“Oh no, Grandpa Has Another Story“
from the collection
I began attending Colgate School in Grade 1 (there was no kindergarten in those days) in the fall of 1955. The school was a brand new, seven classroom, building that had just opened the previous winter. The school was also part of a brand new initiative of the Saskatchewan Government called “Centralized Schools” where a number of rural one-room schoolhouses were amalgamated and students were bussed to a centralized location.
Bussing, in rural Saskatchewan, in 1955 had the additional challenge of country roads that tended to become blocked whenever it snowed. The use of snowplows had not yet become widespread, so the solution was an enclosed tracked vehicle that could travel across the snow covered landscape.
The Radville School Unit used bombardiers (pronounced “bom-ba-deer”, manufactured by a Quebec company called Bombardier (“bom-bard-yeah”).
The winter of 1955-56 was a particularly stormy one. I rode this vehicle, with Art Mackay as driver, for three months. Because of the desire to keep the vehicle as lightly loaded as possible, the routing was arranged so that I ended up being first on and last off. I traveled about 90 minutes at each end of the day, even though I only lived three miles from school.
The bombardier had bench seats on each side and across the back of the cabin. It also had a centre seat that we called the horsey-seat. There was also a passenger seat at the front beside the driver. Because of my first-on/last-off status, I had the privilege to ride there!
There were adventures: like a broken fan belt on a bitterly cold morning – no phones or radios, so we had to wait three hours until we were missed and they came looking for us. Also the rounded front end was designed to simply plow through new snow drifts on the route. One morning we came up out of a gully, at full speed, and hit a concrete-hard drift that had formed overnight. I remember flying forward in the passenger seat.
By the winter of 1956/57 snowplows had become more numerous and the bombardiers were used far less frequently.
Comment from my school mate, Brian Ward:
Those bombers were quite a ride weren’t they. That’s my Uncle Art Mackey there with you in that picture. I can still see Rene Cherpins arms vibrating as he steered that rig with no power steering. Plus i can still smell the fumes from the rear mount motor, and see the center seat board, that was a good place to straddle like riding a bucking bronco. Sometimes looking out the windshield, visibility was zero.
With the advent of the tractor driven snow plow to open the roads for the school bus, the days of the bomby were over. The good old days. Must have been an expensive undertaking for a school unit.
Verse for today:
“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”
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Interesting hx.