Gawiuk Family Interview – “We were lucky”

An interview with the Gawiuk family, discussing the impact of the High Keenleyside Dam on their property in Mount Cartier.

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, Marris, and Ron Gawiuk. Brian Gawiuk is a white man with grey hair, glasses, and a plaid button down shirt. Marris is an elderly white woman, with white-grey hair, wearing black glasses, a white collared top, with a pink sweater over top. Ron Gawiuk is a white man, with black hair, sunglasses, and a blue button down shirt. They are interviewed outside with the forest behind them.

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

Transcript of Narration:

[Starts with Brian Gawiuk; cuts to a video zooming out of a big tree stump with large roots].

Brian Gawiuk: I remember going down to the farm and there was an old old stump a huge tree that Ron and I, and I don’t know who else I think a cousin, we had dug a hole from one stump into uh into this bigger stump, and we had built a big fort with big ladders inside.

[Video of Brian Gawiuk].

Brian Gawiuk: You know, what would it look like you know if that was still, if you still had the opportunity, uh to continue to live.

It wasn’t our wasn’t our choice to move it was every decision was made for us.

(sound overlaps)

[Video pans over bank by Columbia River with mountains and trees in the background].

Marris Gawiuk: We were just lucky we had higher ground. That was it.

[Video cuts to Marris Gawiuk].

Marris Gawiuk: We had the higher ground to move the house to and carry on like that, but it was not a nice time no.

[Video shows Brian and Ron Gawiuk walking in the distance on the flats with mountains; video pans over flat land with mountains and mountains in the background]

Ron Gawiuk: No because, I mean, if you if you moved from one place to another you could always go back in this case everything was obliterated.

[Video pans over path on the flats with mountains behind].

You had, uh you know, virtually you know, you had a tree there it was gone. So you know you had no memories everything was just wiped out you know, just obliterated, so yeah.

[Video cuts back to Ron Gawiuk].

So um, just you know, it’s not, not the nicest thing.

[Video pans over trees and mountains; video cuts back to Ron Gawiuk speaking].

So we were you know a little bit luckier than that, so we had fortunately had ground, but to buy even when they were bought out and paid you still didn’t have much to, much to-to buy you know.

But we had a little bit more acreage.

[Video shows Brian and Ron Gawiuk walking side-by-side away from the camera on the flats].

We had um 80 acres, yeah 80 acres because we had two, yeah so that we had you know little additional uh acreage, mostly so, but uh no, some of the smaller places they didn’t get much, didn’t get much at all.