We listened to the 1962 John Glenn launch as we sat in our school bus outside the school doors.
On Tuesday, February 20, 1962 John Glenn launched into earth orbit.
I show the picture of Art Mackay’s school bus because I vividly remember that is where I was. The launch took place at about 8:50 CST, but we had been sitting in the bus, on the Colgate School grounds since about 8:35.
Nobody moved. We just listened to the countdown on the radio. I think that Mr. Mackay may have realized that he was facilitating the class that morning. He didn’t even open the bus door. He knew that something absolutely historic was taking place, and he knew how to have us involved.
Later that day we watched the following on the suppertime news. However, to replicate the first hand experience, just close your eyes and listen to the sound track …
While it is amazing how much things have changed in the past 62 years, I would suggest that sometimes it is even more amazing how little things have changed.
My trip to Expo 67 involved cars, trains, busses and airplanes.
I graduated from Grade 12 in Colgate High School in June of 1967. In July I travelled to Montreal for Expo ’67.
It was during this time that I developed a love for all of the different modes of transportation that operate across our great country!
The trip actually began a few months earlier when I decided to earn some money for the trip by collecting bottles around our community. To do this I borrowed the old Dodge farm truck (early ’50’s model) that had a very loose steering connection. The steering wheel would go ¾ of a turn before it would begin to turn the front wheels!
My modes of travel to and from Expo were:
- by car to Saskatoon to catch the train
- Canadian National Railway’s Supercontinenal (with an upper berth in the sleeper car) to Montreal
- Montreal’s rubber tired subway daily between our hotel and the Expo site (I stayed at a hotel with my Uncle Stuart, and attended Expo with my cousin David Boyle).
- Inter-city bus from Montreal to Coburg ON, where my Mom and sister were staying with relatives
- Car to Niagara Falls
- Car to Toronto and on to the airport
- Jet aircraft (my first time on a plane) to Winnipeg, Air Canada DC8
- Prop aircraft to Regina, Air Canada Viscount.
Expo was fabulous, however, as I have learned so often since then, “getting there was half the fun!”
P.S. here is a postcard that I wrote to my Dad (he stayed home to farm) from a train stopover in Capreol ON. (It isn’t the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there!)
The Post Card Reads: “Sun, Noon. Dear Dad, Well I am in the middle of a three hours stop in this little town. Sally is on her way to Toronto. My Train is due at 2:05. I’m really enjoying the train. Didn’t sleep too well first night but last night I slept like a log. You were right, N. Ontario is endless miles of trees, rocks and lakes. Well my fish & chip dinner has just arrived (I’m in a small restaurant) so I had better go. love, Chris”
When I was in Grade 1 we were billeted in town during a blizzard.
In the early afternoon, one day in early 1956, a blizzard struck, with little warning, while I was at school in Colgate.
Even now, I have a first hand memory of the preparations that the School Board had made for just such an emergency. Every young child had been assigned a billet in a home in the small hamlet of Colgate. The high school kids were billeted right in the school. The school had an emergency stock of food.
I was billeted to the home of Florence and Art Mackay. Art was my school bus driver. However, on that day, we covered the two blocks to his house through zero visibility in the bombardier (read more) . I presume that we dropped other kids at their billets along the way. I remember sleeping in a heated lean-to type area of the house.
The next morning was still stormy, but the conditions has eased enough, so it was decided that it would be safe to venture a short distance away. So Art Mackay took Harvey and Beverly Ledingham (Beverly Freeden) and me to their house, two miles away.
I stayed at Earl and Jean’s house for at least one more night. The next morning dawned very clear and very, very cold. Earl hitched the team to the sleigh and took me the last mile to my house. To my memory, this is the only time in my life that I used horse powered travel for anything other than recreation!
That blizzard closed the school for a long period, perhaps 10 days (perhaps 3 weeks). We had real “snow days” back then!
Comments received when this post was originally published in 2016:
Beverly Freeden I was billeted at minister’s manse. Funny, I don’t remember you staying overnight at our house. We were so lucky to have such good years growing up.
Wayne Heise I never got to go to school in Colgate but for 1 day when the ones who would start school next year got to go see how thing went down in the halls of learning. We moved to Gull Lake in the summer before I was to start grade1. The things I remember about Colgate are my 2 buddies Wayne Waldal and David Underwood. My Father ran the Federal elevator there. The snow drifts in our yard made great places for snow forts in winter and the empty lot beside us was great in the fall after the garden came out for digging trenches to play army. Rafting in the ditch across from the elevators. Starting to skate when Dad flooded the ice at the skating rink. When Bells had the Fawn that was injured and they bottle fed it. Who could forget Kings store. Eating Rhubarb and brown sugar in our treehouse behind Underwoods. Leaving the house in the AM and playing all day. Spent a lot of time at elevator with my Dad weighing trucks, sweeping the scale clean and learning about life. Sad day when we left but my friend Lorne Carlson came in and we rode our bikes up the ramp in the moving van and out the side door.
Beverly Freeden Chris just have to tell you I had many rides in sleigh behind our horses. We had buffalo (cows) hides and even a coal foot warmer. One day your dad was taking your grandma, my mom and me to ladies aid at Candy’s I wasn’t in school yet. Anyway quess he hit a drift and your grandma fell out as sleigh had low sides. We got storm stayed overnight and when I woke up they had taken me out of a bed and put me between two chairs.
Lorna Cherpin Wow Chris you have a very good memory. People in Colgate were so nice to have us students stay there. Kings store was awesome. I think we went there just to see Mr King. We had lots of rides with the team and sleigh not to go to school but to visit neighbors. Only transportation all winter for us. As hard as it was it’s to bad this generation can’t experience some of it. Good times.
How I got to school in the winter of 1955/56.
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.
As a child, I made a twice yearly trip to Saskatoon for care by Saskatchewan’s only (at that time) orthodontist.
In the late 1950s, I was a patient of Dr. Schacter, the only orthodontist in Saskatchewan. My parents would drive me from Colgate to Regina to catch the CN Dayliner (a Budd Car, self propelled rail coach) to Saskatoon.
I was about 10 years old.
I’d check in with the “Traverllers Aid” volunteers at their booth in the train station and then make my way across the street to Dr. Schacter’s office. After my appointment, I would return to the station, check in again at Traveller’s Aid and await the return dayliner to Regina.
Funny thing, I remember the bathrooms in the train station. There was one closet that was free to use, but the remainder were coin operated and required a dime!
