Osvald Sisask sliced off his right index finger with a band saw some 30 years ago. Always an independent fellow, he drove himself home from the woodworking shop.

They couldn't put the finger back on, but that didn't bother Osvald.

Go ahead, shake his hand. Hear those bones crunching? They're yours.

"Still strong, eh," Osvald says with a grin.

A grip like that is impressive at any age. At Osvald's stage of life, it's downright freaky.

On the last day of last year, he turned 100.

He left his besieged homeland in the 1940s, made his way down here, bought land north of Hamilton, built a house, planted a lot of trees and called it paradise.

This is where he must stay. No nursing home, please.

On Dec. 31, 1907, Osvald was born on the family farm in the Valga region of Estonia. It was a good operation and the family prospered.

Then the Soviets invaded. Osvald headed for a refugee camp in Germany in 1944. His parents' land was confiscated and they were sent to Siberia. Osvald never saw them again.

He came to Canada in 1947. Abitibi was recruiting lumberjacks and Osvald ended up near Sault Ste. Marie.

He was always a quiet sort. Old group photos show him standing to the side. He wasn't the biggest, but he was strong and had a reputation for working hard and fast.

In the mid '50s, he landed in Hamilton and got a room with an Estonian family on Beulah Avenue.

He started his own business, Viking Wood. His specialty, louvred doors and shutters.

He saved his money, went for drives in the country and in 1960 bought a big lot at the edge of Millgrove.

It was just an empty farmer's field then. Osvald and the squirrels planted trees: pine, cherry, maple, chestnut, linden, locust.

He started building a house, a two-bedroom ranch with a roomy living room. The way it looked then is the way it looks now. Same paint. Same kitchen cabinets. Same two-tone cedar and redwood closet doors.

Osvald built the place right. Why make changes?

In the late '60s, Osvald met Reet Poder, a widow who had brought up her family on Hunter West.

Like Osvald, she loved nature. She began to visit the Millgrove place often. She helped establish fruit and vegetable patches, bountiful enough to fill two big freezers.

Soon she joined Osvald for good. "They never saw the need to be married," Reet's daughter Tiiu explains. "They had separate bedrooms and were loving and respectful of each other."

Reet was a seamstress at the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital and made Osvald's clothes, even his underwear. To this day, his bedroom closet has stacks of plaid XL shirts still in plastic wrap, gifts from well-meaning people who didn't know Osvald has always considered store-bought second best.

Same goes for wine. He has made wine from crabapple, raspberry, blackberry. Sometimes he adds a little garlic. He judges a wine's success not so much by taste, but by strength. He likes it sweet. "This is product of Millgrove!" he brags.

He lost Reet three years ago. She was 88. He misses her, but there are many others in his life.

Tiiu, who lives in Nova Scotia, phones every day. Business brings her up this way five or six times a year.

"The neighbourhood has embraced Osvald," she says. "He's kind of a rock star."

Neal and an armada of others arrive on their ride-on mowers to do his yard. Oje keeps him supplied with his Estonian favourite, a gelled mixture of pork with vinegar called sult. Margaret stops in every second day. The passionate Rosa takes the bus up the highway, then hikes to Osvald's in all kinds of weather to do the cleaning. And Maret takes him to appointments.

She describes how, a few years ago, the doctor asked Osvald if he ever got short of breath.

"Oh jaa," he said. The doctor was concerned and asked when. While he was sitting? Standing? Sleeping?

"No, no," he answered. "Ven I chop vood!"

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com

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