Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #14 - Tom Hougham

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Born in 1943 he grew up on a farm near North Bend. Community member, farmer, volunteer & family man he tells story about harvesting ice from the river, thrashing crews living in tents, pigs being referred to as mortgage lifters & if something's worth taken it's worth asking for.  Let me know what you think Text me! 587-217-8500 

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Born in October, 1943. He grew up on a farm near North Bend, community member, farmer, volunteer, and family man. I'm talking about Tom Hoffum. So buckle up. Here we go. Okay, well, let's start here. It is July 12th. We are sitting out at the Frenchman Butte Museum outside.

So if you hear the background noise, you got a nice waterfall going. We got a nice little breeze cruising around. We got birds. flying hummer birds. My grandma would love it here. I'm sitting with Tom Hoffham, so thank you for taking the time to sit down for a little chat. Well, my pleasure indeed. I'm sure we'll have a great chat. Well, you were just talking about the museum. Now, I was asking your kids before we got going. How long you've been at the museum working here? Well, we're getting on close to 10 years now. We started out, you know, just volunteering a little bit.

But as time goes on, you take on more responsibilities. And I don't know, I think the last four or five years I've been president of the organization. So it takes a lot more responsibility. And, you know, we do a lot of work here. You certainly do. You have a beautiful, beautiful spot. I'm saying on the way out here, I probably haven't been. been here since like grade four or five and Hillmond back in the day. It's been a long time and

it hasn't changed much. I mean in the sense that things aren't falling apart, they actually look extremely good. So that's kudos to you and everyone else who's come before you. Yeah, we've actually had a wonderful bunch of volunteers and it takes a lot of volunteers to do this work and we're talking about school tours it takes about 16 volunteers for every day we have a school tour and how many how many days do you have school tours how many schools come through here in a year we do the month of june we have two days uh tuesdays and thursdays and uh it will take about 60 to 70 uh children in that length of time it like in that day are those fun days challenging.

Yes, it's in particular there's kids, you know, there's all kinds of kids, but some that really want to learn what's going on and it's a pleasure to be able to talk to them and they ask

questions. And of course there's the ones that like to goof off and don't care and well, we just accept it for what it is. But we try to leave them with. with the, you know, how things were done in the old days. When kids come through, when teachers come through, what's maybe one of the things that sticks out the most

to the younger generation that was done in the past? Boy, that's a tough one, eh? Well, I guess so much work done by hand. You know, there's, you take a, like the old washing machine, The little scrub board, you know, had the hand wash a lot of stuff. And compared to how they do it now, they throw it in the automatic washer and dryer and they come and go. But like it was big day's work, you know, to make, do the washing. And they had, you know, churn butter and all those sort of things.

And I think the kids realize or we try to help them realize how much work the older, generation, the pioneer generation had to do. Do you miss those days at all? I mean, back when you were a kid and things were a little more manual labor-ish? Well, you see, you go back, we didn't know the other way to do it like we do now. And if we had to do things now like we did in the old days, well, we would be pretty upset with the world. But we didn't have those conveniences. So the way to load the old wagon or the rack with straw was the pitchfork.

And we didn't know any other. We didn't have any other method to do it. Take the team of horses and go out to the straw pile that was thrashed there in the 50s or whenever we did it. And, you know, it was brutal work, but we didn't know any different. Well, you were born in 43, correct? Yes. Do your parents ever talked to you about the time?

I mean, that's right in the middle of the war years. Did they ever discuss when you were born at times were tough? Do you remember anything about your early childhood years in the late 40s or your first memory? Well, I'd have to really dig into that. First memories. Well, they, I guess going to the old country school, and we took our saddle horses to school. We never thought we were hard done by. You know, we always had lots to eat. We had mother and dad had a big garden and we had our own cattle. Everybody had some milk cows and the ship cream, and dad raised a lot of hogs, and they were referred to as mortgage lifters. They always had a few dollars for groceries when you had pigs to sell.

Those kind of things. Pigs were referred to as mortgage lifters. Correct. Now, to explain that to you, you had some money to pay off your debts when you had some people. pigs around. Because they'd always sell. Oh yeah. Yeah, and sell at different times of the year. Like you'd be selling them year around versus say with cattle you'd sell oh in the fall when the cows were weaned or later on when the, you know, as yearlings or fat cattle. And all the animals you just listed off, you know, you just think of today. You need a jug of milk. You go to the

grocery store. You need some bacon. You go to the grocery store. You need some chicken. You go to the grocery store. Back then, you would have done and had almost been self-sufficient on the farm. Pretty well. Yeah, we raised all those things, hogs, chickens at one time, but we weren't big on chickens. Why is that? Well, chickens and hogs really didn't mix too much too well kind of disease and stuff like that. Okay. TB and chickens would the hogs could get that so we stayed away from the chicken end of it kind of. Did you ever have a, did you ever have that go through then? Not that I know of. We just, that was a good excuse not to raise chickens.

And we played that good too. Dad always talked about pigs killing chickens. Well, I guess they would if they had a chance. You know, chicken run loose through the hog barn they would get. They'd get it. Yep, get lapped up. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

But, you know, when you talk about having all these animals on the farm, you know, on a Sunday morning, Mom planned a chicken dinner while you ran out, and it lop the head off a chicken, and he had fresh chicken. I guess some of the fondest memories were the, making ice cream. You go out to the ice house and dig up some ice and get the old ice cream freezer and make ice cream. Mom would make her famous apple pie.

Yeah, we live good. Ice house? Ice house. Explain that. Yeah. Okay, it was a little building and they had a hole dug under it. In the wintertime, they would harvest ice out of the river or the lakes and put down that hole with sawdust wrapped around it or, you know, amongst it. And it would stay all next summer. It wouldn't melt.

And you could shovel a little sawdust off the ice and bring up a chunk of ice and use it in your ice cream freezer. And there was ice boxes in the old days to keep your milk and eggs and stuff like that cool. It helped preserve your milk and eggs. Everybody had an ice box. Everybody put up ice. Another chore. Do you remember going down to the river then to harvest ice? Yes.

Was that hard work? Yes. Well, you know, those blocks ice, let's say two feet square, you get a pail of water. You know, think about a pail of water and how heavy that would be to fill that two feet square. That's what you're lifting. Have a couple of ice hooks, chop it out and put reaper up? Yeah, there was ice tongs. There was kind of a big plier-like thing with handles on it. and you got it and squeezed it together and lifted it up.

But, you know, everybody's a little more physically fit than we are now. Well, we were saying before we got on here, that good times create soft men because we aren't doing anything like that. See, we didn't know any better. That's what we did, you know. Can you imagine kids going down to get ice blocks right now? Well, you'd be scared to send them down to the river because that, you know, you're digging it out of the river and there's no ice where you're pulling that ice out. So the kids would fall in.

You had to be very careful. You didn't slip into the... What did you... Were your parents warn you about the river as young kids? Oh, yeah. We were scared to death of water because mother made sure that we respected that, didn't want us going to. anywhere near and that to this day I don't like water there was neighbors that actually drowned a neighbor's boy that drowned in the river and we were very

careful not to go around near the river you know play at the river although our land was right up against the river and and as a youngster growing up we rode horses and gathered cattle along the river and that and cattle horses watered at the river, but we're very careful. This summer in particular, there's been a lot of kids and people around bodies of water, not just the river, but have drowned or gone missing. And it's been a higher water table than normal. Living alongside the river, I assume you've seen some very high and some very low times.

very much so. Okay, our dad talked about the 1918 flood. In his older years, we went down to the river with him. And he said, boys, you know, the river was up right to here, and he pointed the place. And, you know, after 50 or 60 years, we thought, He was lying. I thought maybe he'd forgotten about this a little bit.

But sure enough, I think, oh, I forget the exact year it was, the water came within inches of where he said it was. And how high would that be for the listener? Like, could you explain it maybe to the people listening how high you're talking about? Well, you'll notice what we call the floodplains along the river. the level little strip of land just before the main bank and that floodplain had water on it. It covered the floodplain. Yeah. The river would be, oh, in some places a half a mile wide.

And junk going down at trees and stuff going down at a real fast clip. I'd read in a book that the river has actually dried up before. Did your father or anyone ever speak of that? Well, I've heard the tale, but I would question that. It would have had to have been long before the turn of the 1900s, I would say. But then there are going to be somebody who'll say, no, it happened. but I've never In your days what's the lowest the river's ever got?

Well, the lowest. Well, our old ferry crossing here and it was probably the best one on the river. It got low enough so the current boards would catch on a rock bar in the river. It was about two feet of water over that rock bar. What ferry crossing are you talking about? It was the Frenchman Butte.

The Frenchman Butte crossing? Yes, and it changed its name. It was the North Bend crossing and the Frenchman Butte crossing. At one time it was called Yankee Bend crossing. Why did they keep changing the name? Oh, you know, it's just, well, the town of Frenchman Butte come in, so that was the closest town to the ferry crossing. So I guess that's why.

Growing up going to school, you may. mentioned a one-room schoolhouse riding horses to it. Your high school, you came across the river. Yes, I did. And you rode the ferry every day? Yeah, I rode my horse to high school, and I had to cross on the ferry every day. Now, back then, what was the ferry?

Was it a wood? Was it steel? Was it? That was wood. They had a steel ferry later on in, late 60s. A steel fairy come in. And was it just the same old guy down there operating it? Well, for a good many years, yes, the Sidwell family

run it and the Mower family. They had 12-hour shifts and they traded off. And then when Sidwell family retired and there was some other that took their place but then I think the last year the ferry was in it was in 1969 and at

the bridge they took the ferries out and put in the bridges the Deer Creek Bridge would come into play then do you miss having the ferry not well sometimes no

the thing of it is you had to wait for that It was never on the side when you went down to cross. It was never on your side. Well, it was at times, but it seemed like you had to wait. I guess it was a 10 or 15 minute wait for it to go over and back. What was it, did it have a little engine then that ran it to pull it back and forth back then? No, it was all current driven.

Current driven. Yeah, they would have a wheel on the, ferry that changed the angle and they'd angle the ferry and the current would push against it and shove it across and vice versa when they go on it come the other way they changed it back so come the other way and in the fall of the air when the water was low and you had an upstream wind the wind would push the ferry up and it wouldn't operate so they had to put a winding cable on that that was the hand job. You turned the crank on the winding cable to get it to cross.

But you know, that's one of the things. You jumped out of your car or off your horse. And way you went, and helped. And you cranked on that thing because you wanted to get across to. Did you ever take cattle across it? Yes. That was a challenge. Now, I guess the best example on how you,

would describe that is if you took a stock trailer out in the middle of the field and tried to load a cow in it. That's basically what we're doing on the ferry with a herd of cattle. We did in the springtime we put fences so we could kind of guide them in. Yeah, run them in. In the fall of the year we just chased them on just the open prairie because they were ready to go home. Yeah. Did you have any jump off in that time? Occasionally.

We've seen it where calves get pushed off, and they actually gone underneath. You could hear them going on, they're rolling. They come out and blow water out their nose and swim to shore. They're amazing swimmers. In the fall of the year, when the water was low, a cow could swim across

as fast as the ferry would go. I don't look at me like I've told me a story because I've seen it. She would swim a little ways and they'd hit that rock bar and she'd come up a little bit and go a little faster and then jump in the river again

and keep going. Her and the she just landed down river a little further than the main cross. Than the rest of them. How about wildlife on the river? They love to follow the body of water, moving water. They have different animals.

Over your lifespan, I'm sure you've seen a few things. Yeah, the deer was, that was no hindrance for a deer to cross. They'd walk down and for any reason they would cross. And they say that the hair on like deer or, like, deer. moose is hollow. Yeah. And they float. Help them float.

Yeah. Powerful swimmers. How about cougars, bears, anything of that size? You quite often saw, well, not so much back in, the, you know, earlier times

because the farmers kept them pretty well shot off. But now you see quite a few bear along the river. I've never seen a cougar along the river, but they are there. But I, you know, I can't say as I saw one. When you were crossing the river on the ferry heading to high school, you graduated? Yes.

And what was, you know, we just came through, we're in the middle of COVID, and so graduation is very interesting this year for kids. When you graduated, what was your graduation like? Well, we never had any so-called graduation parties. We did meet at the lake one time. You know, it was sort of a casual party. But the old principal told me he didn't think I was going to make it. So I was supposed to party too hard. and lo and behold, I skinned through.

So, yeah, I graduated, and not much of a party, but... And then I went on to School of Agriculture. It took a winter school of agriculture. What did you think of moving to Vermilion? It was a good way to spend the winter. Did you live in the dorms there? Yep. Yeah, you were locked up.

He had one free weekend before Christmas and one free weekend after. You mean you went to school every day? No, no. But on the weekends, you still had to stay there. You weren't allowed to leave? Yes, you weren't allowed to leave. Really? Really?

What would happen if you left? Probably had to stay away. Really? No, that was part of the rules. That was no big deal, because there's lots of guys there in the same boat. That's interesting. I wonder when they changed that. Because, I mean, now, pretty much free rain,

You pick up and leave whenever you want? Well, it was the old DSA in Vermilion School of Agriculture, and that's one of their rules. And then when they went into kind of a college or whatever the regional college, that's when all the rules changed. When you look at back at your time in Vermilion, is there anything that sticks out, a memorable moment, a lesson learned, anything like that, a party time?

The best, and we all remember this, the dean at the college was kind of a, well, he had to teach a few guys a lesson. They were partied, and he kicked some guys out right towards the end of, you know, their season. So we didn't think that was fair, so the whole boys dorm, hauled him down to the sheep barn, and we dumped him in the sheep trough. Halled the dean of the school down? Yes, because we figured if we all did it, he'd have to kick us all out.

Safety in numbers. And I got an old friend, Ken Graham, that'll vouch for this story. He said there was about so much ice on the sheep trough when we dumped him in. Yeah, I can remember that. Did he talk to any after that? He was very nice to us all.

Did he reinstate the two? Oh, no, he couldn't do anything. Well, he couldn't do anything to us, really. Oh, wow. There you go. There you go. Safety in numbers. In your early years, did you play any sports?

Not so much. When the curling rink first came into Frenchman But, and, you know, that we were in our teen years, and I picked up the curling. I did. That was kind of a gentleman's sport, and I enjoyed the game, and it was fairly successful at it. Do you still curl? No. Did you curl for a while?

Yes, until about 1972. I actually, my team competed in the, you. Northern Saskatchewan Breyer playoffs, which we were pretty proud of getting that far. What was the first car you ever had? First car. It was a 76 mercury. 76 mercury? Yeah.

I'm going to buy me a mercury and cruise it up and down the road? Oh, that was a nice car. Well, you know, because we lived in the same yard as that man. mom. They had a car and wife and I could most of the time use that when they had to. So, you know, there is not a lot of money to spend on, you know, vehicles on that. So we made deal with, you know, mom and dad's car and we traded off driving it. Then when we could afford to buy our own car, we did. But we saved and built our house first and those kind of things. Speaking of your wife, when did you meet her?

When did I meet her? No, we're married in 68, so, well, I met her through another old girlfriend. Thank God I didn't end up with her, but yes. This was a good occasion when I met Marilyn. Do you remember your first date? Yeah. Do I need to go in again? I don't know.

Do you care to share? No, she was at a dance that I was at in the fine little hamlet of Hillbond. And, yeah, she was with some other people, well, her cousins. And so I moved right in. The great mover I have, eh? Anyway, yeah, that's, that's, we, I took her home from the dance. And that's, everything went smooth after that. How long was it until you asked her to marry?

Wasn't long. What would it be, about a year and a half or so. Where did you get married? And married in Lloyd, Lloyd. Where in Lloyd? United Church. And did you have a big festivity afterwards? Yeah, we, you know, that was the thing about it.

Well, I needed to get this woman married off because mom and dad were heading to California, and this was right after Christmas. So I needed to cook real bad. So we got married on the 6th of January, and it was 50 below. Sixth of January minus 50. What did she think of that? Oh, we stayed warm. night. No, that was, well, we went into Lloyd to decorate the car and my friends were the best men.

And we went in dressed in our coveralls and sweater and big boots to do all this, you know, getting the car ready. And we went into a restaurant and told the waitress in there that we were in a hurry. We're getting married. And we were in our farm coveralls. Did she give you a strange look then? Oh, yeah, but we got the job done. Did you take a honeymoon? Oh, a short one, about a week.

Where'd you go? Into the mountains. Drive then? Yep. Went to Banff and Jasper and then stopped at my son. sisters and Hinton and then back home. It wasn't very long. How was Baff and Jasper back then compared to now? Well, it was, it was slow. You know, there wasn't many people, you know. What did you do when you were in Baff? Just go for heights? Just, no, just hung out. Yeah.

Saw the scenery, that's about it. Going back to when you were a kid, I think you guys had a hired man when you were growing up. Yeah, there was one there pretty well all the time. All the time. Yeah. When you were in harvest season or doing hay, could you be talked a little bit of with that? I read in your family history and I think it was your, either your dads, maybe earlier than that, about having people from Onion Lake coming to help and camping on the hills and having,

having a whole group of people just hammering away. Do you remember that? Yeah. Yeah, we had an all native thrashing crew all the time, as long as I can remember. And the old fellow that was there for years, Dad would get a contact with him and said, well, we're about ready to start thrash. He would get a bunch of boys together and bring him down. Yeah, and they camped in tents, and that's where they stayed. They ate at our house breakfast, noon, and lunch, and then supper. So mom was busy cooking meals for them. And then they'd just stay until the job was done, so they'd stay for them?

Most of the time, yes, unless you've got to rain, and then they left. But they were more reliable than what they are now. they come and cut it. You know, that was a good money for him. Speaking of money, how much would that cost your dad to have a crew come in or did you ever talk to them about it? There was probably about a dollar an hour they paid at that time, which probably was top wages for farm labor at that time.

What was your first job? Did you stay on the farm at all times, or did you go experience something different for, you know, your early years? No, I was on the farm all the time. Never worked out at all. And we never got paid as such, but we always had, we were able to keep our own livestock.

When we started doing chores at, you know, at a level where we'd replace the hired man, we were given a heifer or something like that, And we, that grew into a herd of cows, and we had a peg or two between us, and we got the money for that. So, yeah, we never actually had to borrow money from Dad to go to town to, you know, if we wanted to go out to a dance or a movie or something, we always had our own spending money. What was one of the first movies he used to go to or wanted to go to? Couldn't tell you. Couldn't tell you?

No. I heard there was, I was talking George Mann on one of these a couple weeks ago, and he was telling me about a, what did they call it, there was a cowboy, there was two movie theaters in Lloyd, and one of them showed cowboy pictures. Do you remember that? I remember the two theaters, but we lived quite a ways out of town, so we didn't frequent it very often.

How long of a trip would have been to get to Lloyd to watch a movie then? Well, it was about an hour, at least that. hour to drive to town at that time. And the roads were so unreliable that you didn't always fall over the road lones to get there. You'd run through a pasture or something like that. Really? When you talk about unreliable, you're talking snow, mud, rain, everything? All three. So if the weather was bad, you're best just to stay at home. Right. Wintertime, very seldom went anywhere except over. here to the Butte and a lot of times that was on saddle horse or little ponies on a cutter or something

like that. Now you mentioned going cross country to get off the road to wherever you got to get to. Do you remember times or is there a time that sticks out when you're like, well, I guess we're going through the hills? Well, basically, yes. That happened all the time. Well, not all the time because you were careful when you left home. When was the time that you were like, man, the roads are way better and you could actually rely on them. Do you remember that time? Like when, you know, I was saying on the way out here, it's like,

holy man, the roads were, they're doing construction right now on the highway or the road coming out to Frenchman Bute and if you didn't have a pickup truck, I'm not sure you'd get through it. When was the time and that I guess is unusual for me because now

even when they're doing road construction, usually they got, you know, a lane paved for you and you got nothing to worry about. When you were growing up, when was the time, or do you remember maybe an instance where all of a sudden you went, you know what, we can rely on the road in wintertime or in the middle of a rainstorm because the roads have gotten so good? Not that many years ago. They built the number three highway from Elker to the present crossing at Deer Creek Crossing at on the river here. And that was, that opened up our part of the country. They did,

they did build a grid through Green Street and then that way too. And that was in, uh, oh, late 50s or early 60s. And, and that was pretty well an all-weather road. But there was a lot of Sometimes, you know, you just knew you couldn't, they weren't possible, so you didn't go. And nobody had a four-wheel drive then. It was all two-wheel drive and not that much of a mud truck. And not to mention no cell phone, so if you got stuck out in the middle of some storm, what would you do? Well, you didn't go out in the middle of the storm if you're smart. No, if you got stuck out there, it was on foot.

You'd be, if you wanted to walk, oh, that was it. Most people had a good shovel, and they shoveled a lot of snow to get out. Growing up as kids, well, and mom and dad still have a grain shovel. Packing in the vehicle at all times for shoveling out in case you hit the ditch in the snow. And grandma was religious with that as well. Yeah, you had to make sure you had your shovel with you. Nobody else was coming to get you. Nobody else was coming to get you.

And if you had the half-ton truck, you shovel the snow in the back for a little more weight. You could get further into the snowbag before you got stuck. Yeah, the greatest thing for us was a good four-wheel drive. And we didn't get one until late 70s, I guess. And that was something. Yeah. Yeah, we had a great time going through mud with that snow. How many years have you been married now?

Well, it's 52 years and seven months. 52 years and seven months? Yeah. How have you made a marriage work for 52 years? Well, I had the right partner, you know. A wonderful partner, very supportive of everything I did. And you've got to have respect for one another. You know, when they say enough's enough, well, it is enough.

You know, you've got to grow up. Yeah. 52 years is pretty special. That's something that just doesn't happen every day. Well, yeah, like you've got to have the health to stay, you know, living for 52 years. And you've got to have some understanding about people to be able to live with them. And, you know, you've got to be understanding with your wife and her with me. and we've never had any real major arguments that I can remember.

How about kids? You had two. Yep. Have two. I shouldn't say had to. You have to. What did parenthood teach you? Oh, what is that? Oh, patience. You know, and, well, we were busy when the kids were growing up. And Marilyn had a great, she had more to do with raising the kids than I did. But as time went on, you know, she took him to the figure skating lessons and the music lessons and that.

And then we actually could enjoy what they did afterwards. I guess the thing about our son was quite musical and he's gone on to he's got his doctor to music. You know, we're proud of that accomplishment. Our daughter Heather has got a good life, go to a good farm. She got two wonderful boys, a couple good grandsons that we get a lot of enjoyment out of. So, yeah, you have to, you know, it was fun watching those kids grow up and what they're doing now. When your son goes to New York City, did you go visit that? We did.

Yeah, we did. He met us at the airport the first time down. It was a good thing he did. We had to turn around and gone home. What did you? Oh, I didn't like New York to start with. I mean. But now we just, it's.

It's a wonderful place to visit. So you've gone multiple times then, obviously. Yes. And, of course, he was there, and he knew the place, and he noted all the high spots to show us. What was one of the biggest, no, maybe not biggest, what's one of the, coming from here and then going to New York City, what's maybe one of the biggest things that just stuck out today

that you couldn't believe when you got there? Well, I suppose if I had a day or two to think about it, I could. But you know, there's just a lot of people in the way the city is so crowded. There's on downtown New York, there's shops at the bottom of all those high-rise buildings. And a lot of the people live above them. Great place to eat. A lot of wonderful restaurants. Actually, the people were friendly if you needed to ask directions to some place.

They were, you know, I was surprised that they, how accommodating they were. You know, what else? I don't know. It's a big change of scenery from where you currently are, that's for sure. Well, scenery is, you know, looking at the wall, the brick walls. You know, it's kind of like going down a mountain valley. You just see the walls around you. When your kids were growing up, what was some of the lessons you tried to instill in them?

Well, hard work and honesty. And they worked hard at what they did, and they were good kids. In your life, what was maybe one of the biggest lessons you learned? Well, I guess Dad had what they call sermons in a second. He even had a way at telling you things with not a lot of words, but he meant quite a bit. And if something's worth taking, it's worth asking for. You know, there's a lot of thought, well, you can go in if that. And his advice about court, and he said, well, Faint Heart never won Fair Lady.

You know, those kind of things. That's very true, isn't it? Yeah. Was he the biggest influence on your life, you think, then, your father? Yes, probably. No, all the time growing up, I didn't give it much. thought but yes he gave us a great example to live by currently I've mentioned it once before we're going through this COVID lockdown pandemic in your lifetime

you ever seen anything like this before no and what's your thoughts on it then you're you got many a year on me and seen many a thing well there's many a There's only an epidemic that's gone through, the old timers talked about the 1919 flu. And then there was several other different flus recently, the N1 flu and that. Nothing has shut down the country like this flu has. And there was, when we came home from holidays in the end of February, they were still letting playloads of Chinese come into the country where China was the hot spot for it. And that, they should have been shut down.

They shouldn't have been that plane loads of people coming in. I think that would have helped a lot. the fact that we're not going to see the end of this. Nobody can say when it's going to end. Nobody can say when it's going to end. As we talk, there's more cases coming on all the time. But, you know, if you're not in, you don't go into big crowds, I think that's a safe way to be. We can kind of, you know, you know, live a kind of pretty normal life if we just sort of stay in our own area. How about the riots going on down in all the states and everywhere else?

Over your time, have you any seen anything or heard about anything that's remotely resembled this? Well, every time we hear, we've heard lesser riots, but they get more severe now. Now, as time goes on, people won't, well, I guess it's, you know, the, whatever I want to say, the minority seem to want to get more attention. It's in the old days, you know, we just sort of live and let live. You admire a guy for what he would do, not what he wanted somebody to give him. You know, anybody that worked hard and was always treated as a better citizen than somebody that, you know, had his hand out for stuff. I want to talk quickly about Lloyd Minster, as it is a Lloyd Minster Archive's interview,

and I've talked a lot about your life and your lessons learned, kids, family, everything. You were the president of the Ag Society? The Lloyd Exhibition. Yeah, Lloyd Axe. What brought you to take on a position like that? Well, you know, I just come in as a new director. I took my father's place. and you sit around the board meeting and you have ideas and discussions.

And I guess it's, you know, people recognize you're making a contribution and figure you'd make a good leader. I've had, over the years, I've been quite a few different organizations. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging about things. No. I don't want to. But I ended up being the president or whatever, a lot of different organizations. But each thing you belong to, each group you belong to, you learn a little something on your way by.

And the old fellas, you want to listen close to what they're saying. a meeting and how they person with a good idea presents it his idea in a kind of a well-spoken way and you can see how he influences the rest of the board and that's kind of what i've tried to uh base my model on is think about think hardly about what the problem is they have and what the solution is for it. And you'd be surprised how many people, if you have a good way of expressing yourself, how that you can have a lot of influence on the board.

When you go back to your first board you were on then, Tom, what was the first, when you were sitting there listening, What was the aha moment? Do you remember sitting there listening to a guy and going, wow, that was incredible or smart or just? The one thing I really brought to mind is on the exhibition board and listening to this is me of names, A. Anyway, and he very carefully explained his position

and the boat was taken. And of course, it went the way he wanted it to. And that was, well, I'm going to try to do what he's doing or follow him. So to emulate him, was it preparation? Was it how you said things? Was it your word choice? Was it all to the above? Well, we want to think about what you're going to say

and try to get a plan before you start talking. it's not easy sometimes to be coherent to what you want to say. I find that really interesting. That's why I stick on it, because really good leaders can get their ideas across to the simplest of people. They can make you see what they have envisioned, and they use usually just words to do it. Yes.

and then you see this happen a lot of time in town hall meetings people that are quite thoughtful of what they say and presented in a decent sort of a way don't get too hostile about things and it seems like cooler heads prevail a lot of times you must get mad at a public meeting hard not to sometimes hard not to sometimes

yes what's the biggest thing you've seen change in Lloyd and area since you were young oh that's very difficult to say because everything has gotten so bigger faster pace spend more money that's

on on these community things it costs so much much to run, to keep things up. Now like this little museum here, we spend a lot of money to keep it going. And we have to be very careful how we spend in order to have a strong organization.

We feel, and I feel that you have the money before you spend it. You don't deficit spend. And then on a deal like this, you'll always have a pretty strong, like we'll always have a strong museum if we're careful of our spending. And like on the exhibition board, they've gone into debt fairly heavy. And that's a millstone around their neck. It stops the growth.

and you're running the risk of losing a lot of things you've put into it. That's going to bring me to politics. Don't get me started on that. Well, I'm a young guy, and I don't know about every other young guy, but until I had kids, I didn't give too much thought, too much thought to politics. You know, we've lived through, um, pretty unbelievable time in my life span as far as world war world wars go or wars in general the ability the ease of getting food job you name it the quality of life

around my lifespan has been very good unbelievably good and as time goes on here and I have children I start to pay attention to politics more and more and more and more and it confuses me more and more and I wonder over your lifespan you've seen many a politician come through you've seen many uh crisis XYZ come through is what do you think about the current state of affairs with our politicians well most of them have never had a good farm background where they had to earn their money you know, how to, well, where does money come from? It comes from hard work and good management.

Where does government money come from? It comes from those taxpayers, and the more they can snowball us on what they're doing. They're runaway with their spending. And that's not what we need. It's good, thoughtful spending on what's most needed, and it's not necessarily given it to some interest group that's got a strong lobby and it's been living off the prevails of the rest of the country.

Is this as bad as you've seen it then? Yes. This is the worst I'd seen. As years have gone on, has it considerably got worse over time then? It appears to be, yes. Okay, I have a few more questions, and then I'll wrap it up here. These are just easy. Well, I say easy. I'll put you on the spot here.

If you could go back to your 20-year-old self and give some advice, what would you impart? What would I impart 20 years old? Well, careful spending. and they encouraged us at that time or later on to invest in registered retirement savings plan and that's now they're tax and weigh most of the money we saved for our retirement

we should have put away a few dollars every year or every month to our own personal retirement plan. The taxes would have been paid on that and we'd have been better off now than we are. I'm not complaining about not being well enough off, but that would be a very smart move to have your own retirement plan, finance your own retirement plan.

I guess I'm about three years now, three or four years. And instead of retiring to the Bahamas or the couch where you sit there with your feet up, you are out here every day volunteering? Yes. Is that your form of retirement then? Well, it's something to do. It keeps your mind active. And there again, we're just.

dealing with a lot of personalities. We're all volunteers, and we're trying to make, well, trying to make it a better place. That's, I guess, one of the things that I've always tried to do is make where I live a better place. Leave it better than you found it. Leave my farm in better shape, leave the community in better shape. I think that's very good advice for anyone. We got a situation here that we're trying to cope with, and it's very easily solved if we just come together and work together,

and we can solve it without a lot of difficulty. But, you know, people, if it isn't their idea, it's not a good one. So we've got to sell our ideas. and trying to make it better. This little museum has grown. We can be proud of it. We're rated as one of the best small-town museum in the province, and that doesn't come without hard work and careful management.

What's the biggest achievement over your lifetime? Two good achievements. I was, wife and I were honored by the Saskatchewan Herford Association. We were 2007, I think,

no, 2000. Anyway, we're given the the commercial breeder award for the Canadian Herford Association for the Saskatchewan Erfurt Association, the premier breeder for Saskatchew.

It was something you know you can't buy. It's a recognition for what we've done. And then I awarded the Hall of Fame and would miss your exhibition, I think it's three years ago now. I hang on the Hall of Fame. Which is pretty cool. That's another thing that's, it's a, yeah, I'm proud of that. A lot of hard work when in, it's a combination of the life's work.

Yeah. And it's so nice to be recognized for what we've done. What was it about cattle? Like, why cattle? Why cattle? Why not? I don't know. Trees and farming, or trees and farming, trees and lumber or steel or.

Well, I like to work with livestock. We started out, you know, showing with forage and all that sort of stuff. But we just got buzzed. If the audience can hear in the background, that is a hummingbird. We've been getting buzzed by hummingbirds this entire hour. And there's a hummingbird feeder just sitting up above us. And hummingbird's got to be one of the most mesmerizing animals in the world. My grandma used to hang one of those hummingbird feeders outside her front window.

And as kids, we'd sit and watch them all the time. And they haven't gotten any less memorizing as you get older. They're a very unbelievable animal. Yes. But sorry, going back to cattle or livestock. Yeah. No, we were involved with 4H. and we always like to have quality.

So you've got to show your cattle and compete to see how you're doing. And yeah, we thought we were doing all right. We started out with straight Hereford's and then got into crossbreeding. I'd go to the fall show and see these other guys' cattle. And I think, well, I got good enough one of that. Anyway, I brought him to town and showed six years, and I won the champion three years out of the six. Three out of the six? Yeah.

So I was happy about that. I knew we were on the right track on what we were doing. But it's one of those things, well, it's just like a hockey player, it goes out and scores goals. Well, you know, you're a calibrator, and you go out and win prizes. It's the same thing and enjoyable. Well, I'll give you one final question before I let you go. Is there anything left on your bucket list that you want to do? Not really.

I think I've done what I set out to. Well, I appreciate you sitting down and imparting some wisdom and telling some tales from your life. Is there anything else you'd like to share on here before I let you go? No, I think we've, well, you know, we could cover a few other things but we've kept it a you know on a pretty good level so far so well I'm curious now no no no we're not okay well I appreciate you sitting here Tom it's been very enjoyable well I hope that what we had to say it makes sense I think it does well thanks

quite welcome hey folks thanks for joining us today if you just stumbled on the show please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix.

Until next time. Hey, Keeners. I got to give a couple shutouts today. First to Dustin Garrett, he said, Jesus, I'm exhausted. It took me two and a half hours to finish from all the pauses to catch my breath. and re-listened to a part so I could make sure I was hearing correctly or understanding properly. That was great, forcing me to broaden my horizons some more.

Thanks, ma'am. And then also my buddy from Bow Island, Curtis Clark, said, this was a great listen, Zumer. It took about two and a half hours for me to get through after I kept pausing to look up people and books. But he had a big smile on his face. They're talking about Vance Crow. That was the last episode where we got into some heavy stuff. I'm super cool guy from St. Louis.

Anyways, if you haven't listened to Vance Crow, I suggest you go back and take a listen. Thanks to those boys for listening. Now, to the rest of you, get back to work. We'll see you Monday, and if you're the champ who's on holidays, probably, what do you do on holidays, champ? I don't know. You've probably got your feet up on the desk somewhere else. I guess you can leave them there today, all right? We'll catch up to you guys Monday.

So everybody stay safe, stay warm, and we'll catch up to you next week.