Six members of the Sukanen family visited the Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and museum during the threshing bee.
“This is my third time here. I was here 25 years ago,” said Clyde Sukanen, who bears a physical resemblance to photos of Tom Sukanen.
This time he brought his wife, brother, two sisters, and brother-in-law with him.
“We came for the big threshing bee and the activities. They’d never been here. I talked to them a lot about it. I said: ‘You got to see it.’”
His brother Carl was impressed with restoration of the ship that Finnish settler Tom Sukanen built on the Prairie near Macrorie with the intent to sail back home via the Saskatchewan River/Churchill River network to Hudson Bay.
“It’s really well done,” said Carl. “From a distance it looks small but when you get inside here it’s big.”
Also impressed, Clyde said it was nice the ship was preserved. “It shows how unselfish Tom was that he saw this free land here and he wanted to build a ship to sail over there and bring people back.”
The group is uncertain what relation they are to Tom Sukanen.
“We don’t really know,” said Clyde. “(Tom) came through Ironwood, Michigan and that’s where my dad was born in 1894. Sukanens were over there and from there they moved to Marengo (Wis.) where we lived on the farm. Tom went to Minnesota.
“Our father was 52 when I was born in 1956. He still had 13 kids. We grew up in a family of 13 kids but three died. There was 10 of us – five boys five girls.
“My dad didn’t want us to become farmers. Seven of us ended up being teachers.”
The Sukanen family recently had a family reunion with 124 of 144 members from various states attending.
“There is so much to see here” in the one day they had in Moose Jaw.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
