The Red Lake Regional Heritage Centre

My father Dimitri Boyanowski emigrated from the Ukraine to work on western farms. Instead he started in the Ioquois Falls mills.

He met my mother in Winnipeg. In 1933 he started working at the Howey, McKenzie, Cochenour, Hasaga, Madsen, and Griffith Mines. He was sent to Toronto to learn how to weld and work the lathe at DeHaviland on the Mosquito Bombers.
While working at McKenzie and Cochenour, before we had a road, he lived in the bunkhouse coming home on weekends by boat taxi in the summer and in the winter by cross country skiing and skating on the frozen lake. When my father worked at Hasaga I was under 9 years of age. I was sent with his lunch pail up into the head frame where I waited for him to finish eating before I took his lunch pail back home.

For entertainment the adults had dances in the Hasaga Cookery where my father played the guitar and mandolin. The benches and tables were pushed to the walls. The children were allowed to play until they tired and curled up under the benches, out of the way of the adults dancing.

My father and I spent as much time as we could in the bush, snaring fish in the Buffalo Creek, fishing along the shore lines and collecting wood for heat and cooking. We did not have a refrigerator so we caught only what we could eat at one meal.
My father cleared land with an axe, and by shovel he tilled the land. We could harvest enough vegetables for twelve months storing them in the root cellar.

Before the highway was built, large heavy items were brought in by tractor train in the winter and scows in the summer. Only perishable items, liquor and people who could afford a ticket came by plane.

The local mine managers let us use dynamite boxes for furniture and walls in our two room shack. The kitchen was filled with wonderful food and used for entertainment where singing and playing instruments was the norm.
We were one of the first homes to install an electric light in one socket on a wire hung from the ceiling for reading, replacing the kerosene lanterns. We were told it was not natural subjecting ourselves to electricity and potential cancer.
Eventually the mines helped valued employees to build permanent houses with used building materials and mine equipment. Advances were given on pay cheques with no interest or service charges for building materials and to help pay for education and travel after high school for the children of the miners. This created a two way trust between to mine and employees.

Children were told to play outside all year round. We build forts and snow tunnels. Skating and sliding were a joy.
In summer we swam in the lake and built rafts. Hopscotch with treasured broken glass, marbles, and pick baseballs in the school yard was always popular.

In the 1930’s and 1940’s the miners were very ambitious for their children to exceed them in trades, business and professions utilizing the excellent education at the time. At the 50th high school reunion multiple diverse professions were represented starting with an atomic energy scientist.

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