On July 20, Bill and Roselyn Redekop celebrated 56 years of marriage—and they have a big story to tell of life and love and all that goes with it. So much so that they published a book in 2010 called Our Story, a biography intended to bear witness to their shared life for the sake of their children, grandchildren, and the future generations to come.
The Redekops’ lives hasn’t been vastly different from others of their generation. They’re both grandchildren of Russian immigrants who settled on a Manitoba farm and raised a family. But they believe in building a legacy and marking it down in words. Their three daughters—Sheila, Vicky, and Laureen—are all married and live in Niverville. They’ve blessed the Redekops with eight grandchildren.
The couple spent 47 years on their farm southwest of Niverville, a farm they purchased from the Wittick family in 1965 after being married two years.
“We came to town one Saturday and Mr. Wittick invited us over and he said he’d picked us to buy his farm,” Bill recalls.
When the Redekops assumed ownership, the farm had a large two-storey home and an innovative U-shaped hog barn which had been equipped with an elevator to the third floor and automated equipment for feeding the livestock. The Redekops credit the uniquely designed barn to the genius of Eric Wittick.
Within a couple of years, Bill brought the stock of pigs up to 800, a large operation for its time.
“We won an award as one of the top pig-raisers in Manitoba,” Bill says. “The Wittick boys [had given us] excellent stock and the packers wanted our pigs.”
Bill and his brothers soon amalgamated their farmland and they worked together for decades without many of the dynamics that bog down a family business. Bill says he and Roselyn always got along well, too.
“We didn’t work that much together, so we couldn’t argue,” Bill jokes. “[We were] always busy. She loved her garden and her flowers. She had her own [things] and I was with the livestock.”
About 20 years after the purchase, Norman Wittick confirmed that he’d made the right choice for his family farm when he told Roselyn in an off-hand way, “Well, I don’t think you’ve spoiled it.”
Flood Setback
Thirty-two years into their farming operation, the Redekops were dealt a tough blow when the Flood of the Century took out their barns in 1997. In preparation for the flood, the livestock had been moved to barns on higher ground. The family was evacuated, but Bill stayed with his beloved home in spite of military and RCMP pressure to leave.
In the end, the house was saved but the barns were destroyed. The couple decided not to rebuild their hog operation and continued with the grain operation alone for another 15 years.
They eventually sold the farm and built a home in Niverville in 2012. When asked if the children didn’t wanted the farm Bill replies, “We didn’t want to torture them.”
Mexican Roots
Bill was born into an industrious family. His grandfather had been known as the patriarch of the small community of Cuauhtémoc, Mexico where Bill was born. The family owned most of that village’s businesses, including a John Deere dealership, cheese factory, slaughterhouse, general store, and grain elevator.
As a young man, Bill’s father began entertaining the idea of marriage but had determined that his new wife should be of Mennonite or German descent.
“He saw a picture of a girl from Winnipeg and decided that’s the one he wanted to marry,” Bill says.
It was a photograph, Roselyn explains, taken at the Maedchenheim, a home away from home for young Mennonite women working in Winnipeg to support their families.
“He [drove] with his ‘31 car all the way from Mexico and he found her,” Bill says. “He said why he came and what he wanted and told her, ‘You make up your mind whether you [accept] the offer or not,’ and then he went back to Mexico. She soon replied, ‘Come and pick me up.’ He came back and married her and took her to Mexico.”
They were married in Mexico in 1932, but not without a promise that he’d eventually move her back to Canada. They had seven children in Mexico and the final one was born in Canada after their move. She died in childbirth when Bill was ten years old.
“The hardest time was when my mom passed away,” muses Bill. “Who is there when you come home from school? Who feeds you cookies?”
Life in Canada
Bill’s parents came to Canada in 1945 and purchased a farm one and a half miles northwest of Niverville where the Redekops’ daughter Vicky and husband Gord live today.
“When we moved here, I couldn’t speak a word of English,” Bill says. “We weren’t supposed to speak any German in school, so when my dad dropped me off [at school] I was home before he was. I didn’t like school. I ran all the way home. I did it about four or five times and then I got a big spanking.”
It wasn’t the only time Bill fled from an uncomfortable situation as a child. He remembers being delivered to the hospital by his dad to have his tonsils removed just in case they might become problematic in the future. They barely got Bill on the table when he jumped off and ran down the hallway with nurses in pursuit.
But Bill loved his childhood horses, Sally and Darby, and he loved the game of baseball. He joined the Niverville senior baseball team during his later school years and fondly remembers packing into the back of an open pickup truck to play against other rural schools.
“We went to Winnipeg on the back of a truck to visit the Coca-Cola factory,” Bill remembers fondly. “Twenty to thirty people on the back of a truck to downtown Winnipeg!”
Prairie Upbringing
Roselyn’s grandparents were also among the first Russian immigrants in the late 1800s. Her grandparents purchased a farm near Niverville and her parents eventually settled on their own farm in Tourond.
She attended the two-room Carmichael School as a child along with her two sisters and a brother.
“If we wanted to take a shortcut to get to school, we only had to walk a mile, but we also had to walk close to the oak trees where there were wood ticks,” says Roselyn. “And sometimes my uncle had a bull in the pasture and that was scary, too.”
She also recalls school field trips in the back of pickup trucks. The most memorable was a trip to the Sherbrook swimming pool.
“It was a very nasty event for [my sister] Maryanne and me because we didn’t have bathing suits,” Roselyn recalls. “We sat up on the bleachers while all of these other kids were having a marvellous time swimming in that pool.”
Other fond memories were built at her grandparents’ farm, where the children picked black currants and made games of sliding down the home’s winding staircase.
“One of my first memories was when I was three and my grandfather passed away,” Roselyn says. She describes sitting in her parents’ vehicle with her sister, seeing her grandfather lying on his veranda with one shoe on and one shoe off after falling from a heart attack. Nearby, her great uncle was having an epileptic seizure.
“It was not too far from where Maryanne and I were in the car,” Roselyn remembers. “We were sure he was dying, too. It was so frightening.”
Roselyn eventually moved on to high school in Niverville and eventually to Teacher’s College in Winnipeg. Her first job was at the Carpathia School in Winnipeg where she taught for three years.
“My parents went to the Chortizer Church… and we didn’t have any youth activities,” says Roselyn. She met Bill at her neighbours’ farmstead where Bill had come with others for some organized games. “What probably attracted me to him… was that he was always joking, always fun.’”
Married Adventures
The couple was married in 1963 and she says Bill’s silly humour has never faded over the years.
“Sometimes it bugs the dickens out of me,” she laughs.
In Bill’s jokester style, he admits why he proposed to Roselyn. “I figured, there’s no use wasting gas on somebody else.”
Travel has always been a part of their family life. Without fail, they took their three daughters on summer vacation every year. Their travels have taken them to virtually every state in America as well as the Mexican village where Bill spent the first seven years of his life. It’s now a sprawling city.
In the last couple of years, Bill and Roselyn have enjoyed their new suite in the Heritage Life Retirement Living complex, away from the large yard and gardens they doted on at their home in Fifth Avenue Estates. To fill that time, they still travel as much as possible.
Those travels have taken them on high-energy holidays across much of Canada and Europe. One of the most memorable, Roselyn says, was a river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. They’ve already booked their next cruise for September, which will take them up the St. Lawrence River to enjoy the amazing sites of Montreal, Quebec City, and Halifax.
