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Housing also tops the list when it comes to the "make do or do without" category. Company homes had wooden walls with canvas roofs and appeared more like tents than homes. As many as six men shared a tent as small as a chicken coop. Many company houses also shared one outhouse that was ill kept and a ses pool for disease.

Miners were thrifty men, scouring the valley for any material suitable for building a home. Often these materials would be close at hand...maybe too close. Boxcar doors that could be "borrowed" from the mine sites under the cover of darkness were often used to make houses. The "borrowed" materials were used to slap together a home in as little as a day. Many of these homes had no running water or electricity, and the bathroom or outhouse was "out back". Other popular methods of construction were willow and mud, or straw and manure. A few of these miners shack still remain standing. Many have been added onto over the years, but still have the boxcar door skeleton that dates the house back to it's beginnings as a miners shack.

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The Szabo family's home after a flood, with ice resting against it
1948?
Rosedale, Alberta


Credits:
The Szabo Family