Today, Oct. 20, 2016, Neil (nicknamed Swede) and Amelia (Zimmaro) Peterson are celebrating 62 years of marriage; here is their story in a nutshell.
Swede Peterson of German and Swedish descent was born in Comox in 1934.
Amelia Zimmaro of Italian descent was born in 1930 in Prince George. She is the last living child of Columbus Hotel builders and owners Louis and Teresina Zimmaro. Her parents were born in Mangone in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy.
They originally came to Canada with dreams of working in the construction industry and the fact that they did not speak the English language did not deter them at all. They had three children Jimmy, Mary (Dan) Palumbo and Amelia, who was the youngest of the three Zimmaro children.
Her father found work with the railroad and built the Columbus Hotel at the same time. Her parents and her sister Mary ran the hotel until 1950 and then sold it. The historic hotel was built in 1920 and destroyed by fire in 2008.
This amazing couple has lived, worked and volunteered here in Prince George all of their lives; I visited their home and I saw wall to wall awards, books with letters of thanks and certificates that honour them both for all their volunteer work and their extreme efforts to help others.
Amelia worked as a seamstress and made many wedding dresses for a lot of people over her 30 years of running the business out of her home.
She worked at the Singer Sewing Machine Centre on Third Avenue for many years teaching customers how to sew. If they purchased a machine she taught them how to sew and how to use and maintain their new sewing machine. Later she worked at the Hudson's Bay Company as a clerk in retail sales.
In 1960 Amelia was elected as the first president of the St. Mary's Parish Catholic Women's League (CWL) which was organized by Mary Palumbo and started out with 45 chartered members. She served nearly three years as president and five years as past president.
The new CWL started a catering business and did all the work out of their homes. They borrowed all their dishes from the Shasta Caf and the tables from the Elks Hall for their catered events. I was told that they never lost one dish through all of this.
Soon they earned enough money to purchase their own dishes to serve 300 people. They started collecting Nabob Coupons in order to buy pots, pans, coffee urns and many other things needed in their new business. Amelia said, "We worked hard and we were lucky because the parishioners and the people who had sawmills and camps were all saving the coupons for us."
Swede Peterson arrived in Prince George in 1951. He went to work for Imperial Oil when he was 22 and worked there for the next 35 years. Swede said, "I hauled fuel to all the logging camps, service stations and the airport. There was a time that I could easily name all the old logging camps that dotted the entire Prince George area. I would like to take this opportunity to say that Imperial Oil always paid my wages when I was out volunteering with the Search and Rescue crews."
Swede received the Provincial Emergency Program (PEP) award in 2006 for his outstanding service in Search and Rescue. He was recognized for his 35 years of volunteering with Search and Rescue, going anywhere that he was needed to help people all through the north.
He is certified with Universal Tracking Services Inc, as a trained Level 2 tracker.
He mastered tracking and then went on to teach others how to understand what constitutes a "sign" and to experience human tracking first hand. He taught volunteers how to learn to see a physical sign that others would overlook and how to be patient and concentrate on a human track in the field. He has expert knowledge of the bush and teases Amelia about her poor sense of direction. Amelia's answer to that remark was, "I don't need to have a good sense of direction because I have Swede."
In July of 2011 Swede was totally paralyzed as a result of Septicemia poisoning caused by a blockage due to stones in his bile duct. The doctors told him that the only thing that saved him was that he was in excellent physical condition. Amelia explained, "It was a pretty serious time in our lives but we both tried to maintain some humour. The recovery process is still ongoing."
This has been a huge challenge for Swede and he said, "I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the great people in the physiotherapy and rehabilitation unit at the Prince George University Hospital. They all worked so hard with me and I am so grateful to this day for all their dedication and skill. We still go and visit these people at the hospital and they always have time and a big hug for both me and Amelia. The same goes for the workers involved with the Northern Health Bus. I have nothing but good things to say about the care I received from all of them. When we see the bus drivers downtown they go out of their way to greet us and say hello. Prince George is such a great place to live and all in all, the world has been pretty good to both of us."
As part of the Northern Hardware sponsored canoe racing team Swede and Bill Blackburn canoed 139 miles of the Stuart and Nechako Rivers in 16 hours and took fourth place in that particular competition.
In their younger years Swede and Amelia took the time to be team players in horseshoes, curling, golf, the B.C. Senior Games and much more.
At the age of 82 Swede still walks a three-mile trail nearly every day and racks up an average of 600 miles a year on foot.
He proudly said, "Amelia and I spent 15 years volunteering for St. Vincent De Paul's and 15 years with Prince George Community Policing. Amelia worked for many years with the Meals on Wheels program and I spent 35 years volunteering for Search and Rescue. That gives me 65 years of volunteer work and I am not done yet. After all these years I still teach tracking. I have had some good rescues and some sad ones but I look at it this way, the sad ones resulted in closure for the families."
