98-year-old Raymond Biernaski and his wife, Frances, celebrated their 73rd wedding anniverary last week and his 98th birthday with no signs they are about to slow down.

Barry’s Bay — Seventy-three years ago last week, on August 28th, 1951, Raymond Biernaski celebrated his 25th birthday by marrying Frances Stoppa at St. Hedwig’s Roman Catholic Church here in Barry’s Bay. She was 21 years old, the oldest daughter of Anthony Stoppa, a farmer who lived out along the Paugh Lake Road, where, among other things, he tended to 10 cows, a few hogs, a flock of sheep, and a gaggle of turkeys, geese and chickens.

The wedding lasted three days — standard among local Polish-Kashub families — and it attracted hundreds of friends, relatives and neighbours, who all dropped by the Stoppa farm over those 72 hours, thanks to a temporary home-made square-dance platform and the endless guitar and fiddle music of Michael and Josee Rumleskie — that is, so long as there was daylight.

“We had no electricity so once it got dark,” said Frances Biernaski, now 94, on the day of her 73rd wedding anniversary, “well, they all had to go home and come back again the next day.”

A wedding dinner of mutton and chicken, products of the farm, was provided after being prepared in a nearby cookhouse and served on a huge wedding table in the main farmhouse.  A three-tiered wedding cake was also prepared and topped off with a miniature bride and groom.

For their honeymoon, the happy couple left on the Barry’s Bay train for Ottawa but were back in time a few days later for the final reception the following Sunday.

“We had three different couples who met up at our wedding,” said Frances, fondly remembering her wedding day, 73 years ago, “and they all got married shortly afterwards.”

The three couples included Peter Brotton and Clementine Stoppa, Leonard Rumbleski and his future wife, and a Dombroski. Some of them are celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary this year as well.

Prior to her marriage, Frances was educated in a one room schoolhouse, S.S. #8, in Paugh Lake where she was taught by Doreen Conway, the future wife Mr. Paul J. Yakabuski.

“I went there from about aged 7 to 17 but I mostly went in the summertime because in the wintertime there was no snowploughing, so whenever it was too cold or too much snow, we couldn’t go.”

She said she didn’t grow up with Raymond and indeed never laid eyes on him until she was a teenager.

“We met when I was 16 and he was 20 at a country dance held at Steffan’s farm. And then I didn’t see him for a year because he worked away in the lumber camp. And when I was 17 in 1947, I took the train to Ottawa and worked as a house maid for $30/month, looking after two little girls.

“You got Thursday afternoon off and every second Sunday; and when all the other maids got together — our friends from here who were working in Ottawa then — well, we would take the city buses and go window shopping. I remember one Easter Sunday, we visited six different churches just to see what was going on.”

She worked in Ottawa for four years until her wedding day.

Five months after they were married, the Biernaskis bought the Stamplecoski house on Inglis St. in Barry’s Bay for $3,500 which they paid off at the rate of $500 a year over the next seven years. It was at a time when Raymond earned about $2,200 a year and their first municipal tax bill was for $32.60.

“When we were first married, we had to have to big garden,” said Frances who said she used to preserve and can most of what she harvested. Back in the day, she said the family planted potatoes on the family farm and they bought their beef and pork in bulk and kept it at the local Cold Storage plant.

All their neighbours that used to live up and down their west-end Inglis Street neighbourhood back in the 1950s and 60s — the Murrays, Billings, Skebo’s Yankavitches, Glofcheskies. and Princes — they are all gone now.

“We never lived anywhere else; it’s the only place we ever lived,” said Frances who raised 10 children of her own there: Phylis, Philip, William, Paul, Robert, Pat, Yvonne, Tracey, Kimberley and Anita. Those children are now spread out between the Yukon and New York City but a number of them remain close by, including Pat, who works at the Wilno Tavern and Rainbow Valley Health Centre.

After Raymond got married, he initially worked at McRae’s Lumber in Whitney and then bought a chainsaw.

“It was the biggest chainsaw I ever had,” he said proudly. “It had a four-foot blade; you couldn’t cut those big timbers with a cross-cut saw or anything less.” 

With that chainsaw and his brother Isaiah, Raymond headed into the bush where the brothers worked for years as independent jobbers, harvesting timber for other lumber companies. He also worked building roads where he became a heavy-equipment operator, driving bulldozers for 24 years, and then in the 1980s he operated a snowplow for the Village of Barry’s Bay. Even after he retired, he continued to operate his own snow-plowing business well into his 90s, giving it up only a few years ago.

Indeed, currently at 98 years of age, Raymond still drives his own half-ton. A Chev, bought in 1995, it’s still on the road as is he. Raymond says that half-ton has never seen the inside of a commercial garage; he prefers to change his own oil and do any maintenance on it himself.

It’s little wonder. Raymond is one of the oldest licensed drivers in the area, if not in Ontario, and is well known in Barry’s Bary as a man who would often load up his entire family long before there was GPS and drive them anywhere they wanted to go. Once, in the late 1970s he drove right through the heart of New York City for his grandson, Sean’s, christening — right into the heart of Manhattan and right out again. He’s not one to shy away from a road trip.

“Dad loved to drive,” said daughter Pat. “Even now, he still loves to drive. When we were growing up, dad drove us everywhere. We’d often go to Ottawa and Toronto to visit cousins. Nothing has changed. He drove to Hamilton six weeks ago. And last week, he drove to Ottawa, stopping at the Swiss Chalet on their way back. At 98!”
“Worse thing is,” said Raymond, “if you’re driving and you get nervous, well that’s when you make a mistake, have an accident. But if you’re not nervous about driving, especially, in a city like New York, well everything works out.”

Frances has great confidence in her husband’s driving abilities.

“But sometimes, you just trust in St. Anthony,” (the patron saint of travellers,) “to get you through.”

In fact, the Biernaski family’s adventures in Manhattan have become the stuff of legend around Barry’s Bay. There are stories cherished by family members who talk of them with delight, even though they are not without mishaps or that one time when the family got lost in the back alleys of New York City near midnight.

“We’ve been to Dawson City, the Yukon a couple of times, New York City a couple of times,” said Raymond, recounting some of his adventures. “I drove from here to Alaska in six days for our 50th wedding anniversary.”

The Biernaski family also once made the rounds closer to home, taking in as many local summer and fall church suppers that they could find. Such suppers used to be held between Maynooth and Round Lake, Whitney and Killaloe, including the famous Wilno Chicken Supper.  To hear Pat and Yvonne talk of those dinners is to hear more than ordinary laughter.

“Mom and dad always took us to those church dinners,” said Pat. “We usually paid our own way, but they didn’t want us to sit with them because we ate too much; the 10 of us would sit by ourselves and we’d gobble everything up in sight, especially those all-you-can-eat pies.”

“Bobby and Paul were terrible,” said Frances. “They’d eat pies, my God, it was wild to see them eat, 20 different pies, 20 different pieces.”

Sadly, Paul and Bobby died some years ago, but the ever-optimistic Biernaski family still makes an effort to make more church supper memories. And though those dinners are now few and far between, Raymond and Frances Biernaski are expecting to take a little road trip this Sunday to Bancroft where they heard there was going to be another church supper.

Earlier last week the couple celebrated their 73rd anniversary with a small family dinner of 38 people. Small, considering Raymond and Frances have 19 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren and when they celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary, they rented the Paul J. Yakabuski Community Centre and invited 120 guests. It was a throwback to those heady, three-day blow-outs when they first were wedded, complete with guitar and fiddle.