BARRY’S BAY – Aged 81, Walter Dombroski passed away peacefully at St. Francis Memorial Hospital on February 3. The founder and owner of W. F. Dombroski and Sons Logging Contractors Ltd. was born in the Bay and like many of his generation, left school before the age of 10.
Walter’s son, Larry, who is now president of the business, said that his father began work in different sawmills in the area before he went to work on the railroad. Dombroski said his father moved around with the railway from Ottawa, all through Algonquin Park. The only way into the park in those days was by train as, “there were no roads to any of it then,” Larry said.
One of Larry’s earliest memories of his father was when he was a small boy; he would walk four or five houses up Needham Street where they lived in Barry’s Bay and wait on the porch of friend’s house. Larry said his father, “would stop every day and pick me up and drive me 500 feet down the road.”
While Walter worked on the railroad, he also worked in his garage at night as a mechanic.
“He was always tinkering with something there,” Larry said.
He remembers his father buying a couple of Land Rovers.
Get your February 17, 2016 edition of The Valley Gazette to read the full story.