Nils Parson

Nils Parson

Nils Albert Parson,Age 106 years, passed away on July 11,2010 at the Benito Health Centre. A funeral service was held on Friday, July 16,2010 from the chapel of Andrychuk Funeral Home. Service was officiated by the Rev. Frances Patterson, with Interment at the Durban,Manitoba Cemetery.
On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright piloted the first powered airplane 20 feet above a wind-swept beach in North Carolina. It was just three days later that Nils Parson was born. On December 20 of last year Parson celebrated his 106th birthday. Parson was born in Lund, Sweden to Anna and Olaf where he spent only two years of his life, before moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1905.
Parson and his family along with his uncle Nils Parson only stayed in Chicago for a few years before leaving in June of 1908, where he moved to a homestead in Canada in the Alpine area just south of Benito. It was in Benito that he went to school and where he completed his Grade 11 education. It was also in the Benito School around 1915 that Parson and a few other friends got the first ride in a car.
The homestead days were pretty tough and he wasn't very happy with them. One of the reasons why the Parsons' moved away from the Alpine area was because of the Swamp Fever that their horses kept on getting ill with, and dying from. Other elements that turned Parson off the homesteader days were the bad roads near the area and the mosquitoes.
In 1926 he once again moved with his family out of the homestead and away from Alpine. They found themselves living on a farm near Durban where he farmed with his parents and worked at the lumber mills in the Porcupine Mountains.
Parson worked on the T.A. Burr's Lumber Mill and the French Canadian Lumber Mill, but he said that the French Canadian Mill fed better then the other company did. He also found work as a mechanic and worked in the garage in Kenville. Local farmers also hired him to do some mechanic work for them. It was in 1941 when his father took ill and passed away that the Parsons' really found out just how great the people of Durban were. Parson and his mother stayed on the farm in Durban for three more years before moving to the Benito area, but it was after his mother died in 1952 that Parson made yet another move this time to Pelly, Sask.
Parson found employment out in Pelly which included working at the Campbell's Garage and for the Gwen and Percy Murry and family, with whom he stayed on for 11 years and got two great friends out of it. His last job that he had was at the Pelly skating rink for three years, where Parson made the ice for the rink.
To get his pension he had to prove just how old he actually was, so Parson wrote a letter to his aunt in Sweden, asking her to go to the hospital in which he was born in and get his birth certificate.
After he retired he moved into the Pelly housing, which is much like the Thunderhill Court in Benito, where he lived up until June of last year. Parson enjoyed his life after retirement by going to the Pelly Drop in Centre, where he spent his time playing pool and Norwegian Whist a card game, where he would frequently have the high score and win the toonie.
He lived by himself, with homecare, until he reached the age of 105. It was only then that his legs became weaker, and it was decided that it would be a good idea if he moved into a personal care home. Parson first went to the Norquay PCH, but then decided that it was time to move back to Benito where he grew up for the majority of his childhood.
He never did begrudge his age or complain about getting older.
Parson is survived by immediate cousins John of Benito, MB., Nils and Joyce of San Francisco, CA, USA., Mary Makasoff and family of White Rock, B.C., Rose Parson and family of Ladner, B.C.. Also other cousins in Sweden and Texas, USA, as well as numerous good friends and neighbours and special friend Joe Pollon.
Andrychuk Funeral Home
346-3rd Street
Kamsack, SK
S0A 1S0

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