Hanson (Hanzin) Saga
The story of the pioneering Hanson family of Alberta reaches back to Czarist Russia. In Grodno, Byalestok and Popov Gora the family name was Gandyin, or Handzin, in Russian.
A group of Handzin men arrived in Alberta in 1905-1907. They worked as labourers for the Canadian Pacific Railway, using the name Hanzin. They did such work as fencing the right of way and tunneling through the mountains.
One day a fight began between an overbearing foreman and Elchonen (Emil) Hanzin. All the Hanzins were fired. They desperately needed the money to improve their homesteads and also to send for their families back in Russia. The CPR never rehired anyone they had fired.
The solution to their problem was to change their names. They chose Hanson, because it sounded the same and they knew that Scandinavians were hired most readily. They were hired again under the new spelling of the name, and stayed out of trouble.
Abraham (Abram) Hanzin filed on a homestead north of Cochrane. He obtained his Certificate of Title to the 160 acres on December 11, 1914.
Abram Hanzin was married to Chaya. They had one son, Sam Hanson (Hanzin), who was in the first class of the medical faculty at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. He completed his medical degree in California and practiced in Stockton, California.
Mordechai (Mark) Hanson filed on a homestead north of Cochrane, neighboring on Abram Hanzin’s land. Mordechai Hanson died of a heart attack at age 60 while hauling barrels of water from a slough to fight a prairie fire.
Mordechai and his wife Rachel Leah were the parents of Elchonen, (Emil), the labourer who had defied the bullying foreman. Emil obtained title to his land on March 6, 1914.
Emil was a brother to Chaya, who was married to Abram Hanzin. (The name Emil was given to him by an immigration officer who found it impossible to spell Elchonen.)
Emil Hanson and his wife Sonia (Belkin) had four children, one whom died when he got lost in the woods at age 4. The other children are Marie Samuels of Calgary, Becky Rosenberg and Max Hanson.
Emil and Sonia Hanson shared the homestead shack with his parents Mordechai and Rachel Leah and with Phyllis Epstein. A close neighbor was John Hector.
Sam Hanson came over from Grodno to join his brother Abram in 1909. He left behind his pregnant wife Henya. Sam worked for the CPR to raise money for his wife’s ticket. She sailed from Antwerp on the S.S. Berengaria with her year-old daughter, Ruby, in 1910.
Sam Hanson worked on his brother Abram’s homestead – as did Henya’s brother Abraham Levin.
Eventually Sam Hanson got his own place, a dairy farm on the outskirts of Calgary, near Deerfoot Trail at about 26th Avenue. He delivered bottled milk in Calgary in the early morning hours, with his sleigh bells waking up dozing policemen.
Sam Hanson died in 1926. Sam and Henya had two daughters: Ruby (Switzer) and Dorothy (Katchen). They also had four sons: Samuel (Pathologist), Hymey (Pharmacist), Albert (Engineer) and Morris (Veterinarian). They all served in the armed forces in WW II.
