The year was 1929. Wanda Piascik was not quite three years old. Though no one knew it yet, the world was about to tumble into the Great Depression.

Wanda's parents had decided they would leave Poland for America. They couldn't get into the States, but Canada said yes.

First stop, Saskatchewan. Later, a tobacco farm in Delhi, Ont. Each year they planted and harvested. In winter, they worked in the cigarette factory.

But then, the Second World War just under way, a killer frost stole the crop and the family's living. There were now five children, and Father knew something must be done.

He headed to Hamilton and took his eldest child with him. That was Wanda, and she would work, too.

She got on at McMaster Pottery in Dundas. Eventually -- and it makes her uncomfortable even today to say this -- she got fired. "I was 15, and I missed my family."

Mother and the rest of the children soon moved to Hamilton, and the family got a little frame house on Niagara Street.

And Wanda soon got another job, one she could walk to. It was at 270 Sherman Ave. N., north of Barton, north of the tracks.

It was in the mammoth mill that Imperial Cotton erected in 1900, a 150,000-square-foot, 1 1/2-million-brick complex, with alleys, courtyards, a six-storey steam chimney and a Gothic tower for the castle look.

But young Wanda was not royalty there. She was one of hundreds who worked on the machines that turned cotton into heavy fabric for sails, hoses, filters, awnings, tents, canvas tarps.

Wanda had to mind two machines. If the twine coming into the machines broke, she had to shut them off fast. Once her machine caught fire.

It was a noisy and hot place to work. She started at 7 a.m. and went home at 6 p.m. On Saturday, it was only half a day.

"My mother spoiled me on Sundays," Wanda says. "She let me sleep in and brought me breakfast in bed."

She made $21 a week. She kept $1 for herself. Wanda did not enjoy the job and stayed about a year.

There was more war work for her, making shells at National Steel Car. And at Wallace Barnes she made springs.

Wanda eventually married, had a son and a daughter, went back to school for accounting and worked in the office at HSR for 28 years.

Now she is 81. Her son, Paul Kocsis, is an architectural engineer.

A couple of years ago he visited a client at 270 Sherman Ave. N. and liked the place. "It reminded me of what some of my clients in Toronto are doing with reclaimed buildings."

The cotton complex still commands that stretch of Sherman. Beauty Industries, which produced OshKosh children's clothing and other lines, left some five years ago after a couple of decades in the building.

Now owners based in British Columbia have turned it into a gargantuan condo for businesses and artists. There are some 30 tenants plus a steady parade of movie shoots.

And not long ago, Wanda's son decided he should locate there.

Yes, the mill is a little out of the way, but that's fine with him. "Most of my business is word of mouth. If I had a storefront, I'd be too busy."

So he's rented a corner space on the third floor, with six big windows, a substantial fireplace, original hardwood floors, 12-foot ceilings, views of the steeples of Barton East and the Escarpment beyond.

Recently he took his mother down to show it off. She hadn't known exactly where he had set up shop.

"Oh, my God," she said, as they came up the front walk. And she told the story of that job long ago.

She had not been back to the building since. She looked around, admired her son's space and sat in a wing-backed chair by the fireplace.

"I don't have to tell you how proud I am of my son," she said.

But that visit was enough. Beautiful this old building may be. But Wanda is glad her cotton mill days are only a distant memory.

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com 905-526-3391