On Tuesday, October 21, friends and residents of the Niverville Heritage Centre filled the atrium in support of this year’s fundraising effort.
The goal this time around: $87,000 in donations to improve lighting in the Heritage Life Personal Care Home and purchase an interactive virtual game for aging residents. As well, an expansion is needed for the facility’s walk-in fridge.
By the end of the night, well over $50,000 had come in.
Ron Parent, executive director, opened the evening with a welcome and overview of the Heritage Centre’s progress over the past year. Since the pandemic, he said, many challenges have presented themselves and he expects more of the same in the coming years.
“We’ve all experienced moments that have tested us, whether personally, professionally, or emotionally,” Parent said. “And yet we stand here today, not because the journey was easy but because we chose to move forward. Remember, resilience isn’t innate. It’s a skill honed over time, a perspective we adopt, and a legacy we create.”
Among the successes, the Heritage Centre has effectively increased daytime supports for assisted living residents to help delay their need for long-term care placement. The centre has also collaborated with Marquise Hospitality, a Canadian-based culinary and hospitality service focused on seniors living facilities.
“We prepare over 200,000 meals out of our kitchen every year, whether it’s feeding those who live in our personal care home, people attending events such as tonight, weddings or guests that visit Hespeler’s Cookhouse and Tavern,” Parent said. “We do so knowing that food is such an integral part of who we are.”
The evening’s keynote speaker was former Niverville resident Ben Sawatzky, who notably was the keynote speaker at the Heritage Centre’s very first fundraiser back in 2004. His theme then was “the little town that could.” Two decades later, Sawatzky’s focus shifted to resilience and pushing through adversity to get to the other side.
Sawatzky has climbed the ladder from small town immigrant to successful entrepreneur in the lumber industry, but not without enduring some tragedy along the way.
On this night, he chose to highlight his father’s journey. Nowhere else could he find a better example of resilience in the face of unrelenting adversity.
Born in Paraguay in 1928, Sawatzky’s father described in his journals the extreme poverty of his early years. On laundry day, he wore a burlap sack while his single pair of clothes hung to dry. He recalled days of hard labour in the fields, rewarded with one slice of bread at the end of the workday.
As an adult, he was gifted two oxen, which he used to start a transport business, carrying goods from farms to markets 150 kilometres away. It was a ten-day journey each way.
He eventually upgraded to horses and the business succeeded—until suddenly his horses fell dead from snake bite.
Soon after, Sawatzky took ill, forcing a move off the farm and into the capital to find work he could do in a weakened state. He worked as a store clerk, making just enough to support his wife and first child and putting a little aside, day by day, to purchase a ranch and herd.
Unfortunately, a surgery required him to sell off that cattle in order to pay the hospital bill.
“You would think this man would get discouraged and quit,” Sawatzky said. “But that was never an answer for him.”
Sawatzky’s father wasn’t back to work long before the owner of the store let him go to provide a position for his son.
Yet again, Sawatzky’s father had to move his growing family and work while continuing to save. With eight children, he at last purchased farmland and put his oldest sons to work in the fields while he maintained his job in the city.
Unfortunately, two consecutive years of drought lead to crop failure and the death of the few animals they owned.
“He had tried everything he knew, but he always spoke of this country called Canada,” Sawatzky said. “He had one sister that lived there and he would always talk about this country of possibility without boundaries.”
Hoping to change his fortune in Canada, Sawatzky’s father sought to move his large family, now numbering 14. His immigration application, though, was denied. The reason? He would be unable to raise a family of that size in Canada with only a few farming skills, despite his eldest sons being wage-earners.
“He was devastated, but quitting was not an option,” Sawatzky said. “He moved himself to Canada as an immigrant, living with his sister in Grunthal, where he somehow got a job at the lumberyard.”
He was away from his family for an entire year before his luck changed. He’d made friends with a local couple who owned an apartment complex in Steinbach. This couple, in a great act of kindness, transferred the title of their complex into Sawatzky’s name, giving him a chance to demonstrate to officials his ability to support a family.
“Over the course of 20 years, he’d had six moves, six new starts, and [lived in] six communities. His steadfast determination to provide a better future for his family continued to give him hope and courage. His was a journey of perseverance and resilience.”
Turning his father’s story of endurance into a message of hope, the junior Sawatzky encouraged Heritage Centre administrators and supporters to forge on and never give up.
“It’s no secret that you are an organization that is the envy of not only southern Manitoba but the entire country,” Sawatzky said. “To get to [this place], it requires vision, skill, determination, and a strong will to achieve. But more difficult than getting to the top is staying at the top and the vast majority fail. Why? Because complacency sets in. We forget what it took to get here.”