Christmas Dinner 1959

As a new year dawns, the past is overtaking me. 2015 has been dedicated to shaking loose the collective memories of former residents of a small uranium mining town on Lake Athabasca. To collecting a wealth of photographs of life in the 1950s and ’60s in the town. To extensive research on how the town, Gunnar Mines, Saskatchewan, came to be and how it ended.

Now, as 2016 comes to life, so too does Gunnar. 2016 will be the year that my book on Gunnar is published.

Writing the book has been a journey back in time to my youth, a simple and idyllic life in the North. It has been a way to ‘resurrect’ my home town that closed a short ten years after it started and to reconnect with people after more than fifty years. It has also been a sad reckoning as Gunnar’s Cold War legacy for future generations hits the headlines.

In the spirit of the season, I post a photo taken in our kitchen at Gunnar  in 1959 where my mother Barb Sandberg is making the gravy while her good friend Marge Braund works at the other counter. Friendship.

Stay tuned…

 

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Author: Patricia Sandberg

Born in southern Saskatchewan, lived as a baby in a tent-house, and grew up in a uranium mining town. I am now a confirmed West Coast city-dweller. Sailed to Hawaii and San Francisco and biked to Seattle. Book lover, dog lover, Spanish student, and gardener when I have time. Full time wife and mother (to grown-up kids). Practiced law in Vancouver for more years than I care to remember. Volunteer and environmentalist. A year and a half ago I started my research for a book about Gunnar Mines Saskatchewan, a mining town born in the frenzied search for uranium during the Cold War, set in the middle of the post World War II immigration boom and contributing in no small measure to the baby boom. In the midst of all this history and frenzy, Gunnar was simply a place where people raised their families. My book tells their stories.

12 thoughts on “Christmas Dinner 1959”

  4. Love your writing, Patricia. Thank you from the Gunnarites, a place we never forget but your writing brings it alive. To think there is not even a stick left is sad but it stays with us.
    Donna Lee (Hoddinott) Dumont

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