Gawiuk Family Interview – Moving the House

Brian Gawiuk discusses the process of moving the Gawiuk family house. The Gawiuks were forced to move due to the Hugh Keenleyside Dam.

Title Screen: Circular logo on a black backdrop. Logo is an image of four waves turning into wheat on the left end. The title “Stories Beneath the Surface” is circled around the image in capital letters.

Interview with Brian Gawiuk. Brian is a white man with grey hair, wearing glasses and a plaid button down shirt. He is sitting on a grey chair with the forest behind him.

Revelstoke Museum and Archives logo in the bottom right hand corner.

Transcript of narration:

The appraisers did up a report and uh going back and forth with uh with hydro to negotiate a-a better deal.

So when mom, mom and dad finally negotiated uh a deal with-with BC Hydro, Dad hired a mover, building mover, to-to move the house.

The movers came in early in the morning uh.

Ron and I, was the last day of school for us, so in the morning we had breakfast, the mover showed up, they started to knock the chimney out and-and pull the south wall over, so they had to get the, and they had to fill in the basement a little bit so they, with wood and stuff, so they can pull the big beams under.

So they pull big beams under the house and then they cribbed and then they jacked the house up.

And then Ron and I left for school, so then they-they moved it on and there’s a few pictures that the neighbor took of the move from the farm along the road there.

[Three photograph of the house being moved on the back of a flatbed truck shown consecutively; back to video of Brian].

To raise, the uh, the road up to do the work and they were rip-rapping just to get in preparation for the flooding and so they moved or backed the house down.

So when we came home from school the house was partly on to the basement.

[Video fades to black].