Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #23 - Roger Brekko

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Originally from Moose Jaw SK. We discuss the early days of his childhood, how you don't need money to have fun, working in different industries in different areas to pick up skills that can be useful across industries, his early days in Lloydminster including developing Mount Joy & finally his career as the City Commissioner of Lloydminster.  Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Glenn Healy. Hi, this is Braden Holby. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hi, this is Brian Burke. This is Jordan Tutu. This is Keith Morrison. This is Kelly Rudy. Hi, this is Scott Hartnell.

Hey, everybody. My name is Steele-Fer. This is Tim McAuliffe of Sportsnet, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Hump Day. Happy Wednesday. Hump Day. Hope everybody's having a great week.

It has been, well, the weather's been fantastic. It's been hot. The AC, we finally, when we, moved into Lloyd five years ago, we bought a house with AC in it. And in the first summer, it crapped out. Like, I mean, in the first, like, two weeks, didn't even get to enjoy it. And we finally bit the bullet, you know, this start of this summer. So five years later.

And last night, man, it was worth every single penny. So if you're sitting there sweating profusely, I feel for you. But I can't relate right now because at the house, I tell you what, it's freaking awesome. I'm not going to lie. Now, before we get to today's episode, let's get to today's episode sponsors, Jen Gilbert and team for over 45 years.

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Let's get on to that T-Barr 1, Tale of the Tape. Originally from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, he graduated with an engineering degree from the U of S was City Commissioner of Lloyd Minster, a volunteer, family man, and community pillar, talking about Roger Brecco. So buckle up, here we go. It is November 22nd, 2020. I'm sitting across from Roger Breco. So first off, thanks for coming in and sitting down with me for a little bit. You're more and welcome, Sean.

So where we love to start with these is, you know, you're not originally from Lloyd. So Moose Jaw area-ish. I was curious about maybe discussing where you grew up, maybe some of your early memories growing up as a kid. and we'll just see where it goes from there. Okay, well, being a Moose Jaw boy, for 12 years we lived from 49 to 61 in Moose Jaw. And so it's a baseball town, and we delivered papers for the leader post, and that was our money, and we didn't get allowance.

And so for the ball team, they had a minor league, no, little league set up. And so we started a minor league. and I remember selling draw tickets to my customers. I had about 75-liter post-customers, and when you collected, I'd also ask them to buy a raffle ticket. And so we bought our uniforms. That's how we got going. And lo and behold, by the fourth year that I was there,

we could beat the Little League. And so I became a pitcher. And in 61, we moved to Beachy, Saskatchewan. My father was about 35 and started farming, renting everything and cattle and that. And that summer, they built it to me. And all I did was pitch baseball for one or two months. And the strange thing about Moose Jaw was they were a real ball team and a football team, but hockey. We played in the old outdoor rinks and eventually under the saddle-shaped rink that everybody

he talks about, but their hockey caliber was not that great, but baseball was very good. A couple of guys, one of the guys that I pitched was he ended up in the American League eventually, but of course moving to the farm. Well, let's stick with Moostrad just for a sec. So you live there for essentially 12 years. 12 years. Yeah. Now, being from this part of the planet, all I hear about is the caves and all the tourist attractions.

Growing up, what did you remember about such things? Were they that big of a deal back then? Well, they weren't that big of a deal back then. We knew about High Street and the rum runners that came up from the States and all the stories. But, of course, they hadn't developed the tourism side of it. But for a young boy in Moose Jaw, of course, back then, for example, I played football. It was a big kid for my age, 14-900 league. and I was playing when I was 11 years old.

And I would get on a bus, and it was about a mile and a half down town. We played under the lights. I took my ball team and my sons to show we actually played under the lights before back in the 50s. And they had great football players. Our neighbor, one of the boys we played with, Dave Inglare was a mathematician. The other fellow, Gene was. the fastest half back. He ended up plays the hilltops and eventually

the Saskatchewriders. But hockey, it wasn't so much. So you jumped on your bike and you rode to the ball games. Dad was working. Mom was looking after the house and I had an older brother at the time. And

basically you did your own entertainment to go down to the Moistraw Creek and boat in some old bathtub or something. Life was good. That was fun back then? Well, we had a bathtub. We fought, well, you know, golfing was something that wasn't heard of, but we found some old bamboo shaft golf clubs in the garbage.

And there was a, we were out in 970 Albert Street, and it was a blank field to the west. And so we would golf back and forth, 500 feet with these golf clubs there. So we did get to do some other sports, but we didn't have a lot of money back then. Well, let's, let's, you say, Golfing wasn't that big back then. What do you mean by that?

Well, I think it was considered to be an expensive sport. We would get our balls by walking out at the golf course, so by the coolies on the north side of Moose John, pick up balls in the rough, and then we'd bat them, come home and bat them, because we only had like a seven iron and maybe a three iron or something. So I guess it was, to those that golfed, it probably was. But, you know, baseball was so big.

We had a coach that started our team. We eventually won the championship, 12 and under. And, you know, he was a welder at CPR. He made our stand for a whole batting balls off. And he also got me going. I used it on my grandchildren, actually, this summer. You drill a hole in a baseball and run a little stamps through it in a rope, swing this go round and round.

And we broke our coaches, and knows about two or three. times in Moose Jaw. So when I do it, I put on the hockey helmet for my grandchildren. But you know, you can curve it, dip it, slow it down, speed it up. And, you know, we didn't have batting cages. We didn't have that fancy stuff. But that's, we played. We played everyday ball. Of course, Moose Jaw is a little warmer in the Valley. And compared to Lloyd Minister, I would say they get another month or two ball, and it's usually instead of 70 above, it's 80 above. So ball was very big there. Explain to me, you drill a hole through the baseball and tie a rope to it. Yeah, you'd put a... So then you throw it? No, you just swing it round and round and round and you line the

boys up. You could put about five, six boys on it and do you know, you run on a pretty sense. So you've got a pole? No, you just off your hand. You swing the rope like this. And as it comes by you, you've got to have your bat ready and so I can put it high or low, whatever. Ah, I. I'm just. I got to think quick. Like baseball is about real quick swing, eh? Yep. And so as soon as that ball comes around the corner, you've got to be figuring where it's up and what's the coach doing.

Is he bringing it down or bringing it up? So, you know, like I say, that does probably a better, better than a batting cage in a way because the coach could, if you're a good hitter, even our good hitters would struggle sometimes. Because you can move that, you can dip it so fast or make it go up. And there wasn't, we weren't supposed to slow sliders in, but I threw my arm out when I was 12. But when I went back that year and just pitched all-sart ball, but I was in, Moistro had a senior ball team. Americans would come up, a few of them would play on that team, and played Regina, Madison Hat, Gallagher.

And I was in Waska, Sue, and the fella up there was a pitcher. And he saw me practice, and we carried their ball gloves wherever we went. We went to Lake for a week, eh? We'll ask us to sue, and he showed him how to throw a slider. So I had a mean fastball and a slider. And it would get those guys, go home, the only guys in the All-Star Ball could hit. There was two big hitters in Saskatoon,

and I think they beat us maybe two to one or one-nothing, but, you know, it was very competitive, and you had the temperature, like compared to coaching here, when I coached baseball here and got the boys playing, I wore a ski jacket all the time until you got warmed up. Just different temperature. But you know, our boys,

Mitch, my oldest, youngest son, had the fortune come through. We started ball for the oldest boys five years younger, Chad. And baseball, we'd play Maidstone and Silver Lake and Small Town Spiritwood and that. and we'd have close games, but they didn't have very good baseball program.

But we worked at it, and of course the next son's five years younger. We hosted the Saskatchewan, I guess it would be provincials, and we came in force. And that just tells you that given the opportunity of our boys, they're just as talented as the ones in the south, although there was an old saying we always had even in Moose Jaw. The only difference between an American ball player and a Canadian one, 40,000 ground balls a year. It's repetition, repetition, repetition. And, of course, if you've got the weather to do it.

And it's a sport that you don't need a lot of money for the kids, see? And so I was pretty proud of always Mr. Boys. Because we put, the first team, Chad took, we went down to Kendrously, played a Bantam team. No, we played a Pee-Wee team. We're Bantam, first year Bannon. And the beat is about 17 to 3. So we run an ad in the paper and said,

bring your friend out in your body and your ball glove because I come from a ball town. And this was a little embarrassing. So the oldest boys, they learned. They played good ball. And bottom line is, you know, in five years, we had shale and the diamonds and upgraded them. The first year, we just said,

I said bring a shovel and some players and that will fix the old Legion ballpark up and get it usable. But five years later, we had top run. So, you know, Regina has a real tough, top occasion. Those guys play a lot of baseball. Good ball players down there. It's a student, too. But when we could match up with those guys in Lloyd Minister, that was probably one of the happiest days of my life. Is building the ball program?

Building the ball program, yeah. So it's, that was a nice thing about Lloyd Minster because... You skip over one of the things, too, Roger. Like, you go against a team, something we've had to do here for a very long time. You're not only going against, they get more ball and maybe better facilities, but on top of that, you're going against a way bigger population. Oh, yeah. But, you know, the population, I learned very, you know, come from Beachy,

He was about 200 people when we were there. We had, we were, we ran, we won five Southern championships in provincial hockey. The bombers? The Beechy bombers, yeah. I actually played in Bantam. I played a game with them and they had the Bentley boys, I think was the old one. They played defense in, you know, I didn't play a whole bunch in that game, but, but I soon found out. They had some damn good players.

Back then, the Beechie Bombers. I remember University of Saskatoon would come down, Saskatchewan, University of Saskatchewan. And our bombers beat him. The University of Saskatchewan would come down to play the Beechy Bombers? Yes, maybe once you're, you know, a special. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the arena was always full. That was your entertainment in small town and wintertime.

You know, A, that, can you imagine? Well, you never see that anymore. I mean, like a university team come through and play a senior team, let alone a junior A or a dub team maybe, right? Well, we've sure tried it in Lloyd Minster because of the border, right? We've tried the football and hockey. We've managed some inter-provincial, but it's, I think back then, there was more of an appreciation for sports

because there obviously, there wasn't that much TV around. And I think, you know, we had two stations in Beachy, one was snowy, and the other one was snowier. So, and of course, no game. Typical small town Saskatch. So, you know, we put chains on the old truck, and we had a dugout. I had a KB International in 1949, and off we go between hunting jack rabbits and jack lighting and then go skate a bit in the daytime.

That was our entertainment after you do your chores. So, you know, it was probably a good. thing because you were more focused because man we love we love that hockey and if you win a few trophies score of the forward started off as a goalie but it was a little boring and especially in outdoor rinks when you're freezing your butt off on the other end of the ring you want to be moving you want to be moving so so that didn't last very long but I'll tell you in Beechi they hired they're allowed two imports and one of the parts that played with a senior team would coach minor hockey. So I learned more about hockey

in one year in Beachy than I learned 12 years of Moostrow. And it was really, you know, you learn how to check properly, do the old hip check and flip things over. And of course back then, my favorite check the old hip. Yeah. That is a lost art form now. Yeah, it's the smallest defenseman could really do a good job. Small defenseman. Yeah. Yeah. No, and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, We had Northland hockey sticks in. They were light. But you had to buy them yourself. Of course, we didn't much money.

So if you got one of those a year, that was, you know, for a forward, that was a great. No slap shots because you'd break them. But we had Sherwood Park. Wood clubs. I think the Legion bought them for us. And what were they? They were Sherwood. Sherwoods.

Oh, Sherwoods. Okay. Yeah. The Mayton Quebec. Yeah. The wood stick. The wood sticks, yeah. So our first helmets, the Legion bought them.

I think I was probably, oh, I'm guessing 13 or 14, maybe 14 years old. All we get these little helmets. And so it was, but they really looked after you. You know, we had cows and pigs and dad, we were 16 miles from town, so dad couldn't afford to drive into town. And so I stayed with grandma. And the coaches were really good people that had been, established farmers. We drove us all over. So we played all over the, we had seven teams,

Beachy, Kyle, Lorburn, DeMaine, Milton, Riverhurst. And now when I took the boys down for baseball, one team, those seven communities now form one ball team. And so, you know, there was still quarter-section farmers around when I I was raised. The river school unit was, I think in the 40s was about 3,500 kids. Today that school unit is probably like 500, maybe 350. That big time change for farmers all over. So you can see with sports. We drove all over then, but the towns were closer. And so now they travel a long ways for games day. And I was fortunate. We had juvenile back in those days. days, but in

grade 12, they started the Junior B League in Saskatchewan, Melville, Saskatoon Max, Humboldt, PA, Outlook, the team we played for, and it was 60 miles,

so we had to drive 60 miles for practice. And, of course, by then I was, I had driver's license, and I would drive sometimes, but there were neighboring coaches and farmers would help pick up and take you out there. So we traveled all over Saskatchewan in wintertime. I think we never missed the game.

Storms, we would come home with shovels and clean up the road a bit. But it was certainly an opportunity because, like I said, there was only six NHL teams in, and there was a lot of competition for the, you know, the Weyburn or Estevan or Sassadun Jr. blades. and so we probably played a pretty good level of hockey considering the resources we had. And I think that's just an attribute saying that you don't need to take a lot of money to do things, but you've got to be focused on what you do.

Let's talk about money for a second. You mentioned way, way back at the start of this that you didn't have a lot of money growing up. What did your parents do, and what was growing up like, like where you live in, not in a fancy house, but that's not the word I'm looking for,

but like give me an idea of growing up and some of the things you had in a house and just, you know, the means of what were at your disposal. Well, we, mom and dad bought a house. It was like a granary, and they renovated it.

I can remember them using a three-gallon pail, and dad would be downstairs, chip in the basement out because he put it up in Sinner Creek blocks to make it into real house and of course water and sewer came in

we had originally when I was a kid we had the big pale in the outhouse in the back alley and there were some stories about Halloween and those things I'll tell you well I'd love to hear what what would happen on Halloween

well sometimes they got hung up some of the power poles back then had metal cleats on them to climb up They would check probably once it was a fuse this night because they didn't have a lot of hydraulic lift trucks. So I don't know who would do it, but they would dump the odd bucket in the back alley and hang the can pail up on the power poles in the backyard.

But, you know, it was a, we saw water and sewer coming in, and I think it was about 1954. TV came in. And so I can remember running home from school. Of course, it's a ball town, so baseball was big. And we'd watch maybe an hour or half hour, whatever, over lunch hour. What? Mickey Mantle and all those.

Playing ball? Playing ball, yeah, in the playoffs. Because it's usually September. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's playoff time. And so that was a big thrill because it was before we had the TV, we'd sit Saturday mornings and listen to the radio. and high old silver, tauntle,

and a few radio shows like that were kind of our entertainment. So when the TVs come out, though, I can remember we didn't get one right away and we'd go across to the neighbors, and they'd get us to run out because back then spark plugs would sometimes cause a lot of static on the TV. And so they'd send us out to tell the guy to move on. I guess it was breaking up the TV. But no, so it was from dirt roads to concrete, water and sewer to, well, we had, I guess we had power when we were there. You had a power plant in Moistraw.

But the TV was a big. A big deal. Big deal, yeah. You mentioned the thrill of getting to run home and watch, you know, afternoon baseball. Do you remember, you know, coming from this part of the world, you've hit the nail on the head, right? Like, we come from a world where if you're a hockey player, you thrive because, I mean,

literally we're in snow and darkness for how much of the year, right? Like, you get, you talk about reps and, and, uh, very 100% with you. The more you do something, the better you're going to get at it, right? Just, it just makes complete sense. So here, hockey, ice, I mean, you go out to any pond now. She's froze over. You got the greatest rinkin' way you go, right? That's what us kids always grew up doing.

What was seeing for the first time major league baseball like for you? It's a very big deal because... Who was the guy back then? You're like, was it Mickey Mantle? Mickey Mantle and the Negro fellow. And it was the... Well, in playoffs, it's always... to talk,

I mean, if you think back then, you know, the sports that were available, that was something, eh? I mean, the hockey in wintertime was a,

was Saturday nights, that was all, that was every, what was done every Saturday night, watching, watching a hockey game, Foster Hewitt and the boys. But baseball and Moose job was,

you know, like I say, real big. And so... Are you talking Jackie Robinson? Senator, you talking about? Yeah, Jackie Robinson,

too, yeah. No. You know, that's a long time ago. We had cards. You know, it's strange you had mentioned that because as kids, we could buy a pop for five cents and I forget what the bubble gum was, but they had cards attached to the bubble gum, eh? And so we had not only, we had probably ball cards, more ball cards than we had hockey cards. And that was, that was, you know, you'd trade them and a little different than playing on a computer. But that's what we did.

kids. We, Saturday mornings, we'd go out and we'd play on Brown Street. It was a bus route. And it'd be packed down pretty good. So we, my first pads were bamboo pads. I got them from, we went to the Lutheran Church, and the kids were 14, 15 year old and they're growing up and that. And so their parents gave us their old hockey equipment. And so we thought we're in second heaven, because we actually did use catalogs and stuff like that. Those are not just stories. You have strapped on the... Oh, yeah.

So like for buying equipment, I waited for Santa Claus to get gold stick. And so when I was in kindergarten, dad drove a truck for CPR, delivered groceries to downtown. I knew the downtown like his back of his hand, eh? Anyways, he would drop me off with the skates at William Grayson School, an outdoor rink. And I'd skate to 3.30 or 3 o'clock when my brother Terry got out. He's 20 months older at me. And then he'd take the skates. So we obviously didn't have a lot of money for skates even, eh?

So we got secondhand skate, tube skates. And even in 61, I can remember 62, we were playing. and Kyle, and I played both small town, not enough players, so I played with a, should have been Bantam, so I might be able to be 14 years old. I played with the Bantam team, and then my brother was a midget, played with the midgets.

Can't use those words nowadays. U-18 and U-16 or, you 15, or whatever it is. So anyways, that winter, I lost two big toenails, frozen, you know, and they had these whole tube skates, and the asphalt,

I think it was asphalt tattoos, you get a puck on the end of that skate without a guard, without a very good toe on it, it hurt. But, you know, we, that was, we, we didn't get ice till December. It was all natural ice. And so I can remember in February, Beach is a little further south, and one of the fellows had a snow plane with a big propeller on it. And they'd back that up against the arena, open the doors,

and try to dry the ice off, especially if the bombers were playing, they would try to keep the ice as good as it could. But, you know, those farmers, I was around when they rebuilt the rink, they were jack of all trades. Boards were straight as a whistle, and it's all as this could be.

Say that again about the plane. What would they do? Oh, they built the boards, everything in the rink. You know, you get a Quonset-type building. Yeah. And it's all volunteers. Matter of fact, that's how they run the rink today is you or I would take a week and go in, flood drink, and then the kids have their

hockey, eh? Right. Because it's, I think they've got maybe artificial ice now, but it's pretty expensive, eh, so just. Well, coming from Helm, I know all about that. Yeah, no, so it's, it's, it's, uh, there's an opportunity there. And, uh, and, uh, they have adult hockey now as well, but it's, it's very, it learned a lot in Beechy. We,

you're from the farm and you'd know to build a rope tow for ski hills. Grade 11, I'm starting to ski, had these binders with cable bindings on a downhill skis. And of course, we never got to go to

BAMP or any place like that, but we wanted to build our own ski hills. So we used to make rope, halters and ropes out of binder twine. And I think the binder twine back then, had to be oh

well our hill was about 1,500 feet I'm guessing but I remember the guys when you twist rope together you have a cast iron reel it goes round and round and it's got three coils on the little hooks that you hook the binder twine to

and depending how long your binder twine that's how long you rope this and as you twist it you have a rope you twist it so the fellows being farmers and pretty ingenious, they welded three hooks on three tractors, rolled out, I don't know how many rolls of the bailing flying we had, but it was downhill and we had a hay rack on the very end for tension going up, you pull up the hill. And so they rolled out this rope, made their own rope. And of course,

the grade 11, I'm ready to go skiing, you know, guys, let's get it going. And you know, you know what? They said, this isn't tight enough. And they unwound the whole darn thousand feet of rope and rewound it again. But, you know, you learn how to improvise. So what do you use for a drive on that? Well, on the bottom, we had a smaller tractor wheel on a pulley and a little stand made. But how about the drive wheel up top? Well, we had a 51 Chevy half ton on the guys.

So we welded a dual wheel on it. And put the rope around the dual wheel. And then, of course, for safety, you had to put some kind of switch in there. So we rigged up a line from the spark plug to somewhere on the ignition there, tied in ignition to a cable, just a plug-in. And if you went through the plug-in or pulled it, the truck would stop. So when I came to Lloyd Minster, I became member Mount Joy. And there's a whole one.

And you brought the Chevy with you? Yeah, I brought the Chevy. I brought the ideas, though, eh? I'll tell you one thing about being raised poor, if you got a McLeod welder in a bunch of old scrap iron, like we never had snowmobiles or anything. So we had an old First World War of Harley,

and it had the motor cut out of it, of course, but two wheels on it, and what do you do? It had a brake handle, you know, and it kind of a disc brake in the front, but the motors cut out of it, and the suspension had the trapezoid springs on top, and it was actually pretty good. But it was three miles out to the spring

where our cattle were watered and they'd trap it down, so I would use it for checking on that. But bottom line, so how do you get this thing going? So, of course, we had a welder, so we had clutch out of a 54 Ford clutch plate, and then my sister's younger sister's tricycle, the big wheel kind of took a, fall and we used it. Well, it took the clutch plate and the rim of the tricycle bolted to the back

wheel of this motorcycle because the back wheel was good, eh? So now we got a big pulley. Of course, we couldn't afford pulleys. And what do we do for a motor? Well, we, that had two and three quarter horsepower pump engine, eh? Which ran go-carts, pretty good. And so we put it on a bevel. And so when you push the motor down, to tighten the belt up, right? And so I don't think we had to spend any cash to, we used all dad's stuff and tools in the welder. And so when you wanted to go for throttle,

we had 54 Shev and 54 Pontiac. And those things, we had the only stick shift in Beechy for a while. We had a stick between the dash and high gear because it would pop out high gear when you drove, eh? The last transmission I put in that It was grade 11 And the folks were down south

And I used that ball peen hammer To seal the boats off and that There's the last damn time I'm going to fix that car But anyways the The motorcycle We took out of one of those old shabs we had The choke They chokes in those old cars

You know, a six-cylinder flat-ed And we put it on the two and three-quarter horse power of motor So we had a break and we had a throttle. But we didn't have a good solid bar between the seat and the front, so it would wobble. But the thing would go 35 mile an hour, and I would check the watering hole. I broke horses for six years. You broke horses for six years?

Yeah, yeah, it was no money, so I got a shotgun for the first horse I broke, and eventually I got a saddle even. Just traded for your time. They gave you different things. Yeah, so, you know, we may not have a lot of money, but we had a lot of fun. We, we... But do you need to have money to have fun? No, you don't. You have more fun if you don't have money.

It's because you improvise and the pride and joy of whether it was making that go-cart. We had, I mean, kingpins in it, we put copper bushings in it. There again, my sister's a solid-tired wagon, those rubber wheels aren't very soft, eh? We put that on it. Of course, an old hockey stick. Get that two and three quarter horsepower of motor on there. You had to run as hard as you could. Just before you fell, you push with a stick,

and it'd go putt, pop, put, put. It'd go about 35 mile an hour. But the tie rods we made for it, you know, it's a regular, we knew our mechanics. And stove bolts don't last very good, though. They vibrate off, and so my brother's going to make a turn a mile down the road. and he goes sailing off into the bush

and so that was a big yuck yuck and a lot of fun hey that's that's what we spent our Sundays Saturdays doing eh after we do it chores so how did you get into breaking horses then is that just something you do you did on the farm and felt comfortable doing we farmed right in the edge of the Cotto Hills so

so it was all ranch land to the west okay so I I rode I rode and when you got an older brother he got to do drive the tractor or if there there's a chance of a hired man job. He got the cash. Roger was Malcolm and Cowell, and so I looked after cattle. So how many siblings did you have, Roger? Well, the two brother was 20 months older and then my sister, 12 months younger.

Younger. When I left for a university, mom started packing lunches all over again for her. And then four years later, they had another, our brother, Todd. So the two old of us, our names, Morley Cole, just recently passed away. He was the farm north south of Blackfoot, Lloyd Minster. Back in 61, when we moved to the farm, he moved to Lloyd Minster. And so, but anyways, Roger and Terry, we were called,

and he nicknamed us Rip and Tear, because we'd come out and we'd ride their steers and their pigs, climbing the bails. We were city kids. But I'll tell you, 12 years old, shot my first deer. you know, we did a lot of things. And, you know, not too many 12-year-olds of skinned deer.

At my father's funeral, we actually was just a make-up family out at the grave site in Lance Valley Cemetery at Beachy. The grandchildren there, and one guy's 11 years old, my daughter's son. And so I'm telling the story how we lived, or how mom and dad lived. It was because we put their ashes down for my mother and father. And I said, yeah, the first deer I shot was 12 years old. It was 22. Oh, because he thinks he can shoot this Mike or Max is my grandson's name.

So then all of a sudden I said, well, we, Dad didn't know how to butcher anything, and so I got the encyclopedias out. And so I butchered this deer up, and what's an encyclopedia? The kids nowadays don't know what a cyclopedia. are, but I said, well, that's your internet of the old school. You want to do something? You look it up an encyclopedia or a book, whatever, and where you go.

Did I hear that right? I get the second part about the kid not getting the encyclopedia. I mean, it was the last time you picked up an encyclopedia, probably a while. I certainly, certainly me. Did I just hear that correctly that you shot your first deer with the 22? Yep. And then you didn't know how to skin it, so you read an encyclopedia on how to do it? Well, I had, I had hundred rabbits, sold rabbit skins, so, you know, I could get 50 cents a hide

for a jackrabbit. So that kept me in shells. And so I knew how to skin. So, you know, we had a straw shed. I had to hang the deer up in straw shed. And I could do a whole, dress a whole deer at 12 years of age without a saw and pull the insides out through the tail underneath, put it all in the skin, tie it with bind or twine, and take it out to the disposal area we had for garbage.

And so, you know, at early age, you learn those things. But I never learned to make sausage until I met my wife, Trees, and her dad, Gregor Lerner. We learned how to make Lerner sausages, and that would have been the way to fly back when it's 12 years old. Because wild meat, I remember mom frying antelope especially, would get pretty wild tasting. Fry it with our gravy and onions and lots of vegetables.

and but deer sausage or antelope sausage would be probably a lot better. Now, going from, how big was Moose Job back when you moved at age 12? Oh, almost the same size as it is now. Yeah, 32,000. So was that a big deal for you back then? Like, were you guys excited to go to Beach? Oh, yeah. A farm, I mean, the first horse I got, Ralph Saturday in Saskatoon, Ralph Claypool,

had a bunch of horses from the previous owner. The previous owner, and we moved out to April 1st, I think it was. Snowed that day. Anyways, he had some arrangement with the previous owner that we had about a quarter section that was fenced and some pasture land. He had about 40 horses in there. And so just said, hey, we're taking over the farm now. You can have your horses when you, you know, dad was making arrangements for spring seating

and that. He said, is there any chance we could get one of those horses? And so I had ridden horses on a farm in Moose Jaw a bit. So when we went to the field out there, I took pale oats. And there was this nice mayor, brown mare. She was, I hope she was broke, because some of those horses weren't broke. I put a had a snaffle, snaffle, uh, bridle, you know, the one was a hook in her and, uh, put the bridle on her, she ate a few oats, gut on her. Turns out she's a trotting horse. I go back a mile and a half, or two miles to the farm where living had from this field, and I trotted, bounced all the way to, so that horse was a, uh, was the revelation of a whole bunch of opportunities for a 12-year-old boy. You know, what do you do with the horse? Well, we had

McLeod's catalogs back in those days, and they had pictures of harness. And in the farm that we took, we settled in, straw-lined house and all, but it did have a grudge, and it had some harness in there. So, mom and dad took some pigs down to Swift Current, and I thought, I'm going to try this trotting horse with a harness. So I'm, and I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll the harrow the garden was in the spring. So of course, the trotten horse is used to having two wooden stakes on the back flanks, eh? And so they don't rub

at all. So I got this horse going, and I had, you know, long reins, and I'm hooked her to harrow up, one section of harrows, go to the garden, but every time I turned the leathers with flack on the back of a horse, if you've ever been with horses, they're a little sensitive when

something started rubbing the back of the rear end. And so you turn a 90 mile an hour speed zone, you come down to the end of the garden, boom, and you're all of a sudden going the other direction. And so we learned how to harness a horse, and you figure it out how, you know, stop, go, whoa, whatever. Because in Moose Jaw, we had, I remembered when we had milk delivered by the pony and ice. So in Moose Jaw, when we were probably five years old, we'd run out to the street. The, I think the horse's name was Tony.

And the guy that run an ice machine, he would just whistle, and the horses would go to the next house, stop, and we'd run out, and we'd get some scrap ice. So you'd, you know, suck on some ice out of the Moose Jaw Creek. I think about that now, how good that was. But, you know, the milk was the same way. We had a little hole cut in our house. Dad had fixed up this house and put a little door on it, you know,

and they'd drop off, you leave your empty milk bottles there, and they'd drop off a couple of fresh ones. How good was that milk? Oh, it was good. Real milk. Wasn't homogenizing. I don't even know if I can remember what that was. Bright's used to have, Oten Hillman, used to have the milk cows and everything.

As kids, we'd go over there with Grandma and Grandpa. So I remember not the bottles by any stretch of imagination, but I remember going to the dairy farm all the time. Well, so the big change was when we went to the farm. Of course, then we didn't have any money. I think that had $2,000 and we left the city. We rented. got bought the old equipment,

overhauled a super six international, one is 12 years old with my brother, 20 months older. Got the valves done in town, of course, but dad wasn't much of a mechanic. How old are you and your brother at this time? 12 and 14. And or overhauling? Yeah, it was an international tractor.

Tractor. Yeah, yeah. We were, yeah. Do you find, as I'm listening to this, like, I was saying the other day, our kids are becoming kids for longer. Like we treat them as children for longer. I was just out with my son on intro to hockey.

He's only four. But a thing Morgan Mann had told me about six years just rings out when I'm on the ice with kids, right? Don't treat them like their little kids. Treat them like they're, you know, they're grown individuals. Oh, yeah. And build the drills so they're small for them

because they're small. But don't think of them as dumb, right? They're actually really smart, and if you just treat them that way, they'll catch you on to what you're doing faster and faster and faster and then they're way ahead of everybody else because by the time they've done it three, four times, I've cut on to what you're doing and you can continue to grow with them like that. And when I hear your stories that go, like 12, 14, I mean, I think it's impressive. It feels like at just a different time, well, it is a different time. But now you would never enlist. Well, I shouldn't say he never would. Maybe you would.

But right now I don't feel like a lot of people unless they're 12 and 14-year-olds in a whole lot. Well, you know, there's a... I think it's a matter of attitude. Like, we have three kids, two boys and a girl. The girl's the middle one. All three of them changed oil in our vehicles. And I can remember the motorcycles,

the boys fixed transmissions. They were probably 16 years old. Oh, they had a drive, yeah, so maybe 16, 70. But they, you know, they, you want to ride your bike, you've got to fix it. You got to learn how. I think it's a matter of attitude, because I remember the neighbors saying, they had a nice little Ford Escort, station wagon, and the kids never checked the oil and took the motor over it.

And I said, when the son was 18, he couldn't change the headlight. And I said, my friend, I said, Fred, you got to let the kids and encourage them and have patience with them and let them learn. Because they can, you know, my kids built our woodshed when they were, you know, 10, 12 years old. Put the roof on it and shingled it. And I know, because I remember I worked part-time hauling lumber for a carpenter just before I left Moose job,

11 years old. And, you know, you can do quite a bit at my grandson at 12 years old can do, but he's been asked and shown and encouraged, eh, in our family. So that's... That encouragement is a big part of it. Yeah, and of course we had equipment

that required maintenance. Now, I mean, you change the oil, but oil's dirty, I don't want to crawl underneath there. Well, when my daughter worked for Wickham landscaping, I can remember her. she could change oil or whatever and so if it rained out she could always stay in the shop

and change oil or do some things for the company and send the other boys home. But used to say farm boys were always and girls good to hire and as time's gone on that's not quite so

but it's because of the parents. They have the opportunity to farm to do a lot more stuff than but it's too easy to buy things and take it to town to fix it rather than you fix it, eh? And so I think we lost that. I know with the city, you hire a farm, they could drive a standard truck. There's no question about that. I mean, something as simple as driving a vehicle, but when it comes time to check the oil or whatever, if their parents are so important and raising you've got three young

kids and you know it's there's a reflection of you you don't do anything you're not going to do anything if you help them along and the more they can do you know my lifespan I wanted to learn I learned worked in electrical learn out why rewire motors I used your university years did mining learned all the mining did reports on the mining the stocks the whole bit and what younger people learn so quick. And you're right very much about a four-year-old, ten-year-old. Twelve-year-olds are very capable. I mean, we'd be out three miles riding the middle of nowhere. There was no emergency services, no cell phones or whatever. If I got bucked off a horse, it was a long ride home, a long walk home. And if you had a broken leg, it'd be even worse. But, you know, we did

those things so you learn risk management a lot better too having said that we did try some foolish things sometimes do isn't that part of being a kid though yep far growing up and having the opportunity to do that is probably you know so my daughter doesn't change oil now she's a she teaches physics grade 12 she's kind of science nut physics nut and uh but she learned to play piano and change oil and do a little bit. I come home from a council meeting. I remember when we were doing the flooring in the hardwood in the living room. I come home and it was all done.

Mike Strelchuk is their husband and Chelsea's down on the floor and they cut all the boards, put it in and looked damn good. I mean, they, you know, Mike was well-schooled. He had an uncle that was a carpenter, and he worked with him. when he was 12, 14 years old, they don't forget those skills. And so you, you know, that's why my objective was to learn to well,

to learn to cut meat, learn to, so I could be self-sustained anywhere. And I enjoyed it. It was something to do, learn. What's something you learned back when you were 12, 14, when you were, you know, money wasn't abundant, and you were looking around,

you know, looking at different things, trying to find different ways to make, things work or to earn a shotgun for breaking a horse or that kind of what's one of those early lessons that stuck with you for your life well i think the improvising uh that motorcycle was probably you know and i had older brothers so the two of us worked together and uh we didn't you know like i say we didn't have the money to buy the parts or whatever go with the catalog or we had to figure it out And so that's why I think building the ski hill when I come to Lloyd Minster, we're going to build a ski hill. Well, what did I know about ski hills?

I talked to people. Well, let's talk about this. Mount Joy is the ski hill you're talking about. So when you came to Lloyd, there's no Mount Joy? There was Mount Joy, and they had two tractors. There was a Bob Ambler was a farmer down the bottom. He had Oliver 88, and I can remember it had a different spine shaft on. I had to go down to Marshall.

No, just south here, 20 miles, the east side. Anyways, pick up the shaft to fit it for the winter. And then we had a Massey 444 up in the hill. And of course, we built this ski hill when I was 12 years old, and so we love skiing. But, I mean, there's not a lot of snow in Saskatchewan. So come up here, 1971, we got snow in November. My God, I bought a scatoo eventually.

And this is heaven. I love snow. I love skiing. And so the two rope toes they had there, keeping them running, you learn about that. I mean, the farm you keep. So you ever take the oil out of a transmission or a motor and heat it up and put it back in, pull the plugs out, use a blowtorch, heat them up. But we kept Mount Joy running. So I was in the executive of the ski club. What's some of the changes you've made over the years to Mount Joy since when you first got here to where it is today? Oh, we had a good group. I mean, we had a really good group.

George Stevens was one of the guys and Ruby's husband. Their kids were great on computers. They did some computer games in the States. Anyways, those guys were what I call Afro engineers. I was a professional engineer, of course, and I had the luxury. having the training. So these guys, you know, what do you need for the ski hill? Well, I copied the stuff from North Battleford and we put in the T-bars. That was probably 76 or so. And of course, the city engineer, I'd used all kinds of contractors and stuff. And of course, the Campbell brothers

were, you know, we worked a lot, subdivisions building that in the city, went to city engineer. And so talked them into coming out with our old Alice Chalmers. And so I had done aerial photographs. The first big area photographs ever done in Lloyd Minster. I did them in 75, must have been. And so I said, while you're out there, would you mind flying over the ski hill and taking some area photographs? Because you know with engineering planning or ski hill design,

you need to do that. And so they flew that over. And we had grants and stuff. we worked on building that. So that's the T-bar. Of course, you have to have a survey. Interprovincial came out, and it was all volunteer stuff. And so I remember having Alec Robertson and Max Tritcher,

and there were my guides in tagging how much trees we'd cut out. Walter Harbin, just a prince of a man that owned the hill out there, leased it to the Mount Troy Ski Club and still does this day's son I believe and so it was a wonderful we ended up cutting out the brush and then cleaning it out with a hatchet and picking these

so you don't trip on them when you're skiing and so we got the T-bar I ordered it out of Ontario came out in a semi truck and it was just very similar to North Battleford's only difference is North Battleford had a regional

snow wheel everything was paid by the Sagansansansans. Ours wasn't. And I remember some of the guys saying at our ski meetings, oh, how can we justify taking this money from their government and building something that we may not get in a lot of snow? And I said, guys, if it snows, we make a little money and put it back in. Walter Harbin was good if it was a bad year. He even waived the lease thing, but I think we always paid the lease. And that way, you know, with grants, when we built the Communiplex, which is the Russ Robertson Arena and the golf and country club, well, eight sheets of curling ice, what really cost the big money back then. And there was a little

bit of money for Ball and Mount Joy was included in that. So that's a regional thing. Lloyd Minster's a regional center and I guess that's where I have an advantage. If you're going to be somebody in the city world, you've got to be, your neighbors are the most important thing. And I found that from sports. What would it be like if we couldn't go out to play baseball in Maidstone or Mar Wayne or Paradise Hill? They're our friends. They're part of our league and our teams. You welcome in. We don't want to rob their players. That's the other side the thing back then we believed in. But it was really nice to have the region and people in the region. I mean, without competition, not much fun playing hockey against yourself or the same

four city teams all the time. So Mount Joy was a regional kind of thing. And it really, you know, once a T-bar in, then we eventually needed snow. And of course, all experience we had were raised, and these guys were raised similar to me, you know, if you don't have it. You know, so I've figured out, well, it's 300 feet up there. How many pounds is that? Well, at 0.43 PSI per foot. and did the calculation and said to this, oh, we need a pump. Yeah, okay, well. And then I think it's probably going to,

probably George Stevenson, anyway, the guys are an oil patch. That's an advantage. We have a very industrial community. Guys are talented, and gals. And so we said, well, there's a, in the bone yard back there, there's a four-stage pump,

and one of the bearings or something went on and saying, well, I said, what's a rating on it? Got specs and I said, well, we could get enough pressure to run what we need for the water and air but with three stages instead of four stages. So I just weld the shaft through, put the bearing on it and so we got it for free out of the bone yard.

So that was our pump for the water, I guess, ready, and in air. We had compressors that city the uh... uh... uh... uh... I forget the brand on them anyways

Gardner Denver is one of the better old time compressors and so there again one of our oil friend guys he said you know what? There was a guy from Texas that had a fire flood out there and there's some Gardner Denver compressor sitting in the bush. My eyes lit up and said holy geez you know

we could sure use that and uh... and I said one of the other fellows said in Fort Mac they got some yellow jacket pipe that sat on some racks and had cracks in it. And so they couldn't use it, but I said that'll be good enough for waterline and airline, four inch. And most places just run one line up. I said, well, I did utility corridor stuff in the Arctic when I was in Rankin Inlet. I was up there to build a school, but I also did a lot of other things that's given to the young engineer. What's he going to do? Learn. And so we put the pipe up the hill and

down the hill for air and water. And of course, in the city, we had one of the city engineer back in the mid-70s, a fellow from Musaman, small town, eh? They had iron in their pipes, it was just plugging everything up. And I talked to them, you know, how do you, you know, when he said, I think we can use pigs on it. And I said, well, we got calcium blown over from our water treatment plant and made these little pigs about three-quarter inch big, copper tubing,

took it out to the Sask Industrial Park where there's business that's there now and we had to coil of copper to thee put it on a pressure truck we finally got a sewer pressure truck and that old pipe a pig comes out the other end and any dirty water that's in the pipe or rust

and so I said for the ski hill we could just use a pig and of course by then the oil companies were starting to pig lines too but in the municipality we were probably one of leaders to pig lines of Lloyd Minstere And so that knowledge, eh, in having the industry guys, I mean the free pipe, well, trucking costs us, but, you know, to build in not just one line, but two lines up and down the hill.

So you could put a pig in the bottom, put a little dico or whatever. When you're done making snow, clean out the lines. And we did the common sense thing. We looked at different ski hills. Coal Lake had a nice hill, but they said, for God's sake, you get a water break and you'll know on the farm. A water hydrant is basically the water lines down maybe six, seven, eight feet, whatever, nine feet. And you dig a pocket, put a little hole, put a pocket of gravel in, and then you put in a stem pipe with a rod down the center. And when you turn it off, the water drains out into that rock down there.

but I guess when Coal Lake, they freeze up and they got a backhoe up there, sliding around the dams ski hill, skating all over the place. So I talked to Walter Harbor and said, Walter, would you mind if we just put this water pipeline and air pipeline just a little bit, maybe a foot under the ground? Because I said, I think we figured out a way to get the air and water out of the pipeline real cheap. And I said, and he knew watering. bowls and how they freeze up. And I said, we'll

pig the line afterwards. But what we do, for five bucks you can buy an inside, outside thread, welded on, well, I've got lots of welders in the ski club. And so that was another issue rather than have, they're expensive, eh? And dragging

a two inch water pipe minus 20 on a ski hill, ain't a fun job. So we basically what we did. So how close would you like these, oh, every 300 feet or something. I said, well, for 50, five bucks for inside outside thread. And the inside out thread story is all about tapping water mains in the city under pressure. You don't want to turn the water off every time you tap a water main in because you screw,

you thread it in and screw in a brass stopcock, okay, and then it's off, then you hook your pipes up and so on, and you turn the cock on, and you've got water. And so, but the valve, assembly that we used to do that to drill it you you go in okay and so we made one and that's thanks thanks to the oil field guys that helped us out you uh the globe you stuck it over the pipe and you had to pull up so you had a plug in this inside thread right okay and you got water running through there well so how you get water all that we have this valve uh tap her on you've got to pull the plug out first of all and then of course where's the water going? Well, you got a gate valve assembly so the water doesn't come out.

It just fills the... So basically it was like a hot tap when it was just removing that plug. When you're done, you push the plug back in, eh? So you pull the plug out, put the plug in. And then turn the water on or air for the pipes beside you, for the snowmaker. You just have a gate valve, open that up, and you start making snow. You need water and air, but you did the same thing as air.

that's you know mother mother necessity is the best ingenious way of developing your life you know if you need something you figure it out solve problems I mean life is all about solving problems in my that's what I love

I love solving problems I probably make a few problems you know it's a and so so our kids all learn to ski when they're five years old and so when they went to the mountains holy Jesus they were gone And the families nowadays are snowboarding out there. And so all that ingenuities, what did you learn, Moostraw? Well, I learned sports there by learning hockey and the farm.

And I learned all about welding and making things work. Because when you're out in the middle of the farm and you don't have things, whether it's welding or fixing, you've got to get the vehicle home or whatever. You learn, you figure it out. So in Lloydminster was a natural place for me. to come and I love people here because they wanted to do things. They wanted a better way in life. They wanted to have the things they got in the big city.

So as Mountjoy Ski Hill, you will know there's a ski hill in Edmonton at Capilano. The guys heard about Lloyd Minster and so they were contacting me for a reverence, how to make a ski hill. Only made one in our life. It wasn't me. It was us. You know, we all did it together. Put the poles in, put the T-bars, put the water lines in,

You know, the only thing I regret is we didn't put a catholic protection system in because I learned that in the city with water remains. We have cast iron lines that are still running. Most cities would have spent thousands of dollars replacing them. And just by putting anode in and withdrawing the current off, Mother Nature has lots of current in her. And when the current leaves iron pipe rather than take the metal with it, it goes down a little wire to an anode.

And anodes deteriorate. So you replace the anodes every five years. You know, you measure. And that's all about sort of common sense. And you know what happened there? We had oil patch guys. Oh, you've got to have rubber joints and you've got to isolate and impress current.

We're sitting there saying, every copper line on this block, where did you ground your electrical in a house? This is a copper water line, right? that was standard practice. So you have a current from one house to the next house, to the next house to the next house. So if you run a line for about 5% or not even that

in a boulevard and tie it to an anode bed but tie into the service boxes all the way along, the current comes off, it goes from high resistance to low rate. Yeah. And so it naturally goes to the anodes. And so rather than have the current, leaves the pipe and take the metal with it, it goes to the anodes and deteriorates them.

We save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody ever knows about that. I think Herb Fliger and was on utilities and herbs are around forever, eh? But he was in oil patched, but take a chance on that because, you know, the cost of a line you dig up the pavement or dig up the road and replace it. What if you get another 20 years out of it? It's like your car. You know, instead of buying 10 cars in your life you could drive two or three if you don't keep them running me you know so that that way of looking at life has is disappearing quite quickly oh it and unfortunately it has because of of everything is now it's even on the internet you borrow you buy it but but so you raise a good point about lloyd though being kind of out in the middle of nowhere it wants

to be like it's you know we have a gold mine here people don't I would tell my boys, I said, do you learn everything you can in Lloyd Minister? Like Mitch went over to Australia. And I mean, geez, he got treated really well over there. But he, the knowledge. When Chad went to, he took two degrees. He got a finance tree and then he took engineering. He went to General Motors in Oshawa.

Oshawa. Anyways, he was down east. And he went to Waterloo University, taking. taking mechanical engineering. So his quap program, so the one job he got was General Motors. And the big truck frames, which you're familiar with,

the big trucks we got, they give each student a problem, eh, to solve it all summer. Of course, he had worked on the rigs here. Our boys learn, come home Christmas, so they could get a job on the rig. The best thing is they freeze their butts off

on a metal deck, maybe they go back to school and they'll learn. And they'll learn. So anyways, Chad sitting there. Oh, we can fix this. I'll call a union guy to put the plug in. You know, it's terrible. We pay a lot because of the lack of that attitude

and versatility in their workforce. They've got to have a specialist for everything. So anyways, his problem was to, these, they would pick up, if you got two frames, the whole production line has to stop, right? You're putting these trucks together? So that was his job. He'd come back to the next thing.

He said, you know what we do in an oil patch? They put a vibrating screen on this thing. And those suckers will come apart, no time flat. So they put a, you know, a vibrant, but we use all time, I guess. Not all time, but it's, I would say it's calm in knowledge, but, I mean, you think about it. So it's vibrating.

Those frames will just drop off. So instead of getting two frames, you've got one frame. and so I mean so he was offered a job that was the first year engineering for him but he was offered his job that year when he graduated but I keep telling

it's like my daughter changed oil I said you never know when you're going to the more you know the more you can do the more you can help others and so Lloyd Minister is a

for me we could build a combine here There's enough machinists, enough, and there's enough engineers, enough scientists. There's a lot of smart people in Lloyd Minster, and they're practical. In the oil patch, you weren't given a textbook in this fall of ABC. Heavy oil, they had to figure it out. And that's why I really, I just love working with those guys because you'd talk. And you'd say, what about this, what about that?

And so it was a good attitude, everybody worked. They wanted to make Lloyd Minster better. when I came there's very few streets paved. Art Shortel was in council and he says, you got a young engineer there. Could you come in with a program? And I said, well, before you pave the streets, you've got to have drainage, curbs and gutters,

and then you put in your sidewalks at that time. And they had some curbs and gutters already in with drainage established. Blair Bullsfield had done a lot of that one. He was probably hired in the early 50s. He was a good engineer. And so there was something to work on, but with the, I walked every sidewalk in town, and next council meeting, I said, I got a plan here, five years. And Lloydminster, everybody, the last blocks we did in town, were the elected people,

especially the mayors, because everybody wanted to have their street paved before, you know, everybody else. Because they just wanted to be better. And so you can't go wrong working with people with an attitude that, They know there's a better way in life and they're prepared to work for it, and they're prepared to pay for it. The only block we had petitions out on sidewalks, for example, was we had a city treasure. I wouldn't use his name, but he was very old-school, very cheap.

And he said that old cracked-up asphalt style was fine. And his block, he talked to his neighbors, and got petitioned out. But every other block in Lloyd Minister got done. Prince Albert, for example, we're very not. Well, Lloyd Minister, everybody is of two provinces. PA, for example, they belong to associations, engineers of both sides, and council and all that stuff.

They couldn't get anything improved because people would vote it out. Not enough money. Didn't want, you know, didn't have that aspiration of building a better place. So is that aspiration or is that leadership? Well, it takes both.

Takes both? It takes both, yeah. And there's lots of leaders out there. Like, don't kid yourself, these young kids you're talking about, all of a sudden they'll step forward. Because if you know, if you have expertise in your area, I'll come talk, you know, we come talk to you. And you can do, get us that whatever we needed. And so there's lots of leaders out there. And I think it's one of the things I found out pretty quick.

I noticed mentors. I had many mentors. You know, Axelpholt was a controller in Lloyd Minster, Nelson Lumber, one of the top guys. I remember doing, I could do subdivision, 50 lots in a file that was less than an inch thick. But he, you learned business with him, and you, I could save him money and me, city money, money, because we would call one tender instead of being $500,000 or $900,000, it was over a million dollars. You get a better price from contractors at a million bucks, and you do, you know and so

council allowed me as an engineer time to charge 10% engineering charge we basically paid for engineering department all the years I have a city engineer and I continue on afterwards too so you say do you need the overhead

well we're growing city and so rather than laying off engineers or having consultants and paying premium we did use consultants so don't get me wrong but we had plans like Steel Heights.

I think I designed that entire 500, 5,000 people neighborhood with the area photos that I did. But the guys had a surveyed as well. And so if I had if we had a slack moment after

progress payments in the construction done the summer, get out there and survey that guys, we're going to need that in the future. And so we did that internally. And out of the 10%, I got afford to keep those guys over staff. So I had three, four engineering technicians, and it was an ideal thing for them. They could come to Lloyd Minster as a two-year graduate from tech school,

put them in water and sewer one year. They learned water and sewer. Put them in roads, put them in subdivision development, and then put them in miscellaneous. You know, ladies got a drainage problem, lane, whatever. You got to survey, fix it, look at it, solve that problem for her. And so we, all the engineering techs that we graduated, I personally went through all their professional fault and stuff.

They're now superintendents of engineering all over. So here's a hot button question for a guy who was with the city for a lot of years. Still is. Why no overpass over the railroad tracks? How many times you've been asked that question? It's a good question. Somehow we've managed to get to this stage. First thing I'd say, always take a look at what you got.

And are you thankful? And could it be better? Yeah, it could be better. But, you know, in my 40-some years in Lloydminster, we've never had an incident getting across the fire truck or whatever. But the question is all about finance. We are border city, split in two. And so that's always issue number one.

And I think it was a natural one in Vermillion. But in fact, the MLA and the minister came from Burmline. Always helps. Never underestimate the power of politicians. Yeah, never underestimate the power of knowing the right person. Yeah, yeah. And yes, and that's probably more correctly put, is, you know, like, there's lots of examples.

So what you're saying is, is being a border city, we can never get, A, the correct politician online from either province, or they probably haggled over it, but who's going to pay because it's two provinces? Well, it usually does, but eventually we convince them. Like, I'll tell you, when I came to Lloyd Minister in 71, there was no synergy between the two provinces. We had a guy called Bud Miller, Alberta side, Bob Long, Saskatchewan side. He was an NDP, but Bob believed in this area.

And Mass, dear old Maz, Mazzenkowski, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. Wow, what a powerhouse. And then we had a guy in Kindersley, Nichols, I think it was his name. wife is from down Estonway, and I apologize. Memory's not that good, but those guys got together, and you remember the upgrader. Nobody wanted to, and so councils and our council did a lot of work. I did the background stuff on all the resources for the provinces saying,

hey, Lloyd Ministers had all this long-term planning in place, we got a water system in place, all the way to the river, we can supply the upgrader, okay? Husky actually worked with us. I worked with the guys from there and they contributed to the study to the river. There was a proposal for a refinery, upgrader kind of thing at Stapleton, just Northwest Deloitte minister in the county about 10 miles out. Just a siding, rail siding, really. That was the first real secure thought. like we did general plans

and we did our general plans including not just water sewer and storm sewer and streets and roads and people but it included the social network and people and it also included the economic region I mean Lloydman's we were bound for

it was our dream to be regional center someday and so getting a major refinery we knew probably the steadiest workhorse generator of revenue and jobs at a consistent level is the old Husky refinery. That's been a godsend for a Lloyd minister. And take that one, for example, that was a refinery brought up from the

states, put together. That's a little bit like some of my stories about how you take this and take that and put it together and you got something. I mean, those guys did it. They figured out how to make money and heavy oil. And so the political side, of getting Masks, and those guys together, there's a couple things. One, there was a real competition for the canola plant when it came about. I think Fort Saskatchewan was maybe the closest one

in Saskatoon had one. And it was a big competition. And so I remember as an engineer when it first came out, I had to say, Yeah, there's enough water here to, we were still on wells, not at the river. So I did a whole bunch of calculations and figured that out and said, yeah, no, we, and there's 75 good paying jobs there, man. And for the farmers, there's cash crop readily available right in your neighborhood. And so, yes, there were some problems of the connoll plant when it was built, but they worked very hard at it.

when ADM took it over. And that's something a lot of people don't know. Originally, Mitsubishi, United Green Growers, and I forget the third party. I used to get their financial statements. Jack Smith was a... Anyway, he was the manager of the canola plant. He was also a kinsman.

He came up from Weyburn. And I mentioned when I was in the Yukon, I had also done a report on I worked for silver mine out in the bush and in the mine too in the lab and I did a report on them how they made money gold was $35 an ounce then 1971 silver was $170

and so a young engineer it's a good to learn when you're young because you really pick it up quick so I finally I said how come you guys make a lot of money here because $1.70 is not much for silver and they had found one new drift So I went down and talked to the Miller. And he says, oh, hell, we can make money at seven ounces of silver per ton of ore.

That's how the flow, the flotation process. I don't know why. I was in, excuse me, in Lynn Lake at a mine there too. So I was thinking about mining engineering, although I was always away from all the weddings and family events for years. But bottom line is the high-graded, around Kino Hills, and who's the second largest supplier in the world at the time of silver. And when they hydrated, if you and I were high graders,

we would take anything that was 200 ounces of silver per ton or more, and we'd get that milled out and make some money. The waste was 200 ounces, silver or less. So I'm sitting there. These guys, there again, United Kino was the mining company. they were very frugal, very, you know, it wasn't fancy. We stayed in log bunk houses, and it was good food. I loved it.

It was outdoors. We go hiking weekends in the mountains, they had pan for gold. But the company was making money. The stock price was always up. So I was following that. And so I said, they have all these old international and hume tractors, and they bought up all the old claims. there was like, oh, hundreds of claims on that mountain

where people had come out, URI as prospectors would get a little claim, make our money, leave everything on the bunk, a bill of the shed, which we stayed in when we were university students, and we would explore, you know, but what they did is they just had their wasters right there.

So the company bought up all those claims, took a front-hand loader in, didn't have to use dynamite, didn't have to, you know, have air compressors and all that stuff, loaded it up, took it down to the mill. As soon as they said, what was it, 200 ounces per tonne or less was waste? I said, oh, there's a gold mine there, the silver mine. So they just loaded up, so their costs were these old trucks,

and they were very frugal. They didn't need fancy, you know, trucks and loaders and stuff, and they were making money. They were just steady, you know. And so at early age, you got to know the other man's business and you got to know the detail. Because you got to understand exactly how that business operates. And so when I did that little report on that, for my own use, hey, fall in their stocks and that. I'm not a great stock investor, but they were successful.

You don't need to be big and fancy and rich to be successful. But you've got to be smart. We're quickly running out of time. So I apologize to, I always think of your family and the questions they'd want asked. Yeah. But I got one just sitting here that I'm curious about. And we're slowly running out of time because as I listen to you, so you go to the U of S for engineering. After you get your degree, you mentioned Rankin Inlet, you mentioned Yukon, you mentioned all these different places.

I know Mitch went to Australia. Your son went out to Oshua. Is it something that you consciously chose to do to take jobs in obscure places in different industries to... Oh, very definitely. We financed our ways through schools. So for me, working up in a mine... Paid good. It pays good.

And you don't spend. Yeah. You're isolated so you can't spend on anything. Anyways. But lo and behold, there's a hell of a learning experience. I mean, I can remember burning out motors in... Those were undergrad years. The last year, between 70 and 71,

I worked at university on hydrology for a professor. He wanted to look at, I look at all the streams around here, the three pre provinces. It's a hot hydrology. The retention lake system is my baby, hey? Hydrology. And there's a big story about that one, about how we saved or got,

we got no rivers here. So where are you going to put the water? How are you going to handle it? And so I got offered a master's in hydrology when I graduated. And, of course, in our era, my buddies were all married. They're driving 442 automobiles, 396 Camaros. Rogers got a 54 Pawniac that he reviews to take from his dad. So I went to work.

But in 1971, there were no jobs available. I remember talking to Axel Fote Nelson Lumber. He says, that's one year Lloyd Minster should have put some lots on the market and should have done some things because it really wasn't that bad. But when I graduated, there was 150 engineers. 25% of them had jobs, and of that 25%, only 25% were in the engineering field. So I... So very, very few engineers actually had engineering jobs.

Yeah. So, yeah, my buddies were working, uh, Calling cars, flinging beer, you know, or unemployed or working on the farm. And so at university, this professor Wiggum was his name, and they had a northern program where they need somebody to go to rank and inlet to build some recreation facilities. They wanted civil and drink type because you had to build a pad and there's water and and stuff like that. So that's in 71, in May, I bought, was it going with Trees?

I bought some rings, got engaged, and then I took off for the North in the Arctic. At Rankin in Hudson Bay, and I flew out once for my brother's wedding in July. But all experience, like the learning experience, even in the Arctic, the things you do, like there you've got to improvise. You talk about engineers today, and I did quite a bit of mentoring when I worked for associated with their engineers. We didn't have a team of engineers. when you ordered stuff in and rank and inlet, the boat came in July after the ice went out.

And if you were building this community hall, if you didn't get enough rebar ties or whatever, and you had to allow for loss because sometimes they would unload it off the ship onto the barge and it'd slip into the ocean. A cat once did that. You know, you learn, there's only one guy. and if you wanted to pay three bucks a pound to fly it in from Winnipeg

or whatever the price was then you're not going to you know repairs were expensive so you learned to think on your own and you had to work with the people you had there like people know a lot basically they don't have any engineering degree but they all have some thoughts on it and you can pick their brains and pull it together and you've got enough science that you can make it work because it has to work in the end and that's where the north was an opportunity to those people that want to do things to help them along. And so, and the money, of course. And in 71, I just got up to the Arctic and I had applied at Lloyd Minster, Blair, Bullsville phoned to the farm, and mom raised me a letter saying, well, you're

offered a job in Lloyd Minster. Wrote you a letter. Yeah. So, yeah, we, I think we had not teletype. We was radio communications for pretty poor narrative. Anyway, so I said, well, when I come out in September, so I ended up in Lloyd Minster, there's another part of this story because we were engaged, eh? And so November 7th, November 20th, we were married in Esten, and so we're planning the fall sometime. And of course, nurses had jobs all over. Trice had a job in Central Butte and Weyburn and Lloydminster and two other places. Anyways. She had finished her nursing courses and graduated in 71.

And so I said, well, take a job in Lloydminster. That's close to Saskatoon or Edmonton. I can get a job anywhere in the north. Every place I'd worked at, they offered me to come back. I remember in Lynn Lake, you know, with university students, and oh, we had a great year. That was the second year.

I was in the Yukon the first summer, then the next summer in Glen Lake, northern Manitoba. Ah, great job. Oh, lots of friends. Yeah. And the super dense city, I want you to come back and fall, or next year, Roger. And I said, oh, geez, thanks. But, you know, I'm out for, my whole objective in life is to get experience. And so I'd learned electrical that summer. And so the next summer I learned hydrology. And so I wouldn't have that if I didn't do that. And so, you know, if you do the same thing,

it's really nice to come home to the farm every summer, but in your best, your learning years of your life are at that age, you're like a sponge. And so you remember every darn thing, but learn it and move on, learn some more. And so I always said eight years of public school, one year of high school, you should learn what you're learning eight years.

Four years of high school, you better learn at least that much in one year of university. And I said one of my goals was when I get out of university, I want to learn as much as I can as I do to a year of university, a year in a job. So Lloydminster was a hell of an opportunity. I went through the books. CMHC did the land banking for the city.

They didn't have any money. They didn't have any reserves. And so I set up a land development reserve. And, you know, what happened? we would, Colonial Park with CMAHC, they knew nothing about land development. I'd set the prices, service it, the whole damn thing, and then they approve it.

And I said, something's wrong in this picture here. Why don't we make a little money and we sell these lots, and we'll get in the land, and we'll make the money, okay? And we won't have to put up with these gentlemen in Ottawa. The third party. The third party that knows nothing about it. Right.

just taking a cut of... And take it, yeah. And so, so it was great they wanted, they, you know, they did a land bank problem, which got us, a program, which got us going. They would, they would land bank the land and then sell it back to us at buck cost. Until the liberals had a problem.

Here's another twist of you, about politics. Poor Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario had bought land at way too expensive a price back then, $25,000 an acre. We bought some land at $350 an acre for land banking. The agreement was you buy land back as you subdivide, and you pay book value. So $350 plus interest might have been in that time maybe $800, $900 an acre. And I remember the liberal MP we had North Battleford.

The politicians did, eh? Russ Robertson was a good liberal. But those guys basically said, those poor people in Ontario can't afford to pay market value or can't afford to pay book value because they bought $24,000 and their costs were like at $35,000 with interest.

And the market was down. So they ripped the agreement up basically. Didn't rip it, literally. But that's what they did. And they changed the policy. You have to buy the land back market value. Well, Lloydminster was growing, and I remember having a discussion with politicians locally. Oh, you got Russ was great leader in Lloydminster, and Russ Robertson said, well, we should participate in the federal programs.

And I said, Russ, we could do a hell of a lot better job on our own. If you get money, he makes money, Russ. And so bottom line is we ended up paying $17,000 acre for the last 70 acres. It was all the land development. The land development was not funded by taxpayer money at all. You make, sell you a lot. When we did Hill Industrial, it was one of the first ones, where the canola plant is, bought the land.

And back then, when a young engineer comes to town, he says, well, how come you don't have an industrial park? I mean, you got where the dairy queen was, the old one, there's an oil business. There's oil and oil crap on a nice highway commercial tourist, You know, something's wrong with this picture, guys. And basically, I said, well, why didn't you build industrial park? And they said, well, we tried to, and they had to have a public vote to venture.

And they got defeated. So I said, oh, you know, this community is always when they stand in line to get their streets paved. They want this place to be improved. I said, they want industrial property. I said, how about we buy some land from the Hill family? Jim Hill just passed away. Yeah, yeah. And what a prince of a man.

Anyways, so we got this land and I said, excuse me, we could probably, there's people that want land. I said we could do a subdivision plan and see, they'll pay, we charge them cash for the whole price and rather have the municipality do, like how we paved all the streets in Lloyd and Esther in the curb and gut or not,

where there's existing houses. We did what they called local improvements. We put it on your taxes for the next 10, 15, 20 years. So the city carried the mortgage. If you went broke, left town, you still got to pay that mortgage off. But I'm not collecting taxes from you. You went broke or you left your business.

So I convinced, well, it wasn't hard to convince counsel. They're pretty good. We had some business counselors back then. And they said, well, so this way is the bank will be holding the cash if there's a problem. So we'll start the subdivision because we didn't have any money. We'll do this local improvements, but I'll sell them the lots.

We will sell them the lots, and that's not I. We will sell them the lots for cash. So if it's $70,000 an acre, that covers the water, the sewer, the curb, the gutter, the pavement, and the streetlights. And you got your money. Okay? And what do you give the money then? Pay off the local improvement. And you make a little bit.

But we made more money on residential than industrial. because in industrial tax base is the most important thing in the community. If you wonder why St. Albert's so expensive, they don't have any industry, no commerce, very little. So their taxes are 50% higher in ours. Lloyd Minister had the lowest taxes in Saskatchewan for a while when I was on. And that attracts more businesses and people, right? So that we made little money and we got the industrial park going. So we cleaned up, that then helped the commercial market A, highway 16.

all of a sudden, oh, get rid of the sunny's oil filled patch on the corner and put in a dairy clean or whatever and clean it up, make it look nice, tractors. So the money and the land development allows us to invest back into infrastructure, water sewer and storm sewer. So that's, you know, but the fact that we got cost probably $700,000. by the liberal government back then. Stale sticks and my crowd, they're running the corporation. There's two organizations like we dealt with Husky. They can sue us, we can sue them.

We provide the water. I negotiated agreements with the raw water supply there and domestic and sewer and all that out in the county, or out in the RM. They can be sued, we can be sued, but the provincial government, they just walk away. they're God. So I do not, I strongly recommend

you work with them, but politics can change overnight and all of a sudden, you know, you're holding the bag. So my heart was in Lloyd Minister, still is, and it's no different in our businesses. The only reason they're successful

is because everybody looks after themselves and they look after the community then too. and so it's not a I don't like to say that I don't trust it but I'd rather deal with Husky or a large company on some of these commitments saying like that where you get burnt once or twice in life

and so we've survived we managed but but the politics you know the canola plant was abandoned, Mossbald for a while. And a lot of people probably don't know what happened there,

but our Vagerville friend helped us out. He was, I think it was on the board of ADM, and ADM come along. And they knew how to operate a canola plant. They used the dust off the floor if it had protein. They use every usable brought in soybeans, mixed it up, make cattle mixes. And if the truth was known, when Mitsubishi was part, once they're an owner of the canola plant, guess what they did? If their mills in Japan weren't busy, then you could ship raw canola over the ocean.

And so they controlled that flow, right? So little of the farmers know, but that's exactly what happened. If you're not controlling your environment, you sell it out to the other guy, you better make sure you're protected. And so when ADM came in, ADM was a much better owner, fixed the problems up there. But they also, you know, what they did, they are the second upgrader in Lloyd Minister.

And you probably don't, you say, Roger, why is it? You call it an upgradeer? Well, the plant in Wainwright, they had finished oil product there that they were shipping. It's like a heavy oil story. Why would I buy heavy crude oil when I can buy light crude? Okay. And the story we used in Saskatchewan to get the upgradeer was, well, would you put the same royalty on frozen wheat as you do in number one hard? I come old school.

A number one hard wheat? No, we never do that. Well, what do you do in Lloyd Minster? So there was another political argument that both the oil patch and council and chamber commerce got on and said heavy oils needs the classification. So that was in the late 70s, eventually.

Finally, Lloyd Minster got recognized as, you know, Lloyd Minster crewed, a specific gravity, the whole thing. And so that's the truth. That's the value of it. That's asphalt in the world. But you can also make jet fuel out of it. But that was political people carrying the message, not just the corporate guys, but they need the support of the community. And so that was a big change that took time because what happened, the 70s, I think I saw seven turn downs in the El Patch. They'd lay off staff, then higher staff.

Laos staff, hire staff. Why? Because they sold frozen wheat. No, they sold heavy oil, which is like frozen wheat. It's hard to deal with. It's hard to, you know. So to convince Saskatchewan on the Upgrader, this goes into that story. What could you do with frozen wheat if you could turn that into number one? We have the technology. Thank God that Laheed got a hold of the Canadian Prime Minister of time, Trudeau, and they got go ahead and a bit of a break on royalties and on the Fort McMurray oil sands. Oil sands when they built, you know,

I remember I had my graduate frenzy. I was the only guy who went to university, the rest of the guys were making more money probably, mechanics and stuff, well, they were working up in Fort Mac. And when the cocker blew up the first time, I said, oh, that's too bad. They said, oh, hell no, I got more overtime than I ever had, eh? They were making lots of money. But the truth is, we played sports up there.

You probably played in Fort Mac too. And I knew the managers and the engineers up there and the guys. And they were getting their operating costs down, eh? And they, but they had the technology fixed. So when we built our upgrader here, we, I still was part of it, feel part of it, did all these utility negotiations on it and a lot of political stuff, that the technology to build the Coker here, we haven't had any explosions. The commissioning of that upgrader went, for a big project, went really well.

No problems at all. And you've got to be thankful that Fort McMurray, Alberta led the way, they got a break in the royalties. So, and then my, of course, my city manager in Saskatchewan would say, well, the government had to step into, you know, that's taxpayer's money. Saskatchewan hung in, they got all their money out when they got out of the upgrader. Alberta took a bit of a loss, but Saskatchewan also made 5% provincial sales tax on every purchase out there. And Saskatchewan did very well. Lloyd Minster region did very well because all of a sudden we're not, the seven layoffs we had in the 70s, our product

synthetic crude sells an 80 market yeah hey and so that had to be the biggest change ever and husky was a tough negotiator

and we did the water agreement they said they'd use 600,000 gallons a year well they were using about 900 and that took me right off because we didn't you know a story on that one I was negotiating with them

I had them over a capital contribution to well over a million bucks to pay to hook into a warrant, sir. And the word came down, back that guy off. We,

that's too much. Husky doesn't want to pay that much. So I said, okay, I don't know the corporate wranglings and the politics and that side, but that's fine. But I agreed with 700,000 gallons here, whatever it was,

but they used more. And we had a list of future stuff. Always look ahead. There could be a catholic, you know, with the processing done here to produce the material they use in all these upgraders. There could be greenhouses out there. There could be a power plant.

There could be an ethanol plant. There could be all these spin-off industries. And we knew that from the old refinery. I mean, where did your hockey planks come from? Eldro Ashwold. You know, where did the shingles come from? I'll ask you, oil oil plant next door. The spin-off is humongous,

but you've got to think and put it in an agreement when you do that. So I knew would he be coming up when the, what was it, a couple hundred megawatt. It's a good size double cycle generators they got out there. The SaaS power, of course, was not very good. We're in the end of the line, and you know the story of SaaS power. And so they found it advantageous.

They could actually make money. They're in the gas business too. And so they installed the generator. You can reuse the heat off of the turbine process in their processes to reheat steam. So low-grade steam is about 90 degrees centigrade. So I happen to be on some Alberta committees on electrification de-referencing.

regulation. And of course, that leads into generation of power. I was in Finland, looked at a whole bunch of turbines and how they generate stuff. And we had looked at, I looked at with the utilities engineer, if you could put the waste heat inside an oil pipeline, you wouldn't have to add condensate, so to pipe it from the refinery to, or from the upgrader to the refinery or back and forth. You know, there's a lot of synergies there. In Finland, you were in Finland. Yeah. In Helsinki's, half the downtown is heated by steam heat, but they didn't cost in the cost of the tunnel. We drove down there in a Greyhound bus, or a big bus, and they had a one-meter-sized pipeline of low-grade heat. And so they developed the wafer technology, so rather than have a room this side with a big boiler in that,

they have one the size of this cabinet or a couple of big suitcases and they take this heat exchanger and that's how they heat all the public housing I mean if you want to live in public housing Finland's a very social estate but they didn't cost in the the cost of the work project

to build the big tunnels to put this in but they had the density I mean they had so much public people going for housing I mean, I guess that's the best in life they can expect to do. So when the oil crisis came, we knew all about that. And what was the nickname of the oil company area? They had a conglomerate.

Well, Finland had a big cavern, and they'd fill it full of oil. But all of a sudden, price of oil went way up, eh? And so they had a gas line from Russia. But they hated Russians as a passion because they had been beaten up and pilford and buying Russians for years in Finland, eh? And there's quite a history there. Yes, there certainly is. And so when we asked for their numbers, costs,

because I was interested in, you know, Lloydminster's power. We had always intervened. If you thought of all the powers got in Lloydminster, I heard a, we hired a lawyer. It said we sing. But I was the guy that read through all the detailed report. and stuff, hired the lawyer. I was

Alberta Power. I contacted all the Alberta Power communities because we could recover the cost of interventions if we were fair and reasonable. So it didn't cost to municipal to anything. But if you could lower the cost of 5% in power, imagine all the money that stays in your people's pockets,

eh? So those are the kinds of things that drove Lloyd Minster. Well, I do appreciate you sitting down with me. We've been going for two hours now. And you know what that means? We have to wrap it up. And do really appreciate you coming in, sitting down, and sharing this wealth and knowledge about Lloyd

and your travels, your life with us. And just thanks again for sitting down with me, Roger. You're more and 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, thanks for tuning in today. I've got to give a shout out to Edwin Sunderland. He said, listen to your podcast with your dad while golfing yesterday, which is the first. That's the first guy I've heard that has listened to the podcast while golfing.

Maybe there's a whole bunch of yeah, I'm not sure. He said some interesting and powerful stuff. It's amazing the things that our dads have been through, and it's great to have a medium such as yours to hear the stories and life lessons. He also said thanks for the shout-out, and happy Father's Day to you as well. So if you haven't listened to my episode 183 on Monday with my dad for Father's Day, it's a little bit of bias because obviously he's my dad and he is the man. But I was super proud of the episode, super proud of dad opening up at some.

of the toughest times of his life. Like some, he had to, he had to, he had to face some serious stress and taught me a lot of life lessons in there and to get to have them in the studio and ask him about it and have him open up about it was, uh, it's something I won't forget anytime soon, that's for sure. Now, it is Wednesday, which means we're off until Monday. So wherever you are, I hope you have a great rest of your week.

to all the teachers that are slowly winding down the school year. Have a couple days off. You guys have earned it. And if you're the champ, and all this talk about golf and just must be eating you up, when that wrist is ready, big shooter, I'll gladly take you out. And we'll have a little round.

You might have to go barefoot. I'm just saying. Anyways, we'll catch up to you guys Monday.