UNITY — Richard Lorne Swarbrick celebrated his 100th birthday Feb. 12. He still lives on his own, at Heritage Manor in Unity. Family gathered for a low-key birthday celebration in friend Butch Boskill’s suite at 8th Avenue Estates, Feb. 11. One of Swarbrick’s favourite meals was served – Mama burgers from A&W.
Swarbrick was born on the farm in Round Valley northwest of Unity Feb. 12, 1923, the fourth of eight children born to Ann Eaves and Richard Marsden Swarbrick. Midwife Mrs. St. Germain, who was a neighbour, attended the birth.
Swarbrick and his siblings attended Mount Everest School, No. 4418 on NW 11-40-24 W3, although several of the boys had to leave school early to help on the farm. There were sometimes as many as 23 students at a time, in Grades 1 to 10.
As a young man, Swarbrick joined the army in October 1943 and was sent to Yarmouth, N.S. for basic training. Transfers to Camp Aldershot near Kentville, N.S., and Camp Borden, near Berry, Ont. followed before he was sent home on farm leave in March, 1944, as it was decided not so many men were needed overseas at that time. He did some more army training in the fall and winter of 1994-45 but, with the war over May 6, 1945, he never did see any action in Europe.
Swarbrick returned home to help his mother on the farm. (His father had been killed by a bull in March, 1934.)
They stayed on the farm until the spring of 1966, when Swarbrick thought a life in town would be easier for his then 75-year-old mother. Swarbrick worked at various jobs, ending up at Imperial Oil as a fuel truck delivery driver for 19 years before retiring. He used his time off to take his mother to visit her grandchildren who did not live nearby.
After retirement, Swarbrick did handyman-type jobs around town for homeowners, in particular widows who did not have a man to help them with yard work and repairs. In doing so he met Laurene Burnell when he replaced the shingles on her house. They also encountered each other at square dancing sessions, and were married in 1985.
Swarbrick also fell in love with Laurene’s two daughters and all her grandchildren, and happily continues in the “Grandpa” role to the new generation of great-grandchildren, although sadly Laurene herself has been gone for many years.
Following are some tales from Swarbrick’s life, in his own words, as told by him in a family history book.
[With another baby coming when he was about 18 months old], I was moved to the bed and as I was number four I had to go to the bottom. My older brothers and sister were at the top. My nice brothers liked to think I should have to smell their smelly feet. Wasn’t that nice of them?
Two years after that another one was added to that bed, but this time we slept crossways. Imagine five in a bed. By the time the next one came in 1927 the shack had to be built on to … I was his babysitter that first winter in the new addition. Thank goodness I didn’t have to change him. Poofff!
I helped my Dad the next summer. I had to walk out to the field to call him to dinner. I didn’t have to walk back; he put me on a horse, which I loved.
School was important, and education necessary, but making a living was also necessary, so I had to do both as best I could. I lost my Dad early in life and our mother had a hard time for a few years, raising a family of eight. We all had to dig in and help out.
What I remember of the first Christmas trees coming our way was a lumber yard agent in Unity in the early 1930s got a boxcar of coal in one December and found a few spruce trees on top of the coal. (If I remember right, only five or six) …the town school got one, and one was sent each way out of Unity to school, they were to be used at the school concerts. If the concerts were on different nights the first school was to use the tree and then send it on to the next school for the next night, and so on. When the concerts were over, the tree was given to someone in the district.
[In later years], more trees were brought in. Every school could buy one for a dollar or two. Also anyone could buy one if they so wished. We never did have one as we didn’t have the room. What we hadn’t had, we didn’t miss.
Mother and I would go picking saskatoons. We would be gone most of the day, picking the cream can full and a few pails. Mother was a good picker. I was the scouter. After picking all day mother would pick them over until dark, and then can them and be ready to go again the next day. We would pick up to 400 quarts in a season, as well as all we ate in the meantime at meals.
I did get fairly good at picking berries later on in life. One year, while with my wife and her family at the lake, I picked over 30 gallons. No one else was picking. Then I came home and picked six more gallons for someone else.
For night lights we had coal oil lamps in the house and coal oil lanterns for the barn … we got a gas lantern in the early1930s; that was a real improvement … In the mid ’30s a six-volt wind charger was put on the roof to charge the six-volt battery from the car so we could get more use of the radio. Before that it had to be taken to town to be recharged. Sometimes it could be charged that day, sometimes not for a week as there were a lot of people in the same fix.
Later in the early 1950s we got an unused windmill tower and put the six6-volt charger on that, with some glass batteries in the cellar, so sometimes had lights when we had wind. Then in the mid ’50s we got another unused 39-foot windmill tower and charger set up at the barn with a battery in the barn. Now, if we had wind, we had lights.
In 1959 we were able to get SaskPower. Now it was like daylight all night. Now we had fridges, freezers, power tools, lights for the hens, eggs all year-round. Out of the dark into daylight.
