In the Tradition of Immigrants

In the Tradition of Immigrants Everywhere

By Patricia Sandberg

Istarted 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

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,

long hours, low pay and peasant food. Assessing these factors and the unrest that preceeded the Russian revolution, Lars decided Canada was a better option. Intending to farm, he bought a plot of land in Northern Ontario not far from James Bay, in an area not known for farming. After clearing bush, Lars had to pick and remove rocks from his land. He was not one to complain about hard work, but became discouraged, thinking he was only farming rocks. When his brother Nils arrived from Sweden in 1923 and said, “Nice farm,” Lars said, “You want to buy?” Nils accepted, and Lars happily moved to Winnipeg.

Fred, now construction superintendent at Gunnar Gold Mines, hired Lars when the man arrived at the mine on foot seeking employment during the Depression. The two men raised their families there, and began their lifelong journey as working companions and close friends. Fred and Freda raised a daughter and two boys at the mine, one being my father Jack whose best friend was Lars’s painfully-shy son Agnar. It was also in this tiny community that Jonas rejoined brother Fred, and where my father met a new nursing graduate who would become my mother.

Fred worked for MacDonald Bros. Aircraft early in World War II. It built aircraft in Winnipeg designed to train Allied air force pilots from around the world. Fred and Lars next supplied their skills to the expansion of port facilities in Prince Rupert on the West Coast, strategic for Canadian and American war traffic.

Having hit two coasts and the southern border, Fred would venture even further north to Port Radium, a radium mine founded by Gilbert LaBine on Great Bear Lake. The mine’s waste product, uranium, was

Fred Sandberg heading to Canada in 1912.

the only known source of the metal in North America and had attracted keen American and British interest. In 1942 Fred was tasked with supervising the new construction. The mine held such high strategic importance that Fred, and Lars and fifteen-year-old son Jack who later joined him, were frozen into their positions until war’s end. After the war, people would learn that Port Radium’s uranium contributed to the U.S. development of the atomic bomb.

Fred would again manage construction at new Manitoba gold mines and uranium mines discovered on Lake Athabasca during the Cold War. Three generations of the Sandberg family, including me from the age of four months, lived at two of these mines. Fred died unexpectedly in 1959. My grandmother lived for another ten years, never rebounding from her loss.

Fred was in many ways a typical immigrant, picking up jobs when and where available. He travelled the breadth of this country and succeeded as a new Canadian due to his work ethic, participating by chance in significant developments in the early 20th Century.

My grandparents were passionate Canadians. They chose to fully contribute and assimilate into Canadian society while maintaining their core attachment to Sweden. Fred was only able to visit his family once, which must have been very difficult for all. Although I heard Swedish on records that Fred and Freda played on their turntable, I never heard them speak it. None of their children spoke Swedish. My grandparents showcased their heritage in their love of entertaining, the lavish Christmas table weighed down with pickled herring and pigs’ feet, and my grandmother’s famous meatballs.

Many thanks to my mother in whom all our family history resides.

The newly-weds Fred and Freda Sandberg. Photos: Sandberg family

Footnote: Patricia Sandberg is the author of the book Sun Dogs and Yellowcake which was reviewed in the October 2018 issue of Swedish Press. The book is available on Amazon and also via the author’s website www.patriciasandberg.com.