My father, Jens Hellum, was born in Denmark in 1875 and my mother, Marie, was born in Denmark in 1876. They were married in Denmark and I was born in 1902. Fredrick William (Bill). My sister Christine was born in 1903.
In about 1904 or 1905 my parents and my sister and I set sail for Canada. We lived in Teulon, Manitoba, where my father operated a blacksmith shop. My sister Madeline and brother Peter were born while we were there.
Then my father decided to go further west; so in the summer of 1908 we landed in Old Wabamun, which was on the north eastern edge of Moonlight Bay. We lived on Butcher Smith's place. I can remember seeing the men round up and butcher animals out in the pasture. Meat was sold to road building crews or sent to Edson. My Dad hauled freight from Stony Plain to Edson, mostly in the winter because this was before the bridge was built across the Pembina River, and the teams and sleighs were able to cross the ice. Dad hauled potatoes in winter without freezing a spud. He had a double box lined with sacks, in which he hung lighted lanterns under the canvas. Dad set up another blacksmith shop in Old Wabamun.
Harold was born while we lived at the new site Wabamun, where we moved when the railroad came through in 1911.
George Duncan convinced my Dad that Duffield had a future so we moved there in 1915 and set up the blacksmith shop again. The shop and our house were on the north side of the railroad tracks and east of the road. My brother Otto and sister Marion were born in Duffield.
In Duffield my father and I operated the blacksmith shop and Massey Harris Agency for many years, sharpening plow shares and resetting wagon tires, shoeing horses - the farmers bringing the wildest horses for us to shoe.
My brothers and I were on the hockey and ball teams. We had a rink on the lake south of Duffield.
In 1925 Blockman and I built the first snowmobile ever built in Alberta. It had sleigh runners on the front and wheels on the back. The other boys worked in the shop part time. Harold worked in the mines on the Coal Branch many winters.
I married Lily Heap and we have two children, a boy and a girl. Harold married Ellen Heap. Peter married Julia Fryer.
I worked with my father in the shop in Duffield until 1939, when we moved to Sangudo where I still run a blacksmith and welding shop with my son Ray who is a welder. My last invention was a fence post driver and I have more orders than I can fill. My father, with the help of the younger boys, operated the Duffield shop until he died in 1946. My mother lived in "Blunt's Nursing Home" in Mayerthorpe before she died on June 4th, 1972, aged 95 years. Harold and Peter have moved to Fort St. John. We had quite a distinction: my mother drew old age pension as did three of her children. How about that?
My father's house was sold to the Andersons and it burned down; my house was sold to Franceys after their house was burned. The shop was sold to Harry Partridge and then Eddie Lutz; it is now a car shelter - so there is very little left of the Hellums in Duffield. But I'm still going strong.