrist to keep it in place. I called it “the
dad special”and then I would proceed to tell the patient the story
of my father's bandaged fingers. By the time the story was completed
so was their bandage.
I think the worse injury that dad had,
happened just before he retired. He was walking in front of a fork lift and it happen to hit him pinning him against a wall. He broke his ankle. He was off work for a while. Dad
rarely stayed home from work.
I asked Rob if they drove to work
together. He said at first they did, but later they would take turns
taking one car or the other. Dad was a stickler about leaving work
immediately. Work ended at 4:15 and he got home by 4:30. If the
boys did not appear when he did; there would be hell to pay. On the
other side of that was the fact that I would get off school at 4 and
by God we would be in trouble if we did not have a pot of coffee
ready for him when he got home.
Eventually the boys got their own cars
and thus they all drove separately to work. Rob had a white Cyclone
and Dennis got a yellow Mustang. Dad would brag to his coworkers
about his son's cars. Cars are still a status symbol, aren't they?
I had the privilege of touring the
Intercontinental. (not really a privilege). Our Grade 7 or 8 Home Econics
teacher thought it would be beneficial. It was disgusting, rank
enough to make you gag, dark and it took me a long time to like meat
again. We got to see the kill floor, the place where they hung the
fresh dead ones, the hides being removed and falling into the hide
cellar. I did get to see the half carcasses being carved up and
eventually i got to see my dad “ham boning” standing at a long
moving table elbow to elbow with his coworkers carving the bones out
of the ham and how quickly it had to be done seeing the next ham was
coming up the table. I saw dad with his white hard hat helmet, his white
coat and apron seamlessly moving to an unheard rhythm of cutting the
ham bone away. I don't think he saw me even though he knew I would
be touring that day. I didn't want him to look up lest his sharp
knife slip.
My siblings and I grew up with the odd
hair raising supper tale of dad's work. There was the one where a
bull got loose in the plant and ran wildly about finally settling in
the women's bathroom among the women screaming for their life. Then
there was the unbelievable story of “Thor”. Thor worked on the
kill floor. At that time they would slit the animals throat to kill
them and good old Thor who spoke no English every once in a while
would fill his tin cup with the spilled blood and drink it. I had
nightmares about that for years.
That day I had a new found respect for
my father and the hard work he did in order to support his family. I
also knew that I would never work at The Intercon.
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| 1983 March Jake Peters at His Retirement Party. |
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Wendy
