FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!

To start off with, let me wish a most Happy Father's Day to all you Dad's out there!!! and especially to my own special guy, with whom I have the privilege of being parents of 6 special kids.... Love you all!!

My own dear dad is gone and has been for 4 years now.. I miss him terribly, especially for the big days like Father's Day, his and my birthday, and the holidays.. my dad was big on phoning me for all the important days, and even normally I think I usually spoke to him about 2 or 3 times a month no matter how far apart we were...

I thought I would make a mini tribute to him here in this blog and if I run out of time I'll continue the story on a later post... so here goes for the record....

My dad was born in 1929 in a little place called Oungre, Saskatchewan. His parents, Iver and Anna Nyland were recent(1923) immigrants to Canada from Norway, where they intended to homestead and raise a family.
My dad was the 3rd youngest of 6 children. Alice(actually born in Norway), Astrid, and Mabel(deceased @ 19 due to appendicitis) were older, and Bessie and Gerald were younger. They spoke Norwegian at home and my dad always said they were grateful that their first teachers understood Norwegian.
The 30's put my granparent's plans on hold as they were forced to relocate to Weldon, Saskatchewan, where they again became farmers, and where they would live their whole lives.
My dad spent a majority of his youth outdoors whenever he was not in school or doing chores. He was an avid hunter, fisherman, and sports enthusiast his whole life. At home, he played hockey, cross countried ski-ied, fished, hunted, and curled.
The war broke out when my dad was 15 years old, and was the reason he dropped out of school while in his teens. He and uncle Gerald were needed to help with the farm work. Many of his underage chums lied about their age in order to join the war effort, but Dad wasn't interested in becoming a soldier, I guess he knew the army needed all the produce and grain Saskatchewan's farms could produce. I know he always said how relieved he was that the war ended approx. 2 months before his 18th birthday, July 29, 1945.
After the war, he seemed to have an ambition to see Western Canada, finding jobs in logging, the oil fields, even building grain elevators. It was a fall from a grain elevator that gave him the slight limp that would last the rest of his life. Apparently, he was home in approx. '62, '63 long enough to attend some dances in Domremy or Bellevue where he met an 18 year old French Metis girl named Anne, whom he married in fall of 1963. Together, my parents raised 6 children, 4 boys, and 2 girls.
Early in their marriage, Dad did some things that impress me now: (1) he quit smoking(hard to imagine him doing so) for the sake of us kids (2) he returned to school, attending night school in order to get his GED and going on to become a journeyman carpenter. How he managed to work fulltime, attend school at night and cope with the demands of a young family I'll never know!!!! kudos to you, DAD!!!
He worked for the City of Prince Albert for many, many years and for all my adult life he was an avid participant in Victory Baptist Church.
We lost my Dad to Alzheimer's in 2005.. will always Love you DAD...