Gerard Derosiers shares stories from his past

By Joan Janzen

Gerard Derosiers has been a resident at Caleb Village in Kindersley for the past few years. He had previously lived in his home in Kindersley but decided to move to Caleb Village sometime after he lost his dear wife, Faye, in 2015.

Gerard shared about his life, growing up on a farm. He was born on July 13, 1941, at St. Brieux, Sask., the seventh child in a family of fourteen. He was raised on a farm south of Bjornedale, which is situated between Tisdale and Porcupine Plain.

He grew up with eight brothers and five sisters in a 16 x 26-foot two-storey house. “Most of the boys slept in a bunk house,” Gerard explained. “We got to be very close; we looked after one another.

Gerard and his siblings walked to a country school a mile and a half from their farm. “At one time, there were 40 students, but usually there were about 25 or 26 kids,” he recalled.

He and his siblings had chores to do, and lived in the bush where they had to pull out roots, pile them up, and then burn them. Gerard’s dad and brothers had cleared much of the land in years gone by.

Their farm was close to a number of lakes and a river. “There were lakes 25 miles away, 12 miles, and six miles away, and we were half a mile from a river,” he said. But in spite of being in such close proximity to water, Gerard never did learn how to swim.

“I damn near drowned once,” he said and proceeded to tell the story. When he was 13 years old, he was helping do chores at a farm while the owner was in the hospital. There had been a heavy rainfall, and the cattle were on the other side of the river. Gerard started walking across the river, but one more step and the water was over his head. “I couldn’t swim and started beating the water. The current took hold of me, and I was able to grab onto the sandbar,” he said. “That was a lucky day.”

He experienced another bout of good fortune when he was 16 and working for a farmer in Quill Lake. “I was driving a John Deere tractor and rolled it into the ditch. I jumped off, and as I was rolling in the ditch, I could hear the tractor coming behind me,” he remembered. “When I stopped rolling, the tractor was right beside me, still running and upside down.”

Thankfully, Gerard survived, and at 19, married his wife Faye and moved to Tisdale, where he worked at the hospital as an orderly. “From there, we went to Thomson, Manitoba, where I worked at the hospital as an orderly. Then we moved to Prince George, BC, where my wife’s sister lived, and I got a job working as an orderly in the hospital there,” he said. Working as an orderly was quite a change from farming, but he learned a lot. “If you keep your eyes open, you can learn a lot,” he said.

The couple’s next move was to Grenfell, Sask. where Gerard took training at an elevator before being sent to Brock, Sask. where he bought grain for UGG from 1966 to 1974.

It was during this time in his life that Gerard was able to pursue his love of hockey. “I never played hockey until I was 25 years old. I started the Wheatbelt League,” he said. The league included Eston, Perdue, Harris, Zealandia and Rosetown.
After nine years of working at the elevator, Gerard bought a farm and tried his hand at farming. In all his years of farming, he only had one bad year. “I can’t complain,” he said.

During their marriage, Gerard and Faye raised three daughters and a son and now have twelve grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. They also hosted a number of exchange students throughout the years. “We had seven of them throughout the years,” he said. The students came from Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and England.

Gerard and Faye travelled to Denmark and Switzerland to visit their exchange students too. “They still come to visit me. They never forget you, and I’ll never forget them. They were really good workers and good people. We made some really good connections,” he remembers.

Gerard began showing me his woodworking projects when I asked about the electric drill beside the front door. Throughout the years, he’s made end tables, coffee tables and chests out of oak and has his tools stored in Caleb’s wood shop.

Although he’s not sure if he’ll attempt more woodworking projects, he does enjoy playing cards. “I play a lot of cards,” he said.

Before I said goodbye, I assured Gerard he would receive a copy of the paper in which his story would be printed. “And if it’s any good, I’ll get more copies to send to my family,” he said. So here’s hoping his family gets to read this!