Change is the only constant, the old adage says.
One long-time resident and former teacher, principal and mayor says Flin Flon has changed immensely in his six decades here.
Dennis Ballard moved to Flin Flon with his parents and four siblings 60 years ago. The family left the small town of Spalding, Sask., with a population of 400, for the bustling city of Flin Flon, which at the time had about 12,000 people.
“At the time it was a very different community,” recalls Ballard.
Ballard was 13 when he arrived in Flin Flon and remembers it being “a real thriving and humming” place.
His father moved the family to town in search for work at HBM&S, now Hudbay – a job that would quadruple the family’s income.
“[Before] we came here my dad was working in a small Co-op store and he was making $105 a month,” says Ballard, a father of two himself. “And you think, ‘Well, that was a long time ago,’ but he started [at HBMS] at $400 a month. We were raising a family with five [children]. Raising a family on $105 a month, well, it wasn’t working too well.”
The family’s newfound financial security allowed them to rent a house at
1 Main Street.
“It was like a mansion to us,” recalls Ballard. “You only had to share a room with one kid. It was like, ‘Wow!’”
The family didn’t have a car when they first moved to Flin Flon, but he says there wasn’t much need for one back then, as they stayed within city limits.
“Just before my time, there hadn’t even been a proper road out of
here,” Ballard says.
As the road came to be, he says he remembers it either being mud or dust.
“There were large sections of the highway that, if it was raining a lot, [equipment] would have to tow you through the mud,” he says.
Ballard still remembers a large hill that caused havoc in the muddy conditions.
“There would be a lineup at the bottom of the hill and everyone pushed a car up to the top and then came down and pushed the next car up,” he says. “I can still remember my dad with these nice shoes and my mom was so [mad] at him because he got out in the mud with these nice shoes and they were ruined.”
Growing up, Ballard and his siblings would play outside all the time. Now, he says, children too often spend their days inside playing video games.
Love of learning
Though school wasn’t his favourite, Ballard would soon develop a love not only for learning, but teaching as well.
“I wasn’t a good student,” says Ballard. “I wasn’t very hard working and I was not well behaved.”
After leaving school before graduation, he soon learned the importance of education.
“I didn’t like any of the jobs I had to take,” Ballard recalls. “Some of the pay and some of the jobs were crap.”
Ballard had left high school before starting his Grade 12 year, but was able to return and graduate before it was too late.
He looked into career options that didn’t require years of university. He settled on teaching.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, I think I would like that,’” he recalls. “And I did. I loved it.”
Ballard attended post-secondary education for one year to become a teacher before accepting a position in Winnipeg.
He spent two years in Winnipeg before moving back to Flin Flon with his wife, Elaine, to take care of family matters.
“We came back…and then we were going to go. I wanted to go west and she wanted to go east.”
It was an ongoing discussion between the two that resulted in the couple staying in Flin Flon and raising their family, though they didn’t have plans to stay more than a year or two.
“I think she pulled a trick on me,” Ballard laughs. “She wanted to come back home. I know she did.
“We really couldn’t decide on the west and east thing, so we stayed.”
Looking back, Ballard has no regrets about that decision.
“Flin Flon was good to me. It’s always been good to me and it’s still being good to me.”
Ballard hopped around the local schools – including Birchview, Ross Lake, McIsaac and Ruth Betts – as a teacher, counsellor, principal and a brief stint as superintendent.
“In that time, a man in that profession moved ahead pretty fast,” he says. “I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that’s how it was.”
Ballard spent 33 years in the education system, all but three of them in Flin Flon.
He spent his first two years teaching in Winnipeg and one year teaching in England on an exchange in the early 1980s.
The Ballards, including their sons Chris, who was in Grade 4 at the time, and Jamie, who was 3, moved to a 300-year-old stone cottage in Blissdom, England, in 1984.
“It was just gorgeous,” remembers Ballard. “We thoroughly enjoyed that year.”
Early retirement
The family returned to Flin Flon, where Ballard became principal of Ruth Betts School. Two years later, he was diagnosed with melanoma cancer and later underwent surgery.
He worked his way through it and spent the next 10 years as principal.
A second cancer diagnosis, this time prostate cancer, forced Ballard into early retirement in 1996.
“I was pretty sick for a while,” he says. “But I knew I wasn’t going to sit on my ass. That wasn’t my style.”
Ballard recovered from cancer for a second time and decided the best way to be retired was to keep busy. In 1997, he ran in a by-election and earned a spot as a Flin Flon city councillor.
“After that year on council, I thought there was a lot of bulls--t. So I thought, ‘I wonder if you can change that as mayor?’”
Ballard gave it a try and was elected mayor in 1998 and reelected in 2002. He had planned on only serving one term and then traveling with his wife, but when Elaine fell ill that plan changed.
“We never did get to do the things she wanted,” he says, citing a trip back to England as an example.
Elaine died in January 2014, just shy of her 70th birthday and their 50th wedding anniversary.
Bucket list
Looking ahead, Ballard plans to achieve a few things on his bucket list. He was able to check off one item this summer when he and his eldest granddaughter, Jade, travelled to Spalding to see where he grew up.
Ballard hopes to do more travelling in the coming years – including the trip back to England that Elaine wanted to take.
“I’m kind of scared to go without her,” he says. “I’m not sure how that’s going to go. But I want to go back.”
Ballard, now a resident of Flin Flon for six decades, says he might have been one of the first to coin the phrase, “Once a Flin Flonner, always a Flin Flonner.”
“I think when people left here to go to university or other jobs, they were so much stronger and self-reliant,” he says. “So often they moved up through the ranks of an organization, and I think that has a lot to do with it.”
Ballard says Flin Flonners are “down to earth, self-reliant, and strong.”
He calls himself a proud Flin Flonner.
“Once a Flin Flonner, always a Flin Flonner.”
