One of the most popular activities was dancing, which was indulged in by people of all ages who perpetuated the traditions and the music of what was called "Old Time" dancing. For those of us who were young it of course was the activity where real boy\girl social contact really began to come into play. As always, the girls matured before the boys and so they generally learned to dance before the boys.
Some of us boys were more fortunate than others and our mothers undertook to see that we did learn to dance. This gave us enough confidence to ask a girl for a dance in spite of the very frightening exposure of getting up on a public occasion and risking the jibes of the stag line. My mother and others like her undertook to teach us at the church socials which were smaller gatherings than public dances. She got me started at about age 14 in the Anglican Church parish hall, where in addition to the ordinary waltz and one step we learned the foxtrot, the old-fashioned (or Viennese) waltz, the two-step, the military schottische, the polka, the square dance and even the French minuet. When we got to be a bit older we graduated to the Anglican Young People's Association and then got to dance with girls of our own age.
From that we were able to progress to the regular Saturday night dances held in the Oddfellows' hall or the Ukrainian Hall. The small town custom then was not to pick up your girl at her home but to go to the dance alone where boys and girls each paid their own admission. Even if there was a girl who you were "getting sweet on" as our parents used to say. During the evening you could ask a variety of girls for a dance, but if you had one that was special you could ask her out during intermission for a coke at the "beanery" in the railway station. It meant, among other things that with 15 cents for dance admission and cokes at 5 cents you could have yourself a heck of a good evening for a quarter! A few years later we were horrified when Bob McKenzie, an older boy then attending Brandon College, reported had spent two dollars taking a girl to a college dance.
The music was basically "old time" and each dance was announced by the floor manager who bellowed out such things as "partners for a two-step" or "partners for a square dance". In the case of the latter he also called the shifts from the stage, "all join hands and circle round","birdies fly in", "hawks fly out", "a la main left" and so on. Then the boys would leave the shapeless stag line at the end of the hall nearest the door and head along one side or other of the dance floor where the girls sat on benches. You stopped in front of a girl and asked her to dance; if she accepted you were off, if not you retreated to the stag line with your tail between your legs or moved on to ask the next one who looked promising. I very soon got brash enough to keep asking until I got one to accept because I really did love dancing. Where else in our society could you get a chance to put your arm around a girl in public?
It was not considered an insult for a girl to turn you down, she had that right and may have promised that dance to someone else. All such promises were of course verbal as we did not go in for such genteel practices as having dance cards. There were of course a few who practised the art of refusal as a putdown.
At the saddest end of this process were the girls who were seldom asked and became classed as "wallflowers". Perhaps it was due to lack of physical beauty or not having enough personality or sparkle. Also, the problem was made worse because there were fewer boys who could dance than there were girls and we were not often gallant enough to see that the less popular girls got a turn. The male equivalent of the wallflower were those boys who could not get up enough courage to, "gasp", go out and boldly ask a girl for a dance when all those eyes were upon him. To risk the chance of refusal was too traumatic to contemplate so their fate was to hang out in the stag line looking woeful, finally ending up slinking out the nearby door and going home.
The orchestra was made up of local talent and they were paid for their efforts but not much. After all, it takes a lot of 15 cents's to make even ten dollars. For many years the orchestra leader was Charlie "slewfoot" Howard. His wife playing the piano sort of held the whole thing together. The origin of Charlie's nickname requires the telling of a bit of local history, but the story is worth repeating here. From the beginning of the town with the coming of the railroad in 1908 to the end of the twenties the town grew. One hotel was completed near the station and still is in business to-day (1996 as this is written). Because of the growth a promoter undertook to build a second hotel on 2nd Avenue. It started out with great gusto and the concrete foundations and roughed in first floor were completed when the stock market crashed and the depression set in. Work stopped immediately and the covered in cellar was abandoned by the developer. The rough floor, which was elevated about four feet above the street beame an ideal place for public auctions of which there were many as businesses failed and people moved away. The chief auctioneer in town was none other than Charlie Howard. The story, as told to me by my dad was that Charlie had an auction going full blast with several heavy stoves and other appliances around him on the floor. Just as he was selling a partcular one and the final bid was in and as he intoned the standard "going, going, gone" he brought down the hammer with a slam; at that instant the floor collapsed sending the stoves and the rest of the articles crashing to the basement with Charlie in the midst of them. The result was the injury to his leg or foot which caused him to be called "slewfoot" ever after. Most of the goods were never rescued and as a child I can remember playing about with the rusting remnants of the stoves still lying helter skelter where they had fallen. At the end of the depression a branch of the Wareham family filled in the site and erected the Rivers Quickfreeze operation there.
Returning now to the orchestra it always had a good violinist such as Alec White or Harvey Foreman. Joe "smoky" Luchuk would play the guitar while Leonard "buddy" Grant played the saxophone and Graham Barker hammered his Xyolophone. There was often also a banjo, but I have forgotten who played it. The orchestra played together a great deal and it is a pleasure to this day to be able to remember dancing to their rythym. It was a bit of a sad shock to me upon returning to the town for its 75th birthday in 1988 (Rivers was not incorporated as a town until 1913) to find out there was no longer an old time orchestra for the celebration dance. They had to import an orchestra from up Hamiota way and they neither played the style nor the pieces so loved in my youth.
Picking up once more on the old remembered dance routine from pre-war days it would last after intermission until midnight or one a.m.. At that juncture the caller would announce "partners for the Moonlight" at which the band would strike up one of the old sweet, slow and sentimental waltz's, such as the Tenessee Waltz. The lights would be dimmed "hence the designation "Moonlight" and every swain would seek out his special partner with whom he could dance cheek to cheek. They could hold each other oh so close as they dreamily drifted through the dance held in the mood by that sweet old music. In general he was expected to walk her home and if lucky and if they had had at least three dates she might let him kiss her goodnight on her doorstep. From there he could only stumble home feeling greatly elated over having achieve such heady familiarity with such a divine creature!
Later on as cars became more common it was possible to go to barn dances at various places in the country where the hayloft floor was swept clean and good country music provided. It was mostly wholesome fun , sometimes enlivened by a few who liked to nip at the bottle, which they may have brought with them or bought from the local bootlegger who might have his truck backed up to the back door. It is said that that type of entrepreneurship is one of the ways in which the Bronfman family of Seagram fame got their start in their Saskatchewan days.
There were also dances held in neighboring towns such as Hamiota and Kenton which became accessible, perhaps in some cases with a special orchestra. Here a change set in as the dance and music style moved away from the purely old time and became what was called modern. This led to swing and to jitterbugging, including such special dances as the Big Apple. I resisted the new styles for some time feeling that they would pass, but was eventually forced to learn or sit on the sidelines. I have never become as proficient in them nor enjoyed them as much as the dear old time dances in the Rivers Oddfellows Hall.
In the big band era another facet of good dancing was found. The big name touring bands did not come to Rivers, but on one occasion early in the war Mart Kenney did come to Brandon. Myself and Ruth Wareham, (who I was sweet on at the time) got to go with another couple who could get their dad's car. We did enjoy the dance held in the Brandon Arena, where we not only danced but sat in the bleachers and listened. Unfortunately we had to cut out at 11 p.m. in order to get back to Rivers to meet Ruth's midnight curfew. In those days these sorts of hurdles existed until marriage.
To begin with our initial home was a bungalow on 3rd avenue which was in view of the CN railway yards where trains could be seen passing. In the 1930's there were 4 passenger trains per day and 8 freights which could be seen from our home and from various other locations in and about the town. This ranged from earliest remembrances of seeing the yard engine push coal cars up the original elevated track coal dock and seeing the evening passenger local pass behind the trees of Butler's farm to disappear in the sunset to watching the morning time freight, No. 403 crossing the big bridge while I was seated in my grade 12 school classroom.
In the times before there were automobiles, trucks and airlines Rivers was primarily a "Railroad Town". From 1908 until 1912 the main overhaul shops of the original operator, the Grand Trunk Pacific were in Rivers. At the peak there were about 700 railway employees, but with the transfer of the main shops to Transcona and the basing of running trades in Winnipeg and Melville, together with the decline in traffic during the depression, the nummber living in Rivers had dropped to about 60. Nevertheless the railway was still the main economic base of the town though it also served as a shopping and commercial centre for the surrounding farming community.
Physically, the railway facilities dominated the town, from the l00 ft. high quarter mile long "big bridge" over the river east of the town to the level crossing to the west. In between, there was a ten track yard and the skyline was dominated by the steel water tank, the roundhouse smokestack and the coal dock.
As young boys we wandered fairly freely over the whole of the property but were occasionally warned off by Mr. Hoogeveen, who was the resident CN policeman. In this way most of us became quite familiar with the facilities and men who were needed to run a railway. Most of the men were dedicated to the railway, and like my own father, fired our young interest in the operation through passing on tidbits of knowledge and happenings on a day to day basis. I recall things such as "no. 1's engine failed east of Melville and was replaced by a freight engine which in trying to make up time caused its pilot truck to overheat and burst into flame" or " the passenger engine on the silk train special threw a driving wheel tire west of Portage and had to be replaced". The main centre for the motive power originally had 18 stalls, later reduced to six as the passenger engines ran through without changing and longer trains and less traffic reduced the number of freight engines to be serviced. High capacity standpipes at each end of the station fed from the high steel water tank made it possible to service the steam locomotives during the regular station stop, when wheels were tapped by carmen to discover flaws and baggage, express and mail were handled as well as passngers. To go down to the station and meet the transcontinental passenger trains, nos. 1 and 2 was almost a ritual with many of the townspeople as well as we kids. I dearly loved in particular to see the shopmen working rapidly to dump the fires and lubricate the side rods on the shiny passenger engines; then when all was done and the anticipation of departure rose, to hear the two peeps from the signal whistle, to see the engineman grasp the throttle to start the train. In summer, the trains would be heavy (up to 15 cars) and the engineman would look out at the driving wheels to be sure the sanders were working so that he could lift the train without slipping. Then with bell ringing, safety valves popping and the stack coughing at an accelerating rate the machine would take off. What a marvellous experience to see it, one that I have never tired of.
Water supply for the locomotives and railway facilities generally came from the Little Saskatchewan River where the CN had built a dam (where we often fished and played). There was a pump house nearby with electricaly driven pumps presided over by Jack Boroff, the pumpman. He had his family home in a little house close by. It was in a lovely dell kept green by the small creek fed by water overflow from the railway facilities up the hill.
The parts and materials for servicing the locomotives were kept in the stores building together with the office of the locomotive foreman. I remember three of them, Mr. Neville, Fred Parsons and George Shipley. These men often moved on to larger terminals based on experince and seniority. Mr. Shipley, for example moved to Ft. Rouge in Winnipeg and later became Supt. of Motive Power for the Assiniboine area. Earlier he had served as foreman in the Pas and in Gillam on the Hudson Bay line during the period it was under construction (about 1930). His wife, Nan, the daughter of a conductor Mahan was of an artistic bent and among other things wrote an excellent novel called "Whistle On the Wind" which was based on she and George's experiences during their days on the Hudson Bay Railway.
These foremen were supported by the locomotive clerk, successively Septimus Hardy, an eccentric Englishman who listed himself as "Gentleman" on the voter's list, Bob Sinclair, who hailed from the "Erin Isle" and who later did a stint as Mayor and Charlie Angel, another product of Old England. A few other names who worked in the shops, Bill Thomas and Frank Walker (Waculka) were machinists, Jack Lindsay, Jack Ellis and Jack Bellamy were hostlers, who ran the locomotives around the shop tracks for coal and water and dropping the fires in the ashpit, where the hot coals were quenched and loaded in a gondola car by "cinderpit" Mike. Hostlers' helpers were George Kervanki, Len Bell and John Shusko who lit up and tended loco fires in the roundhouse and hand fired the shop boilers (which among other things provided steam for the CN electric plant which also supplied electric power to the town). Pete Lusney also fired the boilers and Charlie Blandford unloaded the boxcars carrying coal for boiler fuel. The main coal dock where the locomotives got their fuel was in charge of Alf Richardson. Hoddy Cowan was another man who worked in the shops. He also represented another part of the CNR link to the town in that he coached the Rivers CNR's intermediate level hockey team on which I played. The hockey jerseys for this team (see photo) were supplied by the railway and carried the label Rivers CNR's. Hoddy did a good job for we young fellows. He was transferred to Brandon a few years later. Alf Richardson also played an important part in getting the hockey team started as midgets (under 16 years of age).
"Gump" Anderson was one of the few 2nd generation Riversites who got to work on the railway during the depression. He was the one from the shop staff who generally could be seen on top of the tender during passenger train station stops filling up with water from the standpipe. His dad, Davy Anderson also worked for the railway. He was, I believe, a car inspector along with Arthur Johnson, Pete Manchul and Geordie Mitchell. Geordie was of course the local senior of the clan Mitchell and head of the Mitchell pipe band. He used to practise the pipes in his back yard on summer evenings; although their house was at least a block from us I still relish the memory of hearing him skirling up and down playing all the old tunes of highland glory! The car inspectors covered all trains, both passenger and freight. It was seldom necessary to set off a passenger car for repairs, but there was always a supply of freight cars needing new wheels or other repairs so they had to be switched to the repair track where they came under the jurisdiction of Harry Evans, the Car Foreman. There was no enclosed car shop so the carmen endured plenty of biting cold in effecting these repairs outdoors in the winter.
Other important facilities were the stockyards and the ice house, located toward the east end of the yard. Many cattle were moved to market by rail and they had to be unloaded and fed and watered at certain intermediate points such as Rivers. The ice house was an insulated building used for the storage of ice which was needed for freight refrigerator cars and ice actuated passenger car air-conditioning during the summer months. The ice was sawn in large blocks during the winter from the river just above the dam and hauled by horse and sled to be stored until summer. The levels and rows had to be separated by hay so they would not stick together. The ice was hoisted to the upper levels by means of an air hoist on the outside of the building. As kids we used to get on the hoist to ride up and down, but had to keep a sharp lookout for Jim Messel, the section forman who would put the run on us. The job of delivering the ice was contracted out to Taylor's Transfer, which survives to this day as a mid-sized highway trucking company.
Talking of Jim Messel we must mention his track maintenance or section gang. I remember some of the men on this work, such as Wally Blewitt, Joe Shylega, Mr. Isles and Mr. Chopek. They braved the bitter winter winds and the scorching summer heat to keep all the track in good shape. Wally Blewitt had the special job of filling the oil-burning switch lamps amd trimming the wicks. Now, for the most part the railway just uses the new reflectorized red, yellow or green targets actuated by the locomotive headlight.
About the middle of the yard was the yard office and freight shed where my dear father Norman worked nearly all of his career as a yard clerk. In those days he did it all, made up the train journals, bundled up the waybills, kept the car tracing books, called the freight crews in their cabooses, stoked the pot-bellied office stove, kept in touch with the dispatchers on the phone, and wrote letters for the yardmaster. He also walked the yard once a day to update the location of cars in the yard. He enjoyed his work thoroughly and entered into much camaraderie with the train crews and others from Winnipeg and Melville with whom he came in daily contact. From age 12 to 15 I had the job of taking down his lunch to the office. This was necessary because he got up at 5 a.m. to start work at 6 and mother got up later to make our breakfast and his lunch. This was a great opportunity as I too got to know a great deal about the workings of the railway and got to share my dad's love of his work and his pride in what the railway did. Other yard clerk's who worked other shifts were a Mr. Livesay, "Pinky" Higginson, Johnny Morrow and Mr. Vining. Another younger chap, whose name escapes me started under dad after I had left Rivers and later rose to be Manager of Revenue accounting at system headquarters in Montreal. There was a lot of good basic railroading centred on that yard office!
The actual switching of the cars in the yard was performed by the yard engine with its crews. Our next door neighbor, Norman McConachie, was the foreman of the switching crew assisted by Bob Lee, Euclid Lavallee and Bob Riddick. The engineman for part of the time was Fred Oakley, who married my Aunt Eunice some years after the untimely death of my Uncle Bob. They moved to Edson about 1935 where Fred's seniority allowed him to hold down jobs in mainline freight service.
Presiding over all the yard operations was Mr. Eugene Grant, the Yardmaster. "Gene" had originally been a conductor, but had lost a leg when a caboose turned over on him. He had a variety of interests, including farming on the side ands served several terms as mayor of Rivers.
At the station there was an agent (Mr. Greaves), a ticket clerk (Johny Morrow) and several telegraph operators, Mr. Hedberg, John Charron and Jack Bartlett. Mr. Greaves also ran the travelling picture show as described earlier. It used a projector built by Jack Tivy who also acted as projectionist. Jack Bartlett had lost an arm in the war, but still functioned quite well at his job as well as playing a good game of golf single-handed. Maintenance of the telegraph lines and equipment was done by Bill Audette who had his own track motor car for travelling his territory.
As mentioned earlier most of the running trades lived in Winnipeg or Melville, but a few still kept their homes in Rivers. These included enginemen "Sheenie" Hill and Amos Bradt and trainman Trudel.
They were the noisiest, most visible, ponderously powerful and most dramatic machines ever created by man. No account of the railway in Rivers would be complete without reviving our memories here of steam locomotives used in those days. The acknowedged queens were of course the mountain type 6000's which hauled the Continental Limited, nos. 1 and 2. They were beauties, built about 1930 with their Russian gunmetal jackets gleaming in the sun. They had enclosed vestibule cabs, front end throttles, soot blowers, Baker valve gear, 12-wheel Vanderbilt tenders and other modern steam engine appliances. They could haul 15 heavy steel cars and make the schedule. I was once on no. 2 as a passenger going to Winnipeg and we were late. We made it in 2 hrs. 25 mins., an average speed of 60 mph including stops at Brandon North and Portage plus speed restrictions from St. James tower into Winnipeg. Between Knox and Gregg we were doing 80mph which was really flying in those days of 85 lb. rail and sand and gravel ballast!
The freight trains were handled by Mikado type engines which could pull more than the 6000's. Their driving wheels were only 63" in diameter, as compared with the 73" and higher boiler horsepower of the 6000's. We kids used to refer to them as "big mikes". The mikes were capable of handling about 70 cars of grain or a total train weight of 6000 tons. Getting long trains started in the winter when the journal bearings were congealed with cold could produce quite a spectacular show. One could stand on the station platform and watch this tremendous drama of steam and steel, of numerous backings and fillings to get the slack for momentum, of slipping drive wheels pin wheeling fire from the sand used to increase traction, of the uncontrolled roar of the stack shooting a 50 ft. column of steam and smoke into the slate colored winter sky. The engineman would have to use the utmost skill in handling the throttle and reverse levers all the while cursing the yard office for putting more tonnage on the train than the conditions allowed. The show would go on for five or ten minutes before the last cars on the train could be got moving; only then could the procession move out onto the lead and then to the main line, over the big bridge, through Grant's cut and out of sight. Only when the slightly descending grade beyond the Bell crossing was reached could the train make any speed. Sometimes the initial startup and acceleration could be enhanced by having the yard engine act as a pusher on the rear.
The freight engines were not so well maintained as those in passenger service and they were often grey and grimy from their heavy duties. On the west end they were also stained with alkali from the bad prairie water available. No shiny jackets or white painted driving wheel rims on these working monsters!
Way or local freights were handled by smaller locomotives known as consolidation types. They operated three days per week and set off empties and picked up loads at intermediate stations which were then martialled into the through trains at Rivers. As they did not have vestibule cabs they could be uncomfortable in the colder weather.
Last in the pecking order of locomotives we come to the humble yard "goats" as they were called. They spent all their years drilling cars in and out of various tracks as inbound trains were broken up and then remarshalled. Originally Rivers had a six-wheel switcher in the 7400 series, but this was replaced by an eight wheel switcher, no. 8406 sometime around 1932. This series of engines was built by the railway itself in the Transcona shops. Still later 8406 was transferred elsewhere and replaced with a converted way freight engine in the 2000 or 2100 series. I wish I could remember the exact number, because this engine was the one I learned to operate under the tutelage of Jack Lindsay, the hostler and George Kervanki the helper. They would allow me to drive it around the service tracks as it got coaled and watered. Then it was tricky to stop it in a balanced position on the turntable and finally spot it under the smoke jack in the roundhouse for the night. This thrilling activity for a 15 year old boy could be engaged in after school as the yard engine was off duty at 4 p.m. and was serviced and put away for the night.
During the 1950's the diesels started to come from General Motors, 9000 class for freight and 6500 class for passenger. This marked a dramatic change for intermediate division points like Rivers as the trains ran through without change of power and all the steam servicing facilities were no longer required. Soon only the station agent, the crew rest house supervisor (Nick Kamula) and a few wection men would be all that remained. No roundhouse, no yard office, no rip track, no coal dock, no pumphouse, no ice house, no stockyards remain. Gone, all gone, even though the railway still operates, hauling more freight than ever with 3 six-axle diesel units and 130 car trains. Each diesel unit has more pulling power than a big mike. This was progress and as we shall see later in this chronicle, I was to play a part in it, but I confess my boy's heart still lives in those long away days of steam and the railway facilities of Rivers. About all that remained in Rivers for many years after was the hulk of the old turntable, dragged out to a hill south of the roundhouse and left their like a prehistoric beached whale, even many of its side plates gone, leaving only its rusting uneven skeleton. Even that relic is now gone. (1996).
Gone too are all the men named herein, you will now find their names engraved on the tombstones in Rivers cemetary where the occupants are no longer aware of the tremendous changes that have been made where they labored so long, though you can still see the long diesel freights crossing the big bridge. Those of us still living can only feel a touch of sadness for what the railway and its steam locomotives and those men meant to Rivers. Perhaps an old Latin phrase is as apt a tribute as any: "Sic transit gloria mundi". "So passed the glory of the world". Do you not see that it was no wonder the greater part of my working life became wrapped up in Railways!