The Statue

There is a statue in downtown Edmonton, Alberta of a railway worker lounging on a bench. Beside him is a lunch pail and open thermos. Each time I glimpse it, a memory startles me; I think it’s my Granddad Dunn! It must be the overalls and cap that remind me of him. It’s not him, of course. It’s a statue, sculpted and forged by American artist, Seward Johnson, called “Lunchbreak”.

 

Photo by Michael Kuby for Avenue Magazine, July 4, 2017

David Walter Dunn, my maternal grandfather – well he was actually a step father, was born the 18 June 1906 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was the third child of John Dunn and Christina Clayton. His older sister, Jessie was born in 1902 and Clayton was born in 1904 in Hamilton, Ontario, as well.

In the fall of 1907, when Granddad was just a year old, his parents moved to a remote area of British Columbia near Procter, a small village on Kootenay Lake. The family lived in the area less than year when his father, John Edward Dunn, drowned. Christina, with 3 children under the age of 6, moved back home to Hamilton.

L to R Walter and Clayton Dunn, a colourized photo

After their dad’s death it was decided that Walter and his older brother Clayton would live in Hamilton with their mother, and other members of the Clayton side of the family, while Jessie was sent to Hudson Township, just north of New Liskeard, Ontario to live with the Dunn side of the family.

Granddad Dunn’s obituary says he started working for the Ontario Northland Railway in 1924 at the age of 18. He started in Porcupine (now part of Timmins), Ontario. He was promoted to foreman in 1940. Voter’s lists have him living in Cochrane in 1945, Timmins in 1957, and Cannaught in1962. All list his occupation as section foreman. In 1958, right after my mom and dad married, he offered my dad a job working on the railway. Dad, who had trained to be a teacher, hated it and was thrilled to be offered a teaching job that September.

Walter Dunn is 2nd from the right

After his retirement from the railway in 1966, he and Grandma moved to Yellowknife, North West Territories where he worked in one of the mines. In 1972 they were back in Cochrane. They then moved to Moosonee, Ontario, a community on James Bay, where Grandma Dunn worked as a teacher.

I don’t have many memories of my grandfather. When they lived in Northern Ontario we visited my grandparents once a year at the most. One summer they were living in Cobourg, Ontario. I remember when we visited them he taught us how to make a rose out of a deck of cards.

 

Walter ended up in the nursing home in Cochrane where he died in November 1987.

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