A very brief update today! I don’t believe I have ever come across this record for my grandparents before. This marriage record for my grandparents, Robert Kelm and Lyla Krause, is from Ancestry.com’s “Ontario, Canada, Marriages, 1826-1942” collection and the end date makes me think this particular record from 1941 was digitized and made public very recently.
My grandparents married June 23, 1941, in Pembroke, Ontario. According to family, my grandfather, a nickel miner living in Levack, worked with my grandmother’s brother, Lorne Krause, and met her when he visited the house.
I initially set out to write a longer and more informative post about the Kelm family in Sudbury and Hanmer, Ontario, but wondered if a shorter post stemming from a phone conversation I had with my dad earlier this year might spark some reminiscing (which would then provide more motivation to continue working on the longer article). If you have anything to add from your knowledge or memories of this time, please leave a comment or email me at sarika.rainey@gmail.com. Thank you.
The Queen Visits Sudbury, 1959
My grandfather, Robert Kelm, worked as a nickel miner in Sudbury from around 1937 to his retirement in 1972. I know that his brother, Daniel Kelm (see reference in his 2004 obituary), also worked in the nickel mines, but I otherwise have no information or stories about how they were recruited from Winnipeg to work there.
My grandparents moved the family to an 80-acre farm in Hanmer, Ontario, in 1955. My dad, John Kelm, doesn’t remember the exact location of the family farm, but recalls that you could see the “Falcon Radar Station buildings.”[1] According to RCAF.info, the former RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) Falconbridge Radar Station, which opened in 1952, was located between Hanmer and the Greater Sudbury Airport (see map below).[2]
Falconbridge Radar Station operations building looking south, date unknown; photograph shared by RCAF.info (original possibly from the Department of National Defence photographs sub-sub-series, which is part of the Library and Archives Canada’s Department of National Defence fonds)
Google Map showing locations of Sudbury, Hanmer, Greater Sudbury Airport, and possible location of the former Falconbridge Radar Station; coordinates courtesy of RCAF.info
Queen Elizabeth II and Frood Mine manager, E.N. Gaetz, leaving mine; courtesy of The Canadian Press and CBC News
On July 25, 1959, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Phillip, visited the Frood Mine [Frood-Stobie Mine] in Sudbury as part of their 45-day tour of Canada: “A mining demonstration was staged for their viewing […] Several hundred people reportedly lined the thoroughfare and song “God Save the Queen” as the Royal couple passed through the mine gates following their visit.”[3] My dad, who was sixteen at the time, remembers that his parents took the family to see the queen (possibly at the airport) and my grandmother took a photo of the children waving.[4]
“I remember when I was a young girl living in Chalk River I had my grandparents come visit us. I had caught a monarch butterfly and it soon died. Grandpa (Robert Kelm) seen this and helped me put it in a match box and bury it near a location I chose near the crabapple tree in our yard and we did a ceremony before we finished burying it. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” he said . I never heard that before and it was cute. Thx grandpa.”
Do you have a family story to share? Please email me at sarika.l.kelm@gmail.com.
Kelm History Blog 