With winter approaching, a small town’s Knights came to my rescue

“Do you have enough wood for the winter?” Hendrik Ortynski, our local Knights of Columbus council treasurer, asked me while we warmed ourselves in front of a fire with Grand Knight Don Boucier. 

“No,” I replied.

It was a rainy November afternoon, and we were taking in the hard reality of where my wild pursuit of “an acre and a cow” had led my wife, Leah, and our five young children. Though I had worked tirelessly since the summer on our first house in Powell River, much of it remained unlivable.

“Could you use some help with the house?” asked Don. 

“Yes.” 

Following the pandemic, life in the big city held even less allure than it once did. Still, my work and my dreams had only gotten me so far, and the winter was near. 

Bins of junk had been sent to the dump, and rats no longer crawled in the kitchen through the roof and foundation. The week before, I had removed 37 industrial garbage bags worth of asbestos insulation from the attic with a snow shovel so that the frayed knob-and-tube wiring could be replaced. 

Still, my wife and I slept on cots across from our three sons in one of the rooms with baseboard heaters. My two daughters slept in the other room, where the 1920s storm windows rattled in the wind. 

A few days later, Hendrik delivered a truckload of firewood. Another truckload arrived before I got the first stacked. It was high quality, well-seasoned Douglas fir. Purchasing anything like it would be nearly impossible for newcomers to the small town. But Hendrik refused payment and left me with the wood, two tarps, and a new pair of work gloves. He had taken note of the state of my hands. 

Don then organized a work bee for the following weekend. On Saturday, he and Hendrik filed into the cinder-block basement with Mike Pedersen and Mike Carriere, two other Knights from our council. 

For months I had worked mostly alone, just one hammer banging away at the projects piling up towards the heavens. Often enough my morale sank, and I’d wonder whether I had made the right decision to move us all here and whether I had taken on too much in trying to restore a nearly 100-year-old house on an acreage by myself. Then, I’d fight with my wife and worry about restoration expenses before very reluctantly giving it all up to God. 

Through the local Knights of Columbus, God came through, and now the basement rang with multiple hammers, talk, and laughter. Within minutes, Mike Pedersen, a former navy man and mechanical engineer, pointed out a floor beam that needed reinforcement. Sensing my anxiety, he quickly proposed a simple solution. Across from him, Mike Carriere had established his cutting station and set to framing walls. Each man quickly devised his own task and set to it in the most natural way. Working beside Mike on the frames, I commented on his very apparent serenity. 

“I try to do small things with love,” he said. “[St. Therese’s] Little Way kept me sane during my own renovations and at other times in my life.” 

Don and the two Mikes made it their objective to frame a bedroom for my sons. The boys were excited, and from time to time they’d come down to watch or to lend a hand. Not only were my sons learning important things, but they were in the company of solid men who were working together. That experience had often brought me joy, working alongside soldiers and shipwrights, masons, and millwrights on common projects. 

By lunch hour, the frames for the bedroom were in place and everyone was hungry. Leah had made us a hearty fall stew which she served with bread and home-made pickled beets. The only thing missing was heat.

The steam from the stew rose into our faces as we sat down around the dining room table. After prayer, lunch conversation began, and I listened closely to the stories these men told about my new hometown. Most of them had worked in the local paper mill and recounted some of the humorous as well as tragic stories from those days. 

Henrik told a particularly funny story that had us all laughing. It involved the unintended union of a cement mixer and yards of expensive electrical cable. “In the end, the cable looked like spaghetti wrapped around a fork,” Hendrik concluded. 

Recently the mill had closed for good, and some of these men worried about the prospects for young families like mine in Powell River. They worried also about the local church and whether her young would return. They viewed our moving up here with hope, since now at least our priest would have three new altar boys to help him at Mass. 

At the end of the day, I could hardly believe all that had been accomplished. What was more unbelievable was that the men had all offered to do more. Don and the two Mikes returned until my sons’ room was ready to be painted. Henrik returned until all the wiring in my basement was safe. 

Practically speaking, I learned a great deal from the men of Powell River’s Council 5417. Before meeting Mike Carriere I had little idea of how to properly prepare walls to be drywalled. Before I met Hendrik, my knowledge of residential electrical was very limited. Because of their charity, my sons had a bright room of their own to sleep in during the winter, and we all had a warm hearth around which to spend Christmas. 

What happened here in my basement once happened in small towns across North America when men would gather to build a cabin for a newcomer or raise a barn for a neighbour. Something in our current society works against such magnanimity but has not been able to eliminate it completely.

As Hilaire Belloc once wrote: the Catholic Church makes good men.

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