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Text Box: Footsteps from the Past .... - - (The Life and Times of TATS SAKAUYE) - -

Text Box: (Ed. Note:- Continued from the Christmas issue) During the three years in Slocan, I went back to school and worked at the Burns Lumber Camp, cutting cedar trees for telephone poles in summer. In 1945, I decided to go east to join my brother, Tosh in Montreal. The first two years, I found employment working at Wong’s Restaurant, preparing vegetables, making egg rolls and chashu. Then in 1946, our mother and brother Shig came east to Montreal. After a very brief but happy reunion with her three youngest sons, our mother passed away in May of 1947. That year, I started out as an apprentice in the construction industry building apartment buildings with my brother. Montreal Japanese U.C. Before my marriage to Kim in May 1951, I was baptized at the Montreal Church of All Nations by Rev. T. Komiyama. In 1956, led by Rev. Gordon Imai, our church purchased a property in Park Extension. The cottage became the manse and the K.M.Construction Company built the church adjoining the manse. When the exterior was completed and washrooms installed, the church members decided to finish the interior. Mr. Yukio Niiya, Goro Matsushita and I completed the altar, kitchen and the rest of the woodwork. Other members finished the painting and cleanup. We opened the church for service in the fall of 1956. Ten years later, we held our “mortgage burning” celebration. 30 Years of Building In 1951, I started working for Yamada Construction Co. headed by Mac Yamada. It turned out that I

Text Box: would be working for him for the next thirty years. In the early years, we built custom-designed homes. We moved on to building 12 Eaton catalogue stores that were spread throughout out the province of Quebec. We were involved in the construction of five Cantors’ Bakery chain stores in Ottawa and six in Montreal. Some of our more novel projects included a religious chapel in a Federal penitentiary and a country mansion for the Italian Mafia. During the subsequent years, we had job offers from London Life branch offices and contracts in Northern Quebec near Noranda. One of our larger renovating ventures was the Cotton Mills in Cornwall and we even worked at the Iran Pavilion at EXPO 67. Change in ‘81 Mac decided to go into semi-retirement in 1981 so I joined the Ishii Bros and Tosh Sakauye Co. I spent the following years working on banks,