The Joseph Tomshak Family
Joseph emigrated from Poland in 1909 at the age of 22 years, arriving in Coleman, Alberta and was hired in 1910 to work on a crew clearing the historic Edson Trail. After nine months of clearing, Joseph ended up in Grande Prairie and in 1911 he registered some land surrounding Clairmont Lake. It is there over the years he and his family became friends of the Trumpeters.
He and his wife, Nellie (Kozina), and their eight children adopted three abandoned cygnets at nearby Ferguson Lake in 1948. Raised by a domestic hen, the swans flourished and became family pets. It was common to see the swans following the Tomshakâs to town by flying overhead and later providing guard watch on the family vehicle while they were out and about doing their errands.
Joseph is credited with providing Grande Prairie with it's symbol of a Trumpeter Swan adopted after the community reached city status.
In 1947, Joe Tomshak, farming near Grande Prairie rescued four abandoned cygnets when a lake dried up. Granted permission by Dominion Wildlife Service and RCMP to keep the trumpeters, they were entrusted to a Plymouth Rock Hen. The adopted cygnets soon outgrew their foster mother's clucking solitude, chased the domestic geese, played tag with the dog and endeared themselves to any human into feeding them by hand or pail. With the approach of winter, the contented quads peered skyward whenever their migrating brothers flocked over, but with a shrug of their tails would file across the barnyard to the Tomshak's back door for an easy handout.
One pair was eventually shipped to the Edmonton zoo, but Tommy and his mate wintered well despite the occasional -60 degree bright bitter days of Northern Alberta winters.
Neighbors grew accustomed to being greeting by the watch-dog clamor which Tommy and his mate set up but strangers were apt to retreat in alarm when the great 40 lb. birds unfolded 10 foot wings for attack. Shoppers in Grande Prairie were used to seeing the Tomshak's car escorted into town by the circling pair. No matter how long the vehicle was parked Tommy and his mate would wait out the hours in patient flight overhead, volplaning down at the sight of their master and skimming the top of the car in delighted swoops all the way home.
Then came the day the great white female lay crushed and broken by the side of the road and Tommy rushed at the stranger's car with the blind violence of bitter grief. The female is on display in Muskoseepi Park Pavilion along with a cygnet.
Several years ago the Tomshak's retired from farming and moved to Grande Prairie. Reluctantly Tommy was shipped to the Delta, Manitoba sanctuary to live out his life in sheltered tranquility among his feathered kind.