6. UNIVERSITY OUT OF THE BLUE

6.1 FROM FARM LABOUR TO THE REALMS OF ACADEME

It is now time to turn from the more or less carefree joys of youth to serious, though still happy ways of earning a living and extending an education. The need to find work and earn money for a living was a grinding necessity for many during the depression, and many young men and women had their lives blighted by several years of job hunting without much success. Many found no reprieve until they were able to join the armed services in 1939-40.

It was my good fortune to have not entered the work force until graduation from grade 12 in l938. At this point I was getting the message from my parents that I was no longer going to be looking forward to month long holidays at Grandma Harrison's in Holmfield but that I should find enough work to help with further education and be able to "make something of myself" as they said. It was not that my parents objected to supporting me at home; it truly was their anxious desire to see me put my abilities and their upbringing to good use and succeed in the world. I had a terrible fear of being unemployed; if it went on too long people would start to say "he's no good" and in small town Manitoba one paid a great deal of attention to what other people thought. One of the worst times of my whole life was the six weeks of terrible let down feeling after finishing high school. Here I was, smart enough to have completed the pinnacle fo small town learning which grade 12 represented and I couldn't even get a job!

Mother did her best to keep me employed with thankless tasks such as scraping large amounts of old wall paper off the dining room. Only with the advent of harvest time did the opportunity occur to do something else, and I accepted with alacrity the first farm job I could get. Farming in western Canada in those days was still very labor intensive, so there was temporary work to be had if you were willing. I got a job stooking at the James Bromley farm south-east of town. I recall spending the first ten days as a solitary worker stooking oats in a large field. I worked at the physically demanding and unfamiliar job until my nose bled. Never before nor since have I felt so lonely and depressed. I slept on a cot in an empty granary and the farmer's son would wake me at 5 a.m. by throwing stones against the side of the building. After working all day in the fields it was my job to feed and water the pigs. I had to carry the water some distance in a 10 gallon oil pail and my chiropractor to-day (1997) tells me I have a slight side curvature in my spine which I strongly suspect originated with that pig feeding. The pay was $1.00 per day plus board.

Later I shifted to the George Treloar farm where the pay was no better but the atmosphere was more convivial as the work was shared with Bill and Dougie Treloar who were schoolmates of mine and they had a bit of a sense of fun to them. I worked through most of the threshing of their crop. I learned to build a load on a hayrack so it would not fall off and to pitch sheaves into the maw of the threshing machine with its whirling knives. (see photo). I had to learn how to harness and drive the team of horses to pull the hayrack. I was not too good at learning the intricacies of harnessing because in truth my thoughts still trended toward locomotives rather than horses. Mrs. Treloar was a capable jovial woman who fed us well and encouraged a certain amount of merriment at the table (there were four younger children other than Bill and Dougie). The home farm as far as I know is still run by the youngest boy, Harley, to whom I have talked on visits to Rivers in recent years.

When harvest was done at the Treloars I jumped on my bike to ride home but stopped to check on who was loading grain in the siding at Grant's Cut. During the depression many farmers loaded their own grain direct to the railway rather than pay the fee to have it handled through a grain elevator. On this day it proved to be Chester McFadden loading a car of wheat and as he needed some help he hired me on the spot to level out the grain in the car. That led to more work to complete their threshing and hauling grain by team and wagon. Thus I moved from one job to another without loss of time. It never worried me that some of the older layabouts in the poolroom sneered at my working for a dollar a day; they had been spoiled by the good times up to 1928 when harvest pay was up to $7.00 per day.

I must now turn to something which was the great defining moment of my whole life, a combination of a mother's untiring devotion to her offspring together with a large dollop of pure luck! You will recall that I earlier dealt with my failure to get an entry to the railway as a machinist's apprentice. After this my mother harbored the idea that I might taking training as a school teacher or perhaps get to university. The opportunity for the latter came out of the blue almost as magic! While I was laboring on the farms, the Manitoba government had set up some "Manitoba Scholarships" to provide the opportunity for rural students to get to university. Mother noted that one of my fellow students, named Peter Lepp had applied for one, and as she knew my marks were better than his she took it on herself to apply on my behalf. Even though the application was a few days past the deadline we were lucky they had not yet met to decide, and the result was that I got one of the available scholarships. I'm sure it was as great a joy for her as it was for me to show me the letter of acceptance when I came home for a Sunday off from the farm work! Actually, it was sister Mary who first broke the news to me; she said as I came up the front walk, "well, you won't have to spend your winter farming". The scholarship was for two years duration, and at $325.00 per year was enough to cover most of my expenses as we shall see.

To go to university from Rivers during the depression was really something. Few parents could afford it. Very few people in the town ever even thought about university...only the doctor, the lawyer, the ministers and one or two of our teachers had ever attended. So I was thrilled to bits and have never had to look back since.

When I left Rivers to go to university the country was beginning to change and the rate of change was to be dramatically escalated by the war. Our generation was caught up in it and would tend to leave our home towns and farms for work and life elsewhere. Even Principal Stewart had pointed out to us that Rivers lacked opportunities for us all and that we would have to look elsewhere. This movement, along with cars and paved highways has forever changed the character of rural life on the prairies, a theme I shall enlarge upon in a future chapter.

6.2 THE CHOICE OF AN ENGINEERING CAREER

The next thing to decide was what course I should take at univcerity. This choice was very easy for me. I have mentioned earlier that my first job for pay in the summer of 1937 was working as a laborer on the construction of the meteorological station at Rivers airport. This was to support the operation of the new government owned Trans-Canada Airlines, a larger and much more ambitious undertaking than the original Canadian Airways which only handled mail and which failed sometime early in the depression. I spoke earlier of Russell N. Sharpe who was the resident engineer on the meteorology construction. He was the first engineering graduate that I had ever met and in the short time I knew him I gobbled up ideas of the kind of work which an engineer did. Drafting in particular had a great appeal as I had loved drawing pictures of locomotives all during my childhood. I was fascinated with Russ's precise drawing tools, measuring scales, etc.. so it was with great pleasure that I registered for classes in 1st year Engineering and bought my own t-square, drafting set and other needs, all this after a hectic search for a boarding house etc..

However, life in the depression tended to make some of us into stoics and what happened here was that my scholarship was for Arts & Science and not tenable in Engineering. Mum and I appealed to the president, but he could not change the Dept. of Education's rules. He offered to get the univerity bookstore to take back my drafting set, but I had my heart set on getting into engineering someday so I kept it. After three enjoyable days of engineering classes, I had reluctantly to change to Arts and Science. I did not have much faith in Arts & Science as I felt there was not much chance of earning a living from it. Because I had a complete Grade 12 I was admitted to 2nd year Science and I found that as engineering was applied science that I could select several courses including mathematics which were common to 1st year engineering. While in a sense, the setback represented the loss of a year, it really proved to be a blessing in several ways that improved my quality of life. In addition to the engineering related subjects I found that I enjoyed the English literature courses furthering the spark started in high school by W.I. Stewart. I have ever since had an enduring interest in literature and have enjoyed a wide range of authors and subjects which has continued to enrich my whole life. The second year French I may not have enjoyed as much, but the thorough grounding I got in grammar and pronunciation has served me throughout my later career in eastern Canada. A third unexpected benefit was that when I was later able to get into 2nd year engineering I had only a partial course because I had already completed my physics, chemistry and mathematics. This gave me enough free time that I was able to throw myself into a wide range of extra-curricular activities such as hockey, curling, tennis, and last but not least the student newspaper, The Manitoban. I will have more to say about the newspaper later, but for the moment lets say that my stoicism has been reinforced by this turn of events; in life it is often true that even disapointments can turn out to have been for the best!.
 

6.3 LIVING ARRANGEMENTS DURING EARLY UNIVERSITY YEARS

If one can believe a lot of what one reads, one can see that the traditional lot of students has been to live in a garrett. In a sense, mine was to be in this respect traditional. To keep down expenses I teamed up with Douglas Morrow, another Rivers boy who was taking courses at the Success Business College in Winnipeg. We shared a light-housekeeping room on the third floor of 226 Balmoral St., which was within walking distance of our respective colleges. Mrs. Henry, our landlady charged only $8.00 per month for the room and we had to put quarters into the gas meter to get our cooking fuel.

Food was relatively cheap as we would boil some potatoes in the pot, throw in some weiners on top and have canned peas or corn for vegetable. For dessert we didn't do badly as I would go home every weekend on my CNR student's pass and retrun with a pie from Mum and butter or other offerings from the Morrows. This also made it possible to get laundry done at home. Lugging all this back to Winnipeg in a heavy suitase, partcularly the 20 minute walk from the Union station I am sure added to the curvature started in my spine through watering Bromley's pigs during the previous summer.

For entertainment I was able to purchase a University of Manitoba Student's Union pass which gave me access to most of the student dances, variety nights, roller and ice skating parties, etc.. In a class debate I also won two tickets to the big dance of the year, the Science Prom, to which I was able to take a girl. The prom was considered very special and was held in the main Winnipeg venue of those days, namely the Crystal Ballroom of the CPR's Royal Alexandra Hotel. I will never forget the first breathless impression that I, as an erstwhile small town boy received on descending the broad staircase that led to the ballroom, and seeing what appeared as pure fairyland. The dancing was already in progress and Irving Plumm's orchestra, dressed in tails or tuxedos was playing a lovely Viennese waltz. The sight of all these young women swirling over the polished floor in their lovely long gowns adorned with flower corsages, their faces aglow in the light from the huge crystal chandelier in the centre of the room was simply captivating. I paused with my partner to gaze at these beings who looked just like fairy princesses. I have loved Viennese waltzes ever since. and have lived long enough to dance one in Vienna itself during Fran's and my 1991 vacation tour of Europe.

Though university offered many such glimpses of things in the great world, my lifestyle remained frugal based on necessity. It is eloquent testimony to this that my first 7-month college year in Science cost me just $387.00 of which $160.00 was university fees. Even my graduating year, 1942-43 cost only $550.00 of which $220.00 was fees. It would cost 20 times as much to do it to-day (1997).

Yes, the depression was still on in 1938, and although the award of Manitoba scholarships by the government was a sign of some loosening up in finances there was still plenty of evidence of hard times, even in the city and in the university.

Mrs. Henry's husband did not have regular work, he only did part time grounds work at United College. The boarding house revenue from a half dozen roomers like Doug and I were the main source of income. The other roomers were a man named Bill (last name escapes me). He was a world war I veteran who had been gassed and so lived on his small pension. It was a big deal for him just to fry up a steak as a treat about twice a month. There were also two working girls rooming together who weren't exactly highly paid, and another young man who had some sort of menial job and supplemented his income by serving in the St. John's Ambulance on duty at large evening events such as hockey games at the arena or concerts at the Winnipeg Auditorium. Even hot water was scarce at times in the house, and Mrs Henry gave me the devil one time for taking a bath on washday.

The Junior Division of the university operated in the Broadway buildings which had been put up on a temporary basis to accomodate returning veterans from world war I. They had not had any maintenance during the depression which was partly due to the mishandling of some of the funds by the chancellor, Archbishop Machray, resulting in the loss of about $500,000. I still find it hard to credit but I believe the university was operated for about this amount per year! While some students came from well off families, others were poorer than me. It nearly broke my heart when someone picked the lock on my locker and stole half a dozen or so textbooks, most of which had been purchased from a second hand bookstore on Portage Avenue.

The buildings themselves lacked paint, some windows were dirty, floors were not level and the old brown linoleum had patches on patches. There was a cafe on Portage Ave. called the Blue Bird. It served full course meals of clear soup, meat, potato and vegetables with jello for dessert for 25 cents no tax. Even that was beyond Doug and I except on one or two rare occasions. Streetcar fare was 2 for l5c but I even avoided much of this by riding my bike everywhere. I even found it possible to ride it in the sub-zero weather by having good mitts and a fur lined helmet. This was because the exercise of pedalling the bike was enough to generate greater circulation and thus added warmth!

However, in spite of what to-day would be classed as hardship and poverty we students knew we were privileged to be going to university and that it would open many bright paths in the future. Like most youths we were full of fun, enjoyed the learning and the professors (whose characteristics all differed) and we laughed over our in jokes behind their backs. To me, Winnipeg was the City of Light, just as much as Paris may have been for many European scholars in earlier ages. Doug and I got on well together and aside from studies took time out for competitive games of pitch and toss using the waste paper basket as a receptacle. Also on the lighter side most of us students always had the latest popular songs on our lips and in our hearts. The most popular that I recall were "A Tisket, a Tasket, I found a yellow basket" and "Tilly i pum pum, Tilly i pum, here comes the man with the mandolin". Silly songs in some respects, but they kept us all happy!.

I kept up my studies and did a good job in my labs and in keeping up my notebooks. Exams when they came were a challenge but I managed an average of 76%. I stayed in the city for a few weeks after the exams and got a job selling advance tickets to a concert to br held in the civic auditorium. It was door to door and although I met many interesting people I hated it; as a result I sold very few tickets.

Through all my life I have never really cared for direct selling, never wanting, as I saw it, to convince people to buy something they initially did not need. I went home with my tail between my legs and was very much happier when dad landed me a job on a railroad extra track gang whose foreman for the summer would be Jim Messel from Rivers. I will give more details on the work and life on "the gang" later.

6.4 SECOND YEAR AT UNIVERSITY AND THE SHIFT TO ENGINEERING

Happily, the powers that be changed the rules and allowed me to transfer to Engineering while still keeping the second year of my scholarship. As mentioned earlier, I had to start into first year Engineering which didn't bother me a bit, so happy was I to get into my beloved drafting and other engineering matters. Classes for first year engineering were still held in the Junior Division Broadway buildings so there was a familiar ring to it all. Doug Morrow had finished his business college, but I teamed up with another school pal from Rivers, Donald MacPherson who was now going to take a course at the business college. We got a light housekeeping room at 238 Colony St. which was in the same area as the one Doug and I had shared a year earlier. Weekend trips home on my CNR pass kept up our supplies and home town contacts so that most of my life at university was during the week. Social life consisted of going to university functions such as tea dances and pep rallies. There were lots of smart students in my class, and although I had ranked high in grade 12 at Rivers and in 2nd year Science I had to notch up my efforts a bit more to keep up in engineering.

While the professors all had degrees they also had a lot of practical experience gained in their field when things were booming during the war and the twenties. In this among other ways, I feel we benefitted from the depression which had forced these capable, older men to take up teaching at what were very low salaries. After world war II the profs were mainly young men who had Master's degrees or even PhD's but who had little or no field experience. They were undoubtedly good at theory but I wouldn't trade them for the likes of George Herriot, who was our surveying professor and who had worked as a Manitoba and Dominion Land Surveyor. He had some great gems of homespun wisdom. One which I have always remembered is that if you ever find a crooked spot in a survey line, take a look in the nearest survey mound and you'll probably find an empty whisky bottle!

Like all students, youthful exhuberance often ruled. On one occasion we raided the arts precincts and stole their parade banner, which we hung up as a trophy in our drafting room (see photo). On another occasion junior division charged United College intending to get in by throwing soft mud etc. United got advance wind of the attack and succeeded in repelling us. They had the last laugh in spades in that Clark Hopper, the dean of men was on hand taking names and those of us so recorded had to pay a $1.00 fine!

6.5 INKY FINGERS AND THE MANITOBAN

Of all the outside activities which I took on the one to which I contributed the most and as a result got the most out of was working on the student newspaper, The Manitoban. It also claimed to be known as "Canada's Other Great Newspaper", a pseudonym no doubt invented by some past editor with a bit of wit in his soul.

Up to this time I had never written anything beyond a school essay or a report for the Rivers Gazette on one of our hockey games. You can be sure that when I walked into that grimy large room on the 2nd floor of the old brick building I was received neutrally. After all I was only a cub reporter and an engineering student at that. Such beings were not to be much thought of in comparison with most of the others who were from Arts and Law, and for the most part had much more city bred sophistication than I.

So it was no wonder that I fell for one of the oldest gags in the printing trade when Van Summerfeld, who was then News Editor asked some of us if we had ever seen type lice, which he claimed were a scourge to the business and lived in the dark redesses of type galleys. He said he would like to show us some as part of our introduction to becoming news reporters. He took us into the back room which was so unkempt and dingy that one could well believe that such creatures as lice would be able to thrive. There he had a galley of type loosely set up with a liberal amount of printer's ink in the bottom. At first we said we could not see the lice, so he got us to bend over and look very closely, (after all these were tiny dark ink-stained creatures, were they not?) so we squinted as hard as we could. At that instant, the devilish Van pushed the line of lead slugs in the galley tightly together so that all the surplus ink squirted up through the interstices between the slugs and hit us neophytes right in the face and eyes! What a laugh we got from them all when we were lead out into the main office as we wiped the ink out of our eyes. When they mirthfully asked if we had seen any of the lice we all stoutly avowed that they were real and we had seen them clearly.

Such was my introduction to reporting, along with appropriate instructions on the necessity of thinking up a good lead to each story and following the golden rule of the five "W's", Who, What, When, Where and Why. At first, the tendency was to assign one small inconsequential story to me which they did not always run. I went out faithfully twice each week on press nights but seemed to be making no progress, not only in the work, but in respect of the paper's social circle. As a youth I was of course interested in the various girls who frequented the place, but didn't get to know any of them very well. After about a month I was ready to quit but I consciously applied a very important lesson in life, I said I would give it one more try. Precedents in history were Bonnie Prince Charlie's spider and Dick Whittingdon. When I went out this last time I found the office in an uproar, several of the regular reporters had not shown up and the editor was beside himself. As a result they had to use me and I worked like a beaver to do a full three stories. One of them was a gag story gotten by getting the boys to roll up their pantlegs to see who was wearing long wool underwear. It was run with a photo taken by the staff photographer and had some nonsensical quotes from Van Summerfeld about the serious effect on the wool market resulting from the fact thatr only I and one other had on our woolies! I stayed until about 2 a.m. to finish my stories and they gave me a by-line on one of them. All of this made me feel suddenly very important to the paper and I was now recognised by the editors as someone they could depend on to be there, to take on a big workload and to stay until it was finished! In looking back now over the years I realize these attributes are of more use in attaining success in the world than is a lot of formal education. I must allow some of the credit to my dear dad who always admonished me "if you say you'll do something son, then do it!" Ever since then I have been careful, even reluctant to make promises about anything I might not be able to achieve, but I have doggedly stuck with each task I have taken on and tried to see it through to completion. I must also admit to being reluctant to start sometimes, and thus guilty of procrastination, but have found that once I get started on something I can become quite involved in it and enjoy the satisfying feeling of completion. As the Bible says, "Once you have set your hand to the plow, do not look back". Even to-day it is sometimes difficult for me to turn on the computer and tackle the next section of these memoirs, but once started I really enjoy doing them, with its side effect of helping me to recall so many happy things from the past!

While I finished up the year being appointed as an Assistant News Editor of the Manitoban I did not fare quite so well in the sports. I tried out for the Engineering hockey team but didn't make it so tried out for Arts who took me on. I had the satisfaction of our team beating the engineers and ending the season further up in the inter-faculty league standings than they did. As for the academic side of life I enjoyed it all and finished up the term with fairly good marks on my exam papers and B grades on my drafting plates. We then had the month of April after exams to do outdoor survey school. This was good to get out in the bracing spring air and learn the practical use of levels, transits, stadia tables and even water stream volume counting machines. The school was presided over by George Herriot who worked us hard. His dictum was that the engineer had to do field work all day and then complete his fieldbook diagrams and notes in the tent at night. While we wer living in the university residence, rather than tents we had very few free nights as we labored over our notebooks.

6.6 WORKIN' ON THE RAILROAD

As mentioned earlier, when I returned to Rivers after completing 2nd yr. Science in April 1939 my dad got me work on Jim Messel's Extra Gang No. 1 out of Portage la Prairie. Through discreet enquiries we had found out that a steel laying gang was going to start up out of Portage. I decided to go to Portage to apply for a job and dear dad said he would come with me. In addition to knowing Jim Messel quite well dad knew Jimmy Preece who worked in the roadmaster Muirhead's office and that's how we landed a job! I was highly elated as I was interested in all things about the railway and eagerly joined some other pals from Rivers on this gang. Among them were Emil Kervanki, Walter Danilevitch and Harry Messel. On June 13th I got the hoped for telegram and next morning dad and I got up early to catch no. 4 to Portage. Roadmaster Muirhead was at the station and gave me identification slip no. 102 to present to Jackie Darg, the gang timekeeper and from there I took my bedroll to my assigned bunk in one of the boarding cars. What a thrill to be looking out onto the railroad as an employee, even though just a temporary "casual" one!

Next morning the cars and outfit were assembled in the yard and we started work laying the new 100lb/yd. rail just west of the CPR diamond. Messel assigned me and a fellow called Tom Jenkins as waterboys and we got our own handcar complete with barrel, shiny pails and cups. We were glad to get this job as it was not the back breaker that some jobs were though we sometimes did auxiliary work like unbolting the old angle bars at road crossings. Also as a waterboy I had to walk up and down the gang and could see how it all went on to take out the old 85lb. rail and put in the new. The gang was organized by task from the tie plate and plug distributors, through the adzing machine to the final where men replaced the crossing planks. In between were the brawny men from Portage who pulled the old spikes with clawbars and lined the old rail onto the dump, then the men daubing creosote on the ties, then tie pluggers and platesetters, next the tong men who worked 16 to a rail to lift and carry the new steel into place followed by the rythmical spikers who swung their hammers over their heads as they drove home the new spikes. Altogether it took 110 men for such a gang stretched out over a quarter mile (see photo) so it presented quite a sight. You will see that the only machine operation was the tie adzer, otherwise the work was performed the same as when the railways were first laid across the country. Labour was cheap at 25 cents per hour and in the depression it was desireable to create as many jobs as possible. Our gang could lay one mile of new steel on one side in a l0 hour day. In addition to students such as myself we had many family men who were able to get off the dole to work on these gangs and we even had men from minimum security prisons who were serving on probation. I recall one of the spikers was a man called "raper" Kennedy! After the first day it was a relief to take our handcar back to the bunk cars. I was in bunk car 340488 with Emil Kervanki and others, (See photo). We had a good group and someone had a windup gramaphone with some good records including classical. It was here I was first introduced to Beethoven's "O Sole Mio" sung by Caruso; both the song and the artist have been among my favorites ever since. We also enjoyed the popular country and western pieces such as Wilf Carter singing "the Strawberry Roan" and "When the Work's All Done This Fall", a real tear jerker if ever there was one.

We moved steadily west through Arona to Bloom before shifting to Gregg for another stretch of new steel. For further reference, the stations on this line are named in alphabetical order, east to west. This is because no towns were there when the Grand Trunk Pacific was built so a siding would be put in every 7 or 8 miles and given a name with the hope that a town would eventually sprout, even if it had only a railway station,a grain elevator (prairie skyscraper), a store, a church and a few homes. Hence, starting from Portage (which was a pre-existing town on the CPR) we had Arona, Bloom, Caye, Deer, Exira, Firdale, Gregg, Harte, Ingelow, Justice, Knox, Levine, (then Rivers as a divisional point named after the GTP president, Sir Charles Rivers-Wilson), Myra, Norman, Oakner, Pope, Quadra, (Arrow River pre-existing name), Spy Hill, Treat, Uno, Victor, Welby, and Zeneta. (For some reason there was no X in this series though there was an Xena in a series further west; where there were at least two more alphabetic series). These names still come from memory, even though many have since disappeared; you do not need a grain elevator every 8 miles in this automotive age! I remember the first sequence so well to this day (Jan. 1997) because they were an essential background or framework to my early life, through many, many train trips as well as working on parts of the line on the extra gang.

When we finished this section of new steel we were ordered to a place called Rossendale located on the line between Portage and Brandon. Here we undertook the job of lifting and relevelling the track by putting more ballast under the ties. The highlight of this job was one day in a breezeless cut the temperature went up to 108 deg.F. This really tested our abilities as water boys, because the men not only drank the stuff but we poured it over the wrists of some of the hardest task men just to cool their blood. They used up four barrels of water that day. Olie Johanneson, one of the sub­ foremen didn't help matters by being in a sour mood; he fired five men in the morning."Get your Time", and they walked the track! He nearly fired me for asking him the time on the way home on the handcar. Before we were forced to quit early about 20 men had quit working and gone into the bush where some even passed out. Finally the foreman yelled out, " we're going to the cars, come out of the bush if you can, if you can't just yell and we'll come to get you"! Some were so exhausted we took them home on a pushcar. Such were the extreme conditions that workmen suffered on the track before machines replaced them on the most arduous physical jobs. However fast we may have been maturing under these tough trials we were still young enough to engage with Fischuk's gang (whose cars were near us) in a huge series of water fights that evening!

I was quite excited by the fact that our next posting was to Rivers, where we did a small amount of track repairs and additions to prepare the gravel pit for summer operations. This pit opened about 1930 and continues to have some use even to the present because the glacial moraine underlying the Rivers area is an excellent source of gravel ballast, particularly if it is crushed, screened and washed so as to produce the best consistency for use in the track. While the sojourn at Rivers gave me an opportunity to have some evening contact with the family and tennis pals, (including girls like Pat Thomas and Eldeen Cumming) the big event of the visit was what must have been the prototype if not the original "Gandy Dancer's Ball" on which the name of that song is surely based! (The term gandy dancer is slang for a track worker and originates from the peculiar vertical motion of a man tamping gravel under the railway ties using a short handled shovel). The dance was arranged for Friday night in the Ukrainian Hall through the influence of our foreman, Jim Messel, who by virtue of his regular job as Section Foreman in Rivers exercised considerable clout in the community, particularly among our Ukrainian population. The dance was open to the townspeople and about half our gang members showed up. As it was payday, many were half tight. They made more noise than I have ever heard at a dance, yelling, jumping and stomping in their heavy boots. As the song says "they were dancin' on the ceiling and they were dancin' on the walls". It went on 'till 2 a.m. and some were a sorry sight at work on Saturday morning, in fact, one of the foremen (Bill Sandy) and Jackie Darg were still a bit tipsy.

The gang was transferred back to Portage where we then took up the task of re-ballasting the new steel. A few days after we got started Jim Messel let us know that he would return to Rivers. At this point it is only fitting to give a thumbnail sketch of this most colorful, and in his own way most valuable man. When on the track he wore a battered old fedora with a couple of holes in the crown surmounting a leathery round face with a pair of eyes that didn't miss much. In his hand he often carried a large red flag, with which he held and then flagged through trains holding orders to stop at the work area until the foreman permitted them to pass. For work efficiency Mr. Messel would get a lineup from the dispatcher each morning stating the scheduled arrival time of each train; the normal procedure being to have the track closed up and the men in the clear so the train would not be delayed. On one particular day the expected train was delayed so all 110 of us were lallygaggling on the right-of-way fence. As the delay mounted Messel became more and more agitated, pacing up and down the track, and as we caught on and started laughing his agitation turned to anger. Finally, he turned to face us and said, "all right you smart sons of bitches, laugh now, but I tell you I've worked on these gangs longer than any of you and before this summer is over I'm going to work you to a hardwood finish"!

Sometime later we got a new foreman named Halyck. He was not from Rivers so on the first morning I was greeted with, "come with me, sonny, I geeve you shovel", so that was the end of my job as water boy. From then on I had to increasingly do man's work such as tamping gravel under the ties. The toughest job I had was shovelling gravel in under the jacking ties as the track was lifted to a new level; the worst being a 26 inch lift where the Assiniboine had washed out the ballast in early spring at Curtis, a point east of Portage. I was on that job for a week and lost 7 pounds! Other jobs I did such as handling the shaping and trimming board for the correct dump profile and burying big rocks in the dump did not test me as badly.

Going home on weekends was an important break in the regime of hard labor. With availability of freight trains and gravel trains as well as passenger trains for transportation it was usually possible to make a quick connection for the trip. On freights we sometimes caught a ride in open top gondola cars though on one occasion I got to ride in the caboose out to Gregg with conductor "Slim" Warning. This was arranged through my dad who sort of watched over me that summer, even visiting me once on the gang. As I write this I am getting details from my old diaries kept in school scribblers between 1936 and 1942 and various things make me realize more than I did at the time that dad was there in the background looking over my progress in a caring but unobtrusive way. Getting back to travel, Conductor Warning arranged with the engineman to slow down enough for me to unload from the tail end at Gregg. He was my idea of the best in railroaders, tall and slim, always attentive to the job, good judgment and an easy manner. It was in part knowing men like him and my dad that made me want to work on the railway. One thrilling ride we had was when Emil Kervanki and I rode "the blinds" on the evening passenger train to Rivers. The engineman was making up time on the straight track hitting speeds over 70 mph; when he hit the curve uust before Grant's Cut the back of the tender (which was facing us riding in the baggage car blind) drunkenly heeled over at a sharp angle as that curve was only designed for 60.

Activities on the weekend enabled me to catch up with my social life and according to the diary I was an enthusiastic but busy boy. I always had some tennis with my sister Mary and with others such as Percy Bellamy, went to "the tents" for a swim and then to the regular Saturday night dance with Eldeen Cummings who was my favorite. You see our high school group was still largely intact until the war started.

As September came I was expecting the extra gang would fold about that time and I would go back to university. Talk of the war was everywhere, and e reality loomed when Britain and France declared war on Germany at the beginning of the month. That reality for us was reinforced on Thur. Sept. 7 when Roadmaster Muirhead came out to Harte to notify us that our gang was to move S.A.P. to the military camp at Shilo to install a spur line into the new supply building; this seemed to be saying that Shilo was to be put on a war footing. The gang was moved promptly during the night and started to work on Friday. Saturday and Sunday we worked 11 hours to finish the job with the test engine running over our new track at dusk. Construction of the complete track reminded me of the scenes from the movie "Union Pacific" as our work was still mostly manual. Canada entered the war unbeknownst to us at midnight on Sunday the 10th, we only heard about it next day! Wallace Hills from the gang joined the army the same day. Tuesday the 12th was my last day on the gang as I had to go to Winnipeg on the Thursday to register for the new university term. As the gang train pulled away to go to a job at McCreary I felt very sad to think of perhaps never seeing most of them again!

However, I did see some the following summer (1940) as it was my luck to get a job on a gang, again under foreman Jim Messel. The call happened suddenly, just at the end of May, only a day after I had returned from summer survey school; next morning dad roused me at 5.a.m. to catch the passenger train to Justice where the gang was working.

I got my old job of waterboy to start with; the gang was doing skeletonizing (removing the old ballast and dust storm gunk from between the ties). Messel gave me a copy of the code of operating rules and asked me to study the rules related to protecting work gangs against trains by means of track torpedoes and flags. After a few days I got the job of flagging on the west end of the gang. It was physically easy, but was a position of trust in that you had to be alert in stopping trains, telling them what the gang was doing and letting them through slowly to take instructions from the foreman to get safely through the work area. This was my first acquaintance with the "Book of Rules", something I had a great deal to do with in later years as we shall eventually see. Although we did not have Jimmy Poulis, the same cook as last year, the meals were still quite good. They were wholesome and there was always several kinds of pie for dessert. I used to always take a slice of mincemeat plus a slice of one other kind which I varied from day to day. You could even get an extra slice from Jimmmy on the cook car after hours. (See Photo). On June 11 I got a call from dad saying that the job I had applied for with the Dept. of Transport had come through. (I had applied for this while still at survey school on the urging of fellow student Bill Keay whose older brother worked in the DOT office in Winnipeg). The work was to be at the construction site of Rivers Airport which had been selected as No. 1 Air Navigation School under the British Commonwealth Air Training scheme. While I would have been happy to spend another summer with the Extra Gang, it was too good to turn down an engineering related job which paid 40 cents per hour and allowed me to live at home. As we shall see later, it also helped lead to real engineering jobs in the summer as I worked my way through university. As I made a train trip to Winnipeg a bit later that summer of 1940 I recall going to the open vestibule on the coach and waving to the gang as we passed through and I then felt that I was on the way, leaving farm and gang manual labor forever!