POSTING #52

Saunas in Dog River Ontario, and Siberia

During a swim this week at the Brock University's pool I noticed that the men's sauna was back in operation. It is one of those saunas in which a few rocks are heated by electrical elements. Despite large signs warning us not to, someone periodically throws water on the rocks thus destroying the elements.

I was reminded of some saunas I have known, saunas of the real kind with piles of rocks heated by wood fires

A Sauna in Dog River Ontario

I heard this story while I was working in the summer of 1956 as a labourer-teacher for Frontier College at Dog River, a bush camp west of what is now Thunder Bay.

There were no indoor bathroom facilities at Dog River. Men used a 5 hole privy out back (I don't know anything about the privy for the 6 or so female cooks and cookees---cookees were the women who helped the cooks and served the food in the kitchen).

We went to a wash house to shave and wash our faces. We would fill an enamel basin with hot water dipped from a huge cauldron and after we had finished we would rinse out the basin, wipe it dry with our towel and hand it to the next person.

All-over-washes (you couldn't call them 'baths') took place in the sauna, a good-sized wooden building on the shore of the Dog River. As one entered the sauna there was a 'cooling room' and then beyond that the hot room, the heart of the sauna.

The practice was to hang ones clothes in the cooling room, go into the hot room and sit on one of the tiered benches, going higher until one found a heat level that was just right. If even the top bench wasn't hot enough, one threw a scoop or two of water on the stones.

After a spell in the hot room, the hardy ones ran through the cooling room, onto a short deck and then jumped into the river.

The rest of us went into the cooling room, got a bucket of warm water and soaped, shampooed, scrubbed and rinsed off with the water draining between the boards onto the ground below.

(While I was at the camp, the younger workers started a campaign for in-door plumbing---I will write about that in another blog.)

Sorry for all this description but I needed to provide some background for the story that---finally---I can tell.

The previous summer, one of the accountants from head office spent a few weeks at the camp reviewing the books. When his 12 and 10 year old sons got out of school he decided to bring them to the camp, to give his wife a break.

There was nothing organized for the boys to do, so they just wandered around the camp looking for adventure and more often than not finding mischief.

The men working in the camp, pulling logs from the river and loading them onto trucks, were bothered by the boys tricks and worried that they were going to get hurt.

Complaints to the accountant didn't do any good.

Finally, a couple of the men decided to teach the boys a lesson.

They asked the boys if they would like to have a sauna. This was something new and the boys quickly agreed. They put on their swim suits, and entered the sauna.

The men explained that really tough people used the top tier bench but if that was too hot they could cool things down by throwing cold water on the stones.

The boys nodded impatiently and said they would be OK.

The men shut the door to the hot room and quietly moved a bench against it so the kids were blocked in. Then they sat down quietly to wait.

One of the kids said that it was too hot and threw some water on the steaming stones, which, of course, just produced more searing heat.

The fellows in the cooling room heard the kids muttering and moving down to the middle and then to the bottom tier. Then the splash of yet more water.

Finally, the kids tried to get out of the hot room but found they couldn't open the door.

The fellows gave them a few minutes and then opened the door.

The boys were lying on the floor, trying to suck cool air from the cracks between the boards.

Later that day, the boys told their father that they were bored with the camp and wanted to go home. After dinner, the dad drove them home.

Tough love?

I guess so, but they were safe at home, not running behind trucks and heavy equipment.



A Sauna in Siberia

My interpreter, Yuri, and I were on a state-owned farm in deepest Siberia in 1996 as I continued my travels from Moscow checking Russian employment offices to see whether they could be converted into model offices by Canadian consultants.

I had checked out a proposed model office in a nearby city and since there was no decent hotel in the city we were staying on the farm---in very comfortable rooms.

After dinner with some of the farm managers, they invited us to join them for a sauna evening.

The sauna was very similar to the one at Dog River--- a genuine wood-fired sauna---with a couple of exceptions. There was no river or lake to jump into so the farm had built a deep, indoor pool filled with cold water, just off the cooling room. The other difference was that there was a table in the cooling room covered with beer, vodka, smoked fish, cheese, and cut tomatoes and cucumbers. The Dog River camp as with all Canadian bush camps banned alcoholic beverages.

Yuri and I joined the managers in the hot room. Yuri, having had more sauna time than I, was able to go higher up on the tiers. One of the hosts brought out a pail of water with fresh poplar branches and offered to swat our backs, to get the circulation going. It felt good.

After turning lobster red, we jumped in the cold pool for a few minutes and then returned to seats in the cooling room to have some vodka toasts, and food.

Then the cycle was repeated: hot room, pool, cooling room.

During a session in the cooling room, one of our hosts told a story about a Moscow bureaucrat who had come out to inspect the farm during the Gorbachev era.

Gorbachev had decided to move against the Soviet Union's massive drinking problem with many measures to ban or at least limit the use of alcohol.

Government officials who were used to long official lunches and dinners with copious amount of vodka, wine and beer were upset but, of course, couldn't object.

I was told that the rules about drinking were tightly enforced in Moscow but the further one travelled from the Kremlin, the less they were followed. Moscow officials loved, therefore, to travel.

This particular Moscow official had a lot to drink at dinner and could hardly make his way to the sauna for an evening of further comradeship. His hosts were almost as drunk as he was---they had had to appear to keep pace with him, glass for glass.

After ten or fifteen minutes on the top tier of the hot room, the Moscow official stammered that he was going to jump in the pool. People helped him get down from his perch and he stumbled into the cooling room on his way to the pool.

The farm managers chuckled about how drunk he was. One of them said that the cold water would sober him up.

Then, someone said, "Oh, my god, the maintenance people drained the pool today!"

Sudden horror.

If something had happened to him, how would they explain that to Moscow---that they weren't following the official policy of alcohol-free meals. Although their heads were fuddled with drink, terror was sobering them up.

They stumbled into the cooling room, opened the door to the pool, and expected the worst.

The Moscow official was spread out on the bottom of the empty pool. Someone clambered down a ladder and went over to the body.

After a moment, he said, "He's snoring."

The Moscow official had done a belly flop, and then fallen asleep.

Our hosts told us that they got him out of the pool and into bed.

And then on a plane back to Moscow the next day.

As he got on the plane, the fiercely hung-over official thanked them for a very pleasant evening.

New Year Wishes

Pat and I would like to wish everyone a wonderful, story-full 2010!


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See you next Sunday for Posting #53 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.