H ERITAG E
In the Tradition of Immigrants Everywhere By Patricia Sandberg
I
started writing about my cherished grandfather Johan Ferdinand Sandberg (‘Fred’) on Canada Day, July 1, 2019, our national holiday. I tried to imagine the excitement, uncertainty and homesickness that 17-year-old Fred and his 24-year-old brother Albert must have felt on leaving their home in Domsjö, Västernorrland, Sweden over a century ago.
Fred and Jonas Sandberg.
A younger brother Jonas would follow in a few years. Their father Erik could not support wife Albertina and nine surviving children on stoker’s wages at a sawmill in Sweden. Canada, actively recruiting immigrants before World War I, favoured people from England, The United States, Scandinavia and
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Swedish Press | May 2020 18
The young Johan Ferdinand Sandberg.
Germany. Given limited opportunity in Sweden, the two brothers set their course for Canada. Sailing in fog near the Canadian coast in late April 1912, their ocean liner the Empress of Britain struck an iceberg. Luckily for the future Sandberg family, it was a glancing blow. Two weeks earlier, the unsinkable Titanic had sent 1523 passengers and crew to an icy grave after hitting an iceberg in the same area. Landing in Saint John, New Brunswick, Fred and Albert boarded a train and made their way west. They stopped in Winnipeg in the heart of Canada, possibly because the famously cold intersection of Portage and Main Streets made them feel almost at home. More likely though, it was because Winnipeg – already a popular destination for Swedish arrivals – welcomed the two young men who did not speak English. A railway terminus being built at Port Nelson on Hudson’s Bay in northern Manitoba soon offered job opportunities, so they headed north. Fred delivered mail by dogsled between the
slow-moving endpoints of the railway and the port, while his brother worked on the construction side. Brother Albert elected to go fur trapping in northern Manitoba, while Fred returned to Winnipeg. In 1921 he married Frida Alida Lindberg (later changed to ‘Freda’). Frida’s family had emigrated from Undersåker, Jämtland County, Sweden at the beginning of the century. Fred heard of a gold mine being built in an isolated region north of Winnipeg that offered better money for a now growing family. He hiked with a friend through bush and muskeg for days until they arrived at Gunnar Gold Mines, named after prospector Gunnar Berg, another Swedish immigrant who became a close friend. Fred’s entry in 1929 into Canada’s small but active mining community at Gunnar Gold Mines, with its owner Gilbert LaBine, would shape the remainder of his life.
Delivering mail by dogsled.
Fred was a loving, jocular fellow with a mischievous sense of humour who made many friends, perhaps none closer than Lars Molund, a quiet fellow from Ångermanland, Sweden. In 1917, at the age of 17, Lars was part of a railway gang building a new rail line in Russia, the most notable attributes being hard labour,
