Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #26 - Bill Musgrave

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Few people have a larger presence in the area than this man. Humble, smart & driven he walks us through the events that led him to Lloydminster. Besides owning Musgrave Agencies he is a family man who has a been a giant community pillar. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

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Give Wade Gartner a call the day, 780808, 5025. And if you head into any of these businesses, make sure you let them know. You heard about them from the podcast, right? Let's get on to that T-Barr-1 Tale of the T-T. Born in Moose Jaw in 1943, he's been married to his wife, Anne, for over 50. years, a husband, father, grandfather, successful businessman, and community pillar. I'm talking about Bill Musgrave. So buckle up.

Here we go. Okay, it's January 17th, 2021. I'm joined by Mr. Bill Musgrave. So first off, thanks for hopping in. Thank you for taking the time. And it's important to have some of these items recorded for the archives. got a lot of respect for them. We got an article that was invaluable to us from the archives,

and it was the trip to Canada for Mrs. Rendell when she was a girl. So it was her complete diary from when she left England to the boat, to the rail across Canada. So that's pretty valuable information to have. Yes, I look forward to these chats because I tell everyone who comes through here, right? Like you've lived a lot longer than I certainly have. And you've seen things that there's still a lot of people that have seen, but if you don't document them and talk about them, they just get lost to history.

And we were talking about this before we started. If you write about it, it's one thing. But to hear you describe it and talk about it and get asked questions about things in your own words using your brain, man, that's a whole lot different, isn't it? You bet. And there are so many people that have contributed so much to Lloyd and don't run around looking to be recognized for it. Some of them they just never will. So those people are really important to me and our life in Lloyd, for sure. You have to assume, you know, you've been in Lloyd since 1978.

Lived here, yeah. Lived in Lloyd. But you've been a part of the structure of trying to make Lloyd, while you've been able to see it grow under a whole group of people's leadership and direction and companies coming in and everything else. You must be extremely proud to see where it's come from, you know, a small little agricultural town to where it is now. Yep. No, it's been really interesting following the oil portion of the economy. Certainly we went from 79 a runaway until Trudeau's national energy policy, and that shut things down pretty dramatically for a while.

Interest rates ran away. mortgages went from 9 to 19% for some people. So it was a changing world. I always got to ask then. What we're in right now is from all accounts, never been seen in anyone's lifetime. We've got to go 100 years back to get anywhere remotely similar to it. And back then we were fighting world wars.

What do you make it right now? Because you're a guy who lived through the 80s, and from what I understand about the 80s, they weren't a fun time. No, but the 80s were certainly not disastrous. People weren't locked up and wearing masks. But the economy went through some pretty difficult times. In Lloydminster, particular, Saskatchewan government came up with a mortgage rate guarantee, which I think they subsidized all the mortgages down to 10%. That really changed the complexion of Lloyd

because now the Saskatchewan market was pretty attractive. That was through until 1985, I suppose. That there were tough times, but, you know, nobody should have, I shouldn't say nobody, but there was a lot of opportunity out there, I guess, at the same time. Yeah, we built quite a few houses

through that period of time or had them built with our building, builder group, but they, it would have been very tough to do if we didn't have that Saskatchewan subsidy. Curious, When you see where the world's at right now, do you see opportunity then as well? Yes, yeah, for sure.

Like an example is we're doing some work in the Okinawagon at the moment, but we see the opportunity for people who have now accepted the fact that they can work from home. Maybe they need two or three days in the office in a week. Right now they're living in. Calgary or Vancouver and saying I take my three days and I go out to the lake, out to the Okinaw and out on the ocean. I do the things I want to do. So I think there's a bit of a concept that I can live where I want to holiday and I can go and spend my two or three days a week in the office in Edmonton or Saskatoon or any of the big cities where I belong.

You can see where the trend's going, essentially. Yeah, I think so. Now, I guess if you own big office buildings in Calgary, you're a little less excited about that. But homes are being built now with office accommodation. So people can work from them. Yeah, well, it certainly doesn't feel like this is going to just disappear tomorrow, does it?

No, no, and I don't think it will. Hopefully it will lessen off or improve over the next year, but I don't think anybody should plan to be back to what they deem as normal any quicker. I laugh because I go, I don't even, everybody says normal. I don't know what normal means anymore. That's right. Yeah. We've, we've hit a, it feels like we've hit an event that no matter what is going to change how things are done for the next, I don't know, 20 years, maybe longer.

Yeah. Yeah. Mind you, if you were here in Lloyd Minster in 1905, as a child, you would have had to go through the world with two wars, I guess, would you? Yeah, 19, yeah, absolutely. Two World Wars, the roaring 20s, and that was mine. And the Depression. World War II. Yeah.

The 60s and the 70s, and then, you know, it just always seems like there's something. Is that where you're kind of alluding to? Yeah, 60s and 70s and we're pretty good. We had a little bleep in the 80s, but then it's been very good since then. I'm curious. You would have been a young guy. You were born in 1943.

I got three older brothers. We do round tables in here from time to time, mostly around sports. But when we get around each other, we're like any set of brothers. We get arguing about certain things. And we were having the discussion about what's going on right now and how nobody.

everybody's ever been in through anything like it before. And I was saying, like, exactly what you were saying. And on top of it, everybody says the 60s, oh, the 60s and 70s were great. It's like, well, I don't know, if you lived in the United States and you were fighting in the Vietnam War and your brother was maybe getting drafted and guys like Muhammad Ali are going to jail and protests, and you just name it after name it after name it. Somehow that just all gets glazed over.

Yeah. I don't think the U.S. is a good comparison today either. It's in a lot of trouble. Hopefully they get sorted out. But for Lloyd Minster, I think generally we have to say we haven't suffered a lot. And even at the moment, are we really suffering? I mean, I can talk to you. I can visit with everybody at work.

We still mask and separate and run the business as normal. Fairly normal. We also spend time when one of us is away. We spend quite a bit of time on Skype or teams, and the communication stays pretty good. As a matter of fact, maybe even better because it's shorter when you're on Skype. Skype. When you're all in the room, everybody's looking to each other and visiting.

And Skype, it's up front and done. Well, it's conversations like this one and the ones I've done passed with the archives that do give me a better perspective maybe on where we're at and some of the things that you can be thankful for. I'm curious, you know, you're born in 1943 and Moostra. When you go back on your life, Bill, maybe what's one of the first couple of memories you have, you know, did you grow up on a farm or were you in little Moostra? Were you?

Yeah, we were, we were, we were, lived on South Hill, and my dad worked on the railroad, and it was, I think we had a pretty good life. I was eager to see a lot of different things, and I went to work pretty young. How young were you? In order. Well. Did you graduate high school? Yes, I did.

Okay. Yeah. But we tried to think like, man, I worked as a kid everywhere from sand stores to the pet shop. Then our neighbor was a building mover, and he was very good to me. And by 14 years old, I was working with them. And I worked all summer with them and found different work in the winter. My grandfather had a garage. I worked at the garage as often as I was available.

It was a good life. You were wanting to make money early on then? No. Yeah, I needed to make the money. There's no doubt about that. but I was really interested in what everybody was doing and interested in that work. You know, if you can go so far as to say you would enjoy moving buildings. I don't know, that's quite a stretch, but it was.

I enjoyed it very much. Enjoyed the people and what we accomplished. When you say you're moving buildings, do you mean like furniture movers or do you mean actually like moving the structure? Moving the structures, yeah. What was one of the biggest ones you got to be a part of? What was one of the buildings you remember? Oh, man, I remember lots of them.

CPR stations were, we didn't move. I shouldn't say that. But CPR stations were one of the toughest. CPR had the best concrete in Canada, and we had to bust it out to load up. But I think we moved the PMQs from that's personnel, for the Air Force out of Clare's Home, Alberta, and we moved them to Suffield, that Medicine Hat.

They were three buildings long. They were wide, 28 feet wide, wider than most of the bridges. so it was a real challenge, but a good time. On the list of little answers you kind of sent back, you mentioned your father worked on the railroad. Right, yeah. What did he do for the railroad? Was he an engineer?

He was on the road. He was a conductor for the last 10 or 15 years for sure. Did you ever work with the railroad? No, no. No, he discouraged that. Oh, really? Yeah. Back then, well, I mean, I guess the world was speeding up, I should say.

Yeah. So why did he discourage going to the railroad? I don't know. He was, the railroad was fully unionized, and I'm not sure the relationship between the employee and the employer was. Was great. Was that strong, yeah. and you know I would have been discouraged too because I wouldn't have done very well in a large company I like to know who and respect whoever I'm working for so that's important so what made then

along the trails after you graduate actually maybe we can talk about Ann you was that love at first sight girlfriend in in high school or was it uh She put you in your place? No. No. It just, you know, it was just admiration for the way she treated her friends and all the people, all the other people. Genuine interest and concern and good common sense. That's where it began.

And you guys have been married now 55 years? Yep. Yeah, 55 months ago, yeah. Now, I'd be lying, and I probably said this too many times to count. Now, lots of people that I sit across from, actually, I would say 90% of them, have been married as long, if not longer than you. But I'll ask anyways. Do you have any advice for people getting into marriage if they're into their first couple of years?

Or maybe I'm coming up on, we're year seven here in August. You know, the first thing is think through, think long term when you decide that's what I'm going to do and make the right choice. I always tell young people you take this matchbook and you take this big felt pen and you write down between you all of the things that you believe are worth arguing over and things will go pretty well for you. Not possible, but that's where you have to. It's just don't spend time on the unimportant issues, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure over 55 years you've had your fair share of things that come across your plate that has tested you. You know, yeah, but we've been very, very fortunate.

I think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good respect and good feelings. I mean, yeah. Before we move on from graduating and moving into the working world, which I mean, you started at a super young age, going back to your parents. Did they, I assume, they taught you some things?

Is there some lessons maybe they tried to implant upon you? Like you really need to be X, Y, Z, or make sure you do this or anything like that? I think they just generally set a pretty good example. Yeah. We also had my grandmother living with us, and she was a real mentor. How so? She had a tough life herself. But she was...

How old would she have? been when she was living with you? Probably, well, she was there when I was born, so she, but she, as I remember her, would be through the ages 60 to, you know, 75 or 80. Only reason I ask, Bill, is my brain is trying to do mental math on what year she would have been born. So she would have been late 1800s then. She was the first white child born in Gilbert Plains, Manitoba. Really? That's, I can't tell you.

A real dumb question. Is Gilbert Plains a reserve? Yeah, it's a small town, and there's heavy reserves around it. Okay, okay. Yeah, it's not a reserve. Anyways, you were mentioning she was a real mentor. I kind of butted in. And what was, there's a woman, you know, like if we could warp back in time and just sit and take exactly what I told her we're going to do.

Try and take what's between your ears and squeeze all the juice, so to speak. Yeah. Man, what a fantastic person to probably have sat and chat up with. You mentioned she was a mentor to you. Yeah. What were some of the things you remember about her? Just an endless amount of common sense. anything that

she just always understood that you don't worry about what's not important you can't waste your time or energy doing that deal with integrity and have a good work ethic

Yeah. That's pretty much it. Her and Ann became very good friends when we were in high school, actually, and Anne went through her nursing training. Over the years, spent a lot of time with Grandma because she trained in Muscha Hospital. So when she had time off, she was over to the house spending time with Grandma because she had good. great mutual respect. I mean, if grandma would have disowned me if I hadn't married her. So she had good judgment. Yeah. No, that's her value. When you look back at your childhood, you said you had a really good childhood and good life. What were some of the things you did for fun back then? Well, again, we

We have my dad's cousin farmed. And most weekends when I was younger than he would pick us up or pick me up and we'd head to the farm to work because he worked in town through the week. And we would go out and do everything. summer follow was an eight foot one way and just generally do just generally enjoy working on the farm yeah but you got to paint a picture because right now working on the farm means you get in a combine you type in you sit back you listen to some classical music or what have you and you let the machine do the work i assume as you laugh at me that is not the way it was no no they uh we never had a rock picker and we had lots of rocks.

The farm was south of most jobs. The equipment didn't come out of ag land. It had been around a day or two and it was constant maintenance, I guess. Do you remember when they brought out the rock picker? Do you remember when that was a piece of equipment that you could go by? No. because I remember as a kid picking rocks, but we had the rock picker pulled behind the tractor

and around we'd go and around we'd go and around we'd go and then you'd hit a big one and everybody'd have to get out and, you know, get to... Roll it on. That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, no. We never had that problem, you know. They were little pebbles.

They had to go in the stone boat. Yeah. In the stone boat. Yeah, on the stone boat and pull them. you know what a stone boat. I have no idea. You're staring at me like, no, no. You never lived.

Stone boat is two posts, maybe as heavy as power poles if you had them, and lumber across the top to build a bed. And you pulled it behind the tractor. And you put the stones on it? You pulled it behind horses, but we didn't. we didn't drive horses out there then

so then you put the rocks on this thing on the stone boat yeah and then drag it to wherever you're going to offload them all and away you go yep take them to the rock pile yeah I've always I assume this is a common sense answer but I have no idea so as a guy

who worked with picking rocks did you always pick the steepest side hill or a bush to throw them in or was there a Because out on our farm, I got right around on the quad one day. This was years ago when I first came back. Went through a bush. And in the middle of the bush was this giant rock pile.

I never been through it. And I was like, oh, that makes sense why there's a bush growing around it because nobody wanted to be around this thing. Yeah, well, mostly one of the rocks where you weren't ever going to support them or try and break it up, right? But you don't remember the conversation of, like, like, hey, we're going to pick that side hill to drop everything on because nobody's ever going down that thing because it's steeper than the river hills, nothing like that?

No, no. We just hauled them to where the, you know, where the rock pile was. I mean, there'd been lots of people there were picking rocks before we ever got there. It's almost crazy how many rocks a guy can pick and still find more. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All you've got to do is cultivate again. Yep.

Is there any other things from the farm that you remember doing, you know, we stuck on rocks for a bit, but did you enjoy a certain time of year? Did you enjoy harvest or did it matter? No, we enjoyed all of it. Yeah. I remember finding road gear for the first time when it wasn't very big in the Oliver 66, I think. Got it back under control. Road gear?

Road gear in the tractor, yeah. shift, you know, or shifting first, second, third, you know. I was pretty limited on where I was supposed to go. I was just talking that about a guy. The manual shifting of gears is almost gone. Yeah, oh, I'm sure, yeah. Right? All the vehicles you have now are automatics.

Well, I'm pretty sure pretty much everything now is an automatic. They don't want that thought process going in there. Right. Do you miss the stick stripped? No. No, you don't miss it? No. Really?

No. It's a function of the past. I mean, it's like you don't miss walking either if you have to go somewhere. Do that for pleasure. What's one of the things that you maybe do miss from the past? Better be careful here. the gee you know

I've adapted and enjoyed every stage of life I think I've been really lucky that way I you know no we enjoyed the kids

we enjoy the grandkids we now have great grandkids I mean those things are the things that are really important and and hopefully Hopefully you will go through that yourself.

I certainly hope so. Yeah. If there was one thing, though, you could take to your great-grandchildren tomorrow, you could bring something back to show them, said, this is what we used to do, or this was our fun, or this was a big technological advancement at the time. Is there one that you can kind of romanticize about and be like, that was something I'd love for them to see,

because they'll never have any clue about that? I don't think so. There's things I'd still like to see them have that our kids grew up with and being livestock or horses. They raised everything from chickens to horses when we lived in the country. We lived up towards your home. We lived six miles north of town on the east side of the highway. Really?

Yeah. So just down the six mile? North, no, north, just north of the six miles. Just north of the six miles. We had 80 acres, went along the six mile and bordered on the, on the, or went along the highway and bordered on the six mile. When you first came to Lloyd, why did you buy that spot? Well, there's quite a story here.

We wanted to get the family here. in time to go to school. And there was nothing even to rent here. If you were going to rent, you had to go into a long-term lease. And so we decided to build a house and two actually, one for us and one for Otto and Marlene. And we bought a couple lots from Nelson. I went to Fred Coleris and said,

how soon could you put in a basement for me? He said, man, we're behind. We're 13 behind right now, and this is Tuesday. I guess if we did yours tomorrow, we'd be 13 behind tomorrow. So I guess we'll do that, eh? So that was, you know, that was... The great start of a... a friendship? Oh, no. The friendship had developed quite well for that. But that's when we were

moving here to live, but that's pretty valuable. So they got out putting the basement in, and Nelson's had to build a package because it was Nelson lot, and they were putting Nelson packages on them. So it looked like we still weren't going to make school. So this guy had been trying to sell me an acreage, and I said, no, we're not starting. that we're going to be busy enough when we're, when we open the business. And then we, we left here one day and we flew over the acreage and had a look at it. And I said, let's go back. And we went back to Lloyd and went out there and looked it over and decided, by golly, that'd be the right place to have our family, I think. So we, we, we had. We, we had to, we,

ended up buying that acreage. He had a house just about finished on it. That's how we ended up on the acreage. And then to accommodate the family, we built a pool on it. And they, of course, by then, they got into 4H and all of the interesting things that you have living in the country.

including lots of hard work because they had half a dozen cows to feed and they had chickens and horses. They had lots of responsibility. Built a shop out there and had some equipment. Yeah, they was really good for mom. She's pretty devoted and spent the time with the kids and always there for them. They had a good life out there. And we were working lots, lots of hours. And home with them as often as we could be.

You strike me as a guy who's not afraid of a little honest hard work. Well, I maybe not smart enough not to know better. Yeah. No, that's... I guess that's how you get things done. I don't know. I would agree. You want something done, you better get to it.

Yeah, yep, yep. And you better team up with the right people. There is something to be sad about having good people around you. Oh, that's what brought us to Lloyd. Really? Really? So you're sitting... The people.

To set this up, you're sitting in Shonovan, Saskatchewan. Ashley? Yeah. Let's lead, before we go to that, because I really want to know about the jump and the good people that brought you to Lloyd. What did you do after Moose Jaw? You graduate high school. Yeah, went to work for Beaver Lumber. Okay.

Went to Shawnaven. Then that's where we got married and got transferred to Springside. about four months after we got married. And I had had a chance to nurse in the Shaunabunton Hospital. We went to Springside. You have to know Springside. It's just over 400 people, 450, I think. Springside or Springdale?

Springside. Springside? Yeah. It's 15 miles out of Yorkton. Oh. On the yellowhead. Springside, Saskatchewan. I'm going to look it up on the map right now.

I've never, you've probably driven right by the sucker. Yeah, I have. Right off the highway, just northwest of Yorkton. Right on. Yeah. Yeah, wonderful little town and a tremendous group of people. We were young, just married. But we got married, we were on this five-year plan.

And this nurse I married, I thought, quite well understood that. But once we got to Springside, She couldn't drive to Yorking to go to work shift at the hospital as a nurse. So she began helping me and be a lumber. What was the five-year plan? No kids for the first five years. No kids for the first five years? Right.

That's what you guys signed on for? Well, that was our plan. How long did that last for? When I say our plan, I may not. I had the support on that. But anyway. How long did you last into the five-year plan before you had kids? Not quite a year. We were in Springside about 10 months.

And by golly, Scott was born. And that was a happy story. But, you know, that's a heavy Ukrainian population. there and man they were good to us. We were so young and tried to start out and adapt to all of this and I had lots of work there but the lumberyard was very successful, worked out well. So then we had Scott and

just after about a year they transferred us to Shonovan. We're very reluctant to go to Shonovan because Springside was going well, and the people were pretty, very decent to us. But we went. Do you remember that conversation? Just to rewind you back to sitting in Springside going, I don't want to go.

Yeah. No, no. I said, guys, I can do as much volume right here as you're doing in Schaunavan. I want to stay here. or don't send me to that gopher hole. I want to be, we're pretty happy here. And we can do as much volume for you as you're doing there now. And anyway, that was going all right for a little bit.

So just to stop you there for a second, Bill, they just said, no, we need you to go? Well, they pressured a little, but they, I thought they were given up. And then my buddy who was the superintendent there, he called me and he said, they tell me you're passing up a really good opportunity here. And I said, maybe, but we're pretty happy. He said, you get in your goddamn car and meet me and Shonovan on Tuesday.

I'll be there. So we went down. I had great respect for him, and he was good to us. And so we went down, said we'll, we'll give it a shot, and we moved. It's good to have people who are looking out. I mean, it's nice to be comfortable and have a great community.

And maybe that would have in a different lifetime. You could have been there for the next 40 years. It would have been great, right? But somebody was watching out for your long term going. Oh, yeah. No, we've often, you know, we've been pretty blessed with a lot of good people. Yeah, yeah. concern ourselves, so that's good.

So you end up in Shonovan, Saskatchewan. Yep. What did you think of Shonov in Saskatchewan? Well, again, we quickly fitted in. Lumberyard, we were very busy and sales perked. And Beaver Lumber had a, you know, I told the boys, you got a brand new house in Springside. We like this new house.

and so when they were in shahneman trying to convince me that this was a place to be he drove me around and he said I'll show you the house so he drove around he said do you like that house I said yeah he said that ain't it so obviously it wasn't going in a good direction but And we ended up getting them to build us, to build a new house for us. And that was a happy story. The, we met a lot of good people pretty quick there. And we enjoyed it.

Worked pretty hard for six or eight years, I guess. In Seanovan. In Seanovan, yeah. So you worked for six or eight years. Yeah. What? Maybe, no, maybe not quite that long, but anyway, yeah. It says you transferred to Shonovan, Saskatchewan in 1967.

Right. And you left Beaver Lumber in 69 to establish real estate business. Yeah, the dates might be a little off. 67, might be a little out of whack, but regardless of the dates. Yeah. Why did you leave lumber, something that you obviously were pretty successful? No, we To do real estate.

We enjoyed that, but the problem we had was we just couldn't ever get to make enough money to support ourselves or to substantiate our life. Yeah, they, every time our earnings would get to $10,000, it was all salary and bonus. They changed the bonus structure. It was, you know, it was uncomfortable with from that aspect. So we thought we can earn that much money for sure if we step out on our own and we did. So why real estate bill? What was it about that that attracted you? Oh, I'd always thought that would be a good business.

I couldn't have imagined it in Shaunaven, Saskatchewan, until I was there, of course, but I always liked the idea that real estate would be a good business. And we were building RTMs for Beaver Lumber at the time. So I had a bit of a construction background, which I could carry along. We built RTMs in Estevan and Springside End and Shahneman as well. So when we left to start the business, we had some good connections. We had a fellow from Crown Life who put me under a Crown Life contract and a guaranteed income for a period, which was equal to my Beaver Lumber income.

So it wasn't a high-risk move there. So we sold life for a little while with them. That worked out fine, but it wasn't what I was looking to do. But we got the real estate business started, got our licensing, and the insurance business started and got our licensing there. And ended up pretty happy with our real estate business. housing houses, farmland, building houses, insuring them. You know, it was a small market, but it...

Do you remember your first one? Your first... Yeah, I do. Yeah, first house sale, I mean, yeah. We had a couple leaving town, transferred, came and said, we'd like you to sell our house, and said, sure, we went and looked at it, and agreed on a price.

And then we had a couple moving in from the country, and they were looking for a house, and I said, let me show you this one. Probably was our one-and-only listing at the time, but we went and looked at that house. It was nice. happy, wanted to buy it. I stumbled around a little bit for what to do and took them right to the lawyer and told him.

It was fun. I said, Don, these people want to buy this house. He said, well, have you got an offer? And I said, no, we better write one up, Dawn. We'll do that now. So we did, and that was our first house sale. What was the learning curve like? going into that side of things for you?

Well, the documentation was a lot more sensible at that time in the real estate business, so than it is today. But, no, there was nothing different. It's customer service business, and you're servicing the seller, you're servicing the buyer, trying to find out what works best for each of them. And then farmland business was very good there at the time. We were at a generational point where a lot of people were moving off

and sometimes the sun would take over and sometimes they didn't have anybody to take it over and they wanted it sold. And we really adapted to that business. Being a farmer, yourself, you know that if the neighbor has his farm for sale, he definitely wants too much money for it. And you're pretty sure that it's not quite as good as mine. So I quickly learned that...

If I went to you to say Bob is selling his farm, you're going to say, yeah, but he wants too much money. It's so typical. It was pretty common at that time. So I often would say I have somebody looking at Bob's farm, but they're quite aggressive farmer. They're interested in a little more. Would you have an interest in selling anything of yours? There's, who wants to buy it was the response. And pretty quickly, the conversation got on a lot.

It changed the dynamic. A lot more sensible playing, yeah. It was fun anyway. We drove a lot of miles down there because farms are spread out. It's not like here, they're way bigger farms for the most part. lots of grassland. But over your career, you've had different parcels of real estate, farmland,

businesses like all over the place, not just one little location. Was that something that you started from a very young age that didn't matter where it was, you were fine, or was that something you kind of grew into? Well, as the opportunities came along, I guess when we bought that post office, of course, now we had a clear title to a good building and we could go to the bank and get the money to renovate.

So we renovated that building and our first tenant was Sears. And then the second tenant was a law firm, a lawyer. And the third tenant on the main floor was a barber shop. And then upstairs, we converted the upstairs to four or five apartments. And the building filled up just as we, as every apartment came available. So it was good. In dealing with Sears, we were very first. fortunate. The Western Canadian facility development guy from Sears was, his name was Bill Booker,

and we became very good friends. Booker was important to us for a long time. He was pretty happy with what we did for him. And when he got in a situation where he can was having trouble getting along with the landlord, he would say, will you go and look at Esterhazy, for example? And we went to Esterhazy and found a piece of land to build a little building on, but we really wanted another tenant. So he lined us up with his counterpart in Eaton's. And we built these little buildings and shared half of it with Sears and half it with Eaton's.

catalog stores. So they weren't very big, but they were pretty good tenants. And over a period of time, we had Knoor, Ontario. We built a

straight Sears store. And Fort McMurray, we built a Sears store. And in between we built several combinations. So it was and still ran our real estate business in Seanovan. It was a busy time.

You were in Seanovan while all this was going on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. Side note on Canora. I played my junior hockey. Kenora Ontario, you said? Yes? Yeah. I played my junior hockey an hour down the road from there in Dryden. Yeah, yeah. Been through. Canora is a beautiful spot in the summer. Nice spot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, no, we enjoyed it. We enjoyed pretty much all of the places we went.

In the beginning, when you buy a place, so you buy the post office. Yeah. Are you doing all the work, or did you always hire the work out? Oh, no, we always were pretty close to builders and contractors, worked with them, yeah. You weren't the guy going, I'm going to walk in there and work 50 hours and make sure the walls get put up and the plumbing and electrical and blah, blah, blah. That wasn't you? No, there's people way better. That than me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we always managed to get somebody who we could work with. So it was. So in the beginning then, Bill, if you don't mind me asking, did you, from 14 you said you were working. Did you just constantly save your money up?

So when you hit, okay, I want to go purchase that building. I got X amount. I want to go spend it on that, and then from there, you turn one building into two and two into three, and all of a sudden you got 12 buildings and ones in Fort McMurray and ones in Kenora? Oh, no. How did you? Well, firstly, we didn't save a lot of money.

We never had it, you know, really, because we were staying live and keeping going then. but we the money for the post office building in Shawtownan would have come from probably the first or second real estate sale that we had. You know, we did get a few dollars then

to a few dollars ahead in real estate. They and then we had to have a cooperative banker when we were doing some of these things, the builders at that time. We dealt with Bank of Commerce and Shawton and the Schoenabin Credit Union. We're both very good to us whenever we wanted to do something. So let's talk about Lloyd. You mentioned you're sitting in Schoenovon.

You got all these different buildings scattered out the provinces. What is it about Lloyd Minster? Well, what happened was Eaton's were leasing from Fisher's store at that time. And Fishers were renovating and expanding. And the lease renewal I had for Sears, or for Eatans, Eaton's thought was pretty steamy. So they said, would you go and see what you can do in Lloyd? So we came up here.

It was fun trip. We came up in February, and we wanted to put the plane away overnight because we were going to be another day. And Eddie Jensen said, who ran the airport at that time, said if you go get a hotel room, and when you confirm we got a hotel room,

we put the plane away. because we put too many away and had to drag him out because the guy had no place stay. Hotel rooms are really short here. So that was fine. We were fortunate enough to get a room. They didn't have any, but at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we got a call from, well, heck, hotel long.

out here anyway. And she said, we got a room. If you're here in 15 minutes, we'll save it for you. We had a cancellation. So we grabbed that room and concluded after looking at the lease opportunities that we could find here, buildings to buy or lease, or even a space to build, that fishers were treating eating is pretty good. So we thought we got to tell, we'll just tell Eaton's that they're getting treated fair.

But as we traveled around and listened to the conversation, it seemed that Husky at that time we're going to move a refinery that was shut down in Wisconsin or somewhere and bring it here and assemble it in Lloyd. And they were offering to lease somebody's hotel for. a three-year period, take the whole building. So it became kind of obvious to us that maybe a hotel, and motel was a good opportunity. And I had wanted to build one for quite a while anyway, but this looked like the place to do it. And what hotel did you build?

Motel, Ivanhoe. Yeah. You built the Ivanhoe Motel. I kind of tee this one up because I'm sitting for listeners who do. don't understand. I literally tell people we live beside the Ivan Home Hotel, and you're telling me you built the Ivan Home Hotel. You betcha. Yeah. So, and no, we really enjoyed that, and that was our, that was our taste of Lloyd Minster. Was the Ivan Home Hotel, was building the Ivan Home Hotel. Now before we, let's stop right there, and I'm just going to bring you back to something you said.

You said, and coming here, it was a fun trip. You flew here. So you didn't drive back then? Oh, not unless we had to. So even back then you enjoyed, if you got to get somewhere, hop on a plane and let's get there. Yep. Yeah, well, remember, we covered long distances to do what we were doing. What type of plane were you flying around in back then? Was it just a little six-seater?

Four-seater? Four-seater? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we also chartered Cessna 310 from our buddy. And he, it was pretty quick, pretty nice little airplane. Who is your buddy? Well, weathered. Well, his name was Al Smith.

He was in the aviation business. So, yeah, he'd been around a long time. He had the second IFR charter. in Saskatchewan, but it was good. The second thing you said that I find curious is you said, going around Lloyd, the conversation was that maybe Lloyd was moving an upgrader, or Husky was moving an upgradeer to Lloyd. So in your travels, when you're talking to people,

you're constantly on the lookout for details of what might be happening in the future. Am I reading that correctly? You have to be able to read the room if you're going to make it work, because listening to, yeah, listening to all kinds of different people, not asking them questions, but listening to the stories that are active and credible was I always referred to it as reading the room because you're picking up what's there. That's a very unique skill. Well, it's valuable.

A valuable skill, sure, yes. Sure. But I'm sure most people do it. I think it just, I think it comes natural, I think. I disagree with you. I don't think most people do that. Yeah. I would say a small percentage of people do that.

And I would then say even a smaller percentage act on that. Yeah. But, no, it was, we bought that property. here for $30,000. The one right here. Yeah. That's sitting right along the highway. Was it a dirt road back then?

You know, trying to remember the service road was in. Yeah, the service road was in. Probably gravel. Yeah. Yeah. But or they were just putting it in maybe. They just came off the highway at that time. Yeah.

What was the Ivan Home Hotel like when you? you first built it. Occupancy? No, just general. Rooms, feel. Oh, heck. It was 36 rooms. And it was a simple building.

I mean, we tried to keep everything uncomplicated at that time. We brought a masonry crew. First thing we did was ran into Fred Coleris, who we talked about. and we got them out there to do the site work and the foundations. And they were so competent and smart group of guys. And then we brought the bricklayers from Canora. Ontario because they had built the Sear store for us.

So we brought them out to do, all we did was three straight rows of concrete block and and blocked the perimeter like and the center column had a short span truss and pretty quick an easy building and it went up in really good time. We had a really good framing crew from Lloyd, Joe Wander, and then we, plumbing was Stevens plumbing, was Ray Stevens at the time, really good, really good people all the way through. Can I ask you to put the pen down? Pardon? The pen down. You're fidgeting with the pen. I can hear it. Clicking you. That's all right.

Good. How long did you own the Ivan Home Hotel for? Not very long. You know, I brought a buddy up here to manage it, and he bought half of it. Okay. And then when we got ready to move to Lloyd, he bought the other half. So he owned it. It was, we owned it just over a year and a half, I guess.

Is there any building or business that you've owned since day one that you've never let go? I'm just curious. Yeah, I'm trying to think about that. You know, I don't think so. No. So you've never had a per... I'm trying to think of the question how I want to phrase it, but I'm thinking like, has there never been a personal attachment to any building you've ever built

or piece of land you've ever bought where you're like, I just, I want to keep that. No, there's a personal attachment to it. As you contemplate it and as you put it together and build it, man, you're pretty devoted to that property. But the time comes with the hotels, it's been when the economy was right, the numbers. looked ready, it's a good time to sell it. They're nice to own, but, you know, you wouldn't like to own a hotel in Alberta too bad at the moment.

You wouldn't like to own a hotel right now. They had a best before date, you know. But, no, we, no, we get, We get pretty deep into them when we're doing them, but when we're done, we're done, yeah. Let's go back. You're in Shaughnabon. You're looking at, you make the trip to Lloyd. You hear the people talk, you go, we're going to do this.

You build the Ivan home motel. What eventually pushes you over the edge? We're moving to Lloyd. We're going to bring the family up. Everybody's coming here. Yep. Well, Seanovan was, Sean of them was good to us

but you can see that I had that I traveled to accumulate our assets long distances away a lot of days, almost nights that's a family benefit to traveling

the way we did. But the I could get on the train at Gull Lake just north of Shawton. Okay. At 11 o'clock at night and get to Varden, Manitoba. Manitoba?

We had a building in Varden. Then we would spend the day in Varden, and I could get back home at 8 o'clock the following morning. So I had the whole day away in two nights. nights. It was only one day out of the office. What was the cost of a passenger train back then to go? I shouldn't tell you, but see, my dad

was a conductor and all his buddies were conductors at that time. And when I got on the train, it was hard to buy a ticket. And they always looked for a sleeping unit that was vacant and I had pretty good sleep back and forth quite a bit. So I'm not sure.

It wasn't very expensive anyway. Did you like riding the train? You know, that's something these days that is a super expensive. Yep. And it's just kind of a rare thing to do. Not many, I, mum and dad took the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Rocky Mountain. That's right.

Yeah. But, I mean, it's kind of a rare thing to do now. Yeah. What was, what was, what was taking the train? back, was that something you look forward to or was it like taking the bus, so to speak, where you're like, I'm going to be on the bus for the next eight hours and away we go. No, but it was quite a bit handy than driving, I'll tell you. Yeah. Do you miss the train? The train? Yeah. No, I don't have a lot of need for it at the moment. But we've done,

we'll do train travel, Anne and I for the pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, we go back to the Ivanhoe. After we bought the land, we went home and sketch this thing up and then give it to an architectural type guy to do the drawings for it. But we were sketching it, and we had a real mentor in a guy named Ivan Ing, Chinese. Ivan Ing.

in Shaunovan, just terrific individual and smart little businessman. They were coming for coffee. And Ann said, was come and see what I was doing, told her, Ivan and Mayer coming. She said, what are you going to call it? I said, Ivan Ho. And it was Ivan Ho after Ivan Ing. That's where Ivan Howe came from? Why the whole part?

Why Ivan Ho? Why Ivan Ho? Yeah. Well, not because Ivan Ho was a great night. You know, it was just fun. It was just because Ivan was coming. I had to have a name for it. So that worked out okay.

I don't know how many times I wondered, wonder why Ivanhoe was named. And that's what it was. named after a guy out of Seanovan Saskatchewan. A buddy. A buddy. You mentioned he was a great mentor,

a good person. What did he teach you? Attitude, I guess. Just tremendous attitude. He liked everybody. Everybody liked Ivan. He ran a good, very good business

and changed from When we went there, there were four of them, four families living in the upstairs, not every big restaurant. And eventually, Ivan was able to talk May into moving out to a duplex. We'd built some duplexes there. And they bought a, with another good friend. And Ivan bought their duplex. They moved the family over to there.

And they were just very good people. And just there for everybody. They were very good to us, but very good to everybody they met. You know, you say good people, and it reminds me of my father. That's what my father always says, good people, when he talks about different people

that have helped them along their life is good people. You mentioned at the start of our conversation, moving from Seanovan to Lloyd Minster was about good people. Yep. What was it about Lloyd Minster and the good people? Or maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on that transition. Well, of course, you knew the Coleris brothers were going to be very successful and very competent

and very good friends. We go on with, I joined the Exhibition Association and I had great respect for everyone there. Went to an annual meeting. I had the Silver Spur Horse Show here. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that was a big event in Lloyd. The battle broke out. The Arabs didn't have very good stall space and the Appaloosa didn't get good time in the rings.

Everybody had a little difficulty there. And I thought, this thing is a little out of control. But Dick Jones was the manager, very capable. Terrific guy. Lyle Fox got up and said, I'd like to make a motion. He said it seems there's a great difficulty with the horse show.

He said, I think we, I'd like to make a motion that we cancel the Silver Spur horse show for this year. And the different breeds can get together and sort out and see what they'd like to have for a horse show in the future to bring us back a proposal. And I thought,

Man, I like this guy. I need to know him. And, of course, we did. And he was a good example of good common sense available in Lloydminster. He didn't let that thing go on very long. Once we got in the development business, we got in by default, like the city sold all of their lots by lot draws.

Nelsons were tied to a Nelson package, and the builders were having quite a time. They were pretty short of lots to build on. When they had a lot draw, they always had about as many people go away disappointed as they had get lots. It was just not right. and the builders were shortchanged.

We were representing quite a few builders as a realtor. Just so I got that right, just so I heard that correctly. So they'd have lot draws. And let's say 50 people wanted houses, 25 people get houses. The other 25 weren't allowed to build because they had no... They didn't have a place to build. They didn't have a place to build. Yeah, yeah.

So you looked at that and went, well, that doesn't make any sense because I'm sitting here going, it doesn't make any sense. Right. You want all 50 to build. If you've got 50 people that want to build hoses, let's let's let them build some houses. Right. So you looked at that as an opportunity

and then proceeded to purchase land that they could then develop and put into, so that the other 25 could essentially have houses. Yep. Yeah. Maybe 40 of them, right? But, yeah. You're saying in the beginning that like at a 50,

40 of them weren't getting houses. Well, no, no. I'm, I'm, um, I'm harassing when I say that. No, no. And it probably wasn't 25, but there were very, there were,

but there was noticeable amount of people that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the option was to take what was there. You know, you had no feeling or sense of planning into,

was going into it. So, uh, we thought that's an opportunity. So, uh, but again, We're pretty tight for cash.

I mean, we're not development business, pretty easy business go broken, and pretty easy to borrow more money than you can repay if things ever stopped, and they stop on a dime. So we went to the builders and said, or we went to the realtors, I guess, and the builders and said,

we bought 33,000, We bought a 33-acre parcel of land there, residential, and we said we can put, I think we're going to develop a portion of it that took in 32 lots. And we said, we're going to service 12, if you guys can show me sales for six. You know, so we're not moving very fast on this. But we're not going to get in any trouble either, but we're going to start feeling our way into the market. So we got ready to go.

And Joe Rams used to own the company that's now Russway. He was from Saskatoon, and he was of retirement age. And Wayne was taken over Russway. Yeah. He and Wayne showed up in my office and said, we want to service all 32 of those lots. I said, oh, no, we just haven't got that kind of money. Let's try these 12 and see how it works out.

And then after that, if we get 12 and sell 12, we can continue. But they said, oh, no, you're going to sell those lots. You pay us for them when you sell them. And that was pretty supportive. And I always say that's what Lloydminster is. That's what makes Lloydminster what it was because we couldn't afford to do that.

And that meant quite a bit to us to get going. And, you know, over 2,200 lots later, In 40 years, nobody else has ever put a pipe in the ground for us. We've always stuck with them. And they haven't tendered it. They've priced the projects as we went, and we could keep a pretty good benchmark on it through our engineering firm, but they were always fair.

And we've worked together with them for that 40 years. Tells me you value something right there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, that's important. And of course, Kevin is back here, our Kevin now, our son. And he's done most of the development since, certainly since he come back, and that's been the big growth period for Lloyd.

So he's done very well, done a very good job. But works with Russ Way, works with Phelpspar. course, because Corruses grew from a framing contractor to a pretty major player in the ready mix business and sand

and gravel excavating. They're pretty valuable people to Lloyd. You know, you could probably sit here now and you can sit here now and after you've been successful

through what you've tried. can you look back and see a point in time where you were like, man, I hope this works. Like nervous or just, I don't know the word, Bill, but when you look back, was there a time, a project where you're like, man, if this doesn't go through, I don't know what we're going to do. Like, do you remember something like that or? You mean in the last week?

Sure. You always got to have a little. A little anxiety pushing you? A little concerned, but that keeps you honest and keeps you working. You like having a little something to push you then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's good.

Kevin is fun to watch him go through it now. Like he's got a lot of projects on the go. And it's fun to see him sweat it a little, but he's very competent, not, won't ever, won't get in any trouble. You know, when you called me earlier today, and you heard the kids running in the background, and you said, oh, it sounds like you got a busy crew over there helping you, and you said, enjoy that time.

Yeah. Let's talk about your kids for a little bit. You've got two? Three. Three. Yeah. Two boys and a girl. Two boys and a girl.

Yeah. Now, I guess the big time, Kevin was, five when we moved to the country. So Scott being the older brother, he had lots of load to carry. I think it was fun when a new horse came. Scott always had to understand it first. But the workload was spread over both of them out there. And they, they, They lived very well. They had a tractor on a 250-gallum water tank

and spent a lot of time poking at gophers. They tended to shoot gophers, but the black dog always beat them to the gophers, so they never. But it was good. They just generally... Are you talking about flushing gophers out? Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. That's funny because if you have lived in a city, you have no idea what you're just talking about. Yeah. But what you're talking about is flushing gophers out of their hole, flooding them out. Yeah, yeah. Well, they make a mess in the, they make a mess in the field. Or in the garden or in the lawn or wherever.

Believe me, we used the garden. Mom, as a kids, we used the garden house. So anywhere within a radius of the house, you'd have to figure it out and flush them out. Well, they'd take the big tank and the tractor, and they'd go out. I've got to be honest, that's the first time I've ever heard of that. That moved a lot of water pretty quick. Yeah. But anyway, as they grew, they too went to work in May Theater.

All three kids worked at Mays for a period of time. They worked at a car wash we had on the east end jointly with coal. and they worked in the office and they developed a work ethic at a pretty good age too, which is pretty important. We'd kill a hundred chickens. Bill and Jean Till would come out and a few other friends. We'd have a butcher part or pluck in and everything else. would not come out of the house.

She didn't like it? No. No. But it was fun. We just did 25 chickens with mom and dad. They hadn't done it since, I don't know, probably since I was like three years old. So it'd been a while. And they did 25 here this fall.

Yeah, good. That smell is. Stays with you. Yeah. But that's. What did you do with a hundred chickens? Well, we had a few. friends. I guess so. They'd all, Bill and Gene would take some home and, uh, uh, uh, other,

you know, other people would come and partake and, yeah, that was Kevin's summer project there, you know. Ten the chickens. I'll always make sure he had, uh, always make sure he had a hundred chickens, so that was good. But they had equipment, too, to play with out there. So, so. And it was a, I think it was a very good life. We were very happy and fortunate that we ended up out there instead of a house in town because that was our, that was purely, you know, sometimes you think you make the decisions yourself, but I think they're often made for you. So, yeah.

How do you mean? Well, I think there might be a higher power that's, saying, hey, have you thought about this, you better. Yeah. Yeah. So we, yeah, I believe quite a bit in that, because a lot of things work out that you wonder if they ever would have. We haven't had many bad beatings over the years. We've been pretty lucky.

We got in a venture in Coal Lake when National Energy Policy came out, and we took a bit of a beating there, but nothing not survivable, but the time we wondered. Yeah. But that was, but we've been pretty fortunate all along. Yeah. ASL, Morris Natu, and Bev Welligan, they just ran a terrific company and did all our paving.

except for a short period after Morris sold the new buyer or manager was having a hard time keeping up or getting the work done when we need it. And as soon as you get that road tour up and ready to pave, you need to get it black. Because if you don't, it rains for three days. You lose that three days. You lose three more. Snowballs. Three more building it back up again.

and by then it's raining again. I mean, just when it's ready, it's ready. We want the asphalt down. So we had a little contest over that. So we hauled asphalt from Edmonton for a couple years. And then Bill took over the management there. It's been very good. Bev Welligan came to work for us at that time.

You know Bev's son, but Mike, but I don't know anybody who can get more done in less time and haven't done really well than Bev. She's Kevin's just tremendous asset to him in the civil area. She's capable of doing estimating, capable of managing the projects, supervising everything stays in line she does a tremendous job

so that's good ASL are back doing our stuff we're glad so we were talking about your kids yeah and we went down a little bit of the farm well the chickens

and everything else when you look back at children, having children. What was your favorite time of having kids? Did you like them when they were really young? Every day. Every day? Yep, right to today, you know.

We got the, we shouldn't jump over Sandra, I guess we're going to mess. Yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely, yeah. She wouldn't come out to do the chickens. What did Sandra do? Yeah. She ended up taking education in Saskatoon and came back as a teacher. She married Trevor Thorpe here.

You know. I know the name. Yeah, that was, Norm was his dad, Slim was his grandpa there. Okay. But, yeah, and they live. two doors down from us, from mum still, and they're best to buddies, very important. And Sandra quit teaching when the kids come along.

She got a girl and a boy, and the girl is running a photography company now, Sarah. So she's doing very well, and her son Isaac just graduated from school. But they, yeah, we're pretty happy, pretty lucky there. But, of course, the boys came back to work with us, and that's quite an honor as a parent to have one of your boys, and even to have both boys, is pretty happy.

story working in the company now taking the company over. I have very little, but they haven't changed locks on me, so they still put up with quite a bit. Has it been interesting running, having a family company? Do you, like do you enjoy, I mean. Oh, yeah. No, they, you know, there's really three of them there that are key. There's Scott who runs the real estate department and there's Kevin who runs the development company and there's Kevin Hout. I don't know if you, do you know of Kevin out? No. Kevin's an accountant and he's been with the company for quite a few years actually. And he, I was trying to remember what year he joined, but he's become a crucial part of the company in his ability to analyze a project. And his ability to review all of the documents

and the budgets are invaluable. And he runs a good, Accounting Group at the same time. So, yeah, all three respect each other, and that's what's made the company what it is today, is I think the leadership of the three of them, and the choice of people in their group. you it's less important the pre-qualification of

people who join your group than it is the attitude and the ability to train I always believe that I said you can take a a

pipe fitter with a poor attitude and you can't teach him to have a good attitude. You can take a young guy off the farm with a good attitude, and you can sure teach him to be a pipe fitter. So somebody can. I think that pretty much describes the people that we've always looked for.

Well, and the thing is, is when it comes to work and working with people, for the majority of your life, you're around those people. people. You best pick them right. That starts with your wife. Isn't that the truth? Yeah, absolutely. And her with her husband.

Because that's as close as you're going to get. Did your parents, I know when it comes back to when you're young, you said that your grandmother was basically disown you if you didn't marry Ann. But at a young age, did your parents have conversations? like that with you? Like, you know, if you're going to marry somebody, make sure it's the right one? Or did you come to that conclusion by yourself?

Or after 55 years, do you just look back and go, man, I got a little fortunate there. I was smart, eh? No, I've been pretty lucky. So there's a bit of luck in there? A lot. A lot of luck? Yep.

But, yeah, read the room. use your judgment, I guess, say. You know, when I talk about my wife, Namel, she's from Minnesota. Oh, yeah. And she is by far the best thing that has probably ever happened to me. And part of that, I go,

I don't know what that was. Because I don't know if that's luck or the universe just trying to pull you one way so you pay attention. I don't know. And then it's on you to maybe pay attention. I'm not sure. Yeah.

But I've been awfully fortunate to have stumbled into her, so to speak, because we stumbled into each other in Ashland, Wisconsin, which isn't exactly everyone's stopping destination. Let me just say that. It's a small little town, wow, about the size of Vermilion. Oh, yeah. In upstate Wisconsin. Yeah.

No, that's very fortunate. It's not 80% of the people today anyway, that's for sure. I mean, do you watch people when they get into relationships and shake your head a little bit? Or what is? Because right now, you know, it's fun to sit across and do these archive interviews because obviously there are people who have really impacted Lloyd. And for a majority of them, they've been married with their significant other. I would say 45 plus years, like a long time. I think that's what hopefully a lot of us strive for.

It's certainly what I strive for. I certainly hope that in 50 years I can say the same thing. Yeah. But today, there is a lot of people that are getting divorced, like a lot. Mm-hmm. Yep. A lot of them need a good mirror when they go sit down to evaluate what they're thinking. Fix yourself.

Fix yourself. Take a look at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. You have to value that relationship, that's for sure. And it has to, it's not even the better it is when it starts,

because it always starts good, I guess, but you have to, you have to just value it. Roll with it. And I got a really patient wife, so she's not too hard to please, obviously. I get that. If you have a stable house life or home life, it's easy to go chase things because you know you got the safe spot and things are good there. You're not going away from here and being over here, I'm worrying about what's happening at home

because you know what's happening at home. Yeah. No, that's big stuff. Yeah, that's big stuff. I agree. Yeah. No, we're fortunate. But in all your adventures,

in all your businesses you own, you mentioned car wash, hotel, real estate, farms, houses, everything. The only thing I haven't heard in there, and maybe I'm wrong on this, is we're in an oil field, well, agriculture, And the oil field.

Did you ever get involved in a wildfield? Well, you know, three of us, John Page and Willard Condro and myself put together a company called Lloydminster Maintenance. And we provided the mechanical maintenance contractor for the upgradeer. And we also provided the mechanical contracts for Saskatchewan Powers, three major power plants in the southern Saskatchewan. And that was a very enjoyable company, very enjoyable people to work with, both from the customer side and from the management and from the partners. It's very good. But never,

so that was a service provider, never ever had the thought of maybe we should become an explorer and buy an oil company, drill for some oil, anything like that? Never been, motivated in that direction. Why is that?

Well, there's lots of people who are really good at that and understand that. That's not a, an area because we because that's not an area we've had any any interest in. We'll watch people be very successful

at it, but no. That intrigues me a little bit because you see, I assume you know nothing about car washes. But you go and buy one and then I assume hire the right person to manage it for you. Yeah.

Couldn't you have done the same thing with an oil company? Not quite. No, I don't think so. You know, it's always seemed like a, I like the oil man who said the oil business been very interesting. He said it made me very rich a couple of times. You know, but it's the times in between that we could never, that I never had any temptation to be involved.

Yeah. What's one of the funnest businesses you've been involved in? You know, we enjoyed the hotels. They were a lot of, a lot of work, mostly Kevin designing them. and then building them. The hospitality inn we built right at the multiplex was fun. They, you know, when the multiplex first went in,

we tried to get quite a few people to build a hotel down there. And we just weren't able to talk anybody into going that far off the yellow head. We met a guy who Gary Young had got to know, and his name was Aik Johanssen, and Gary said, you've got to talk to Ike and see. So Ike was a hotel builder. Actually, we had met him when we were building the Ivanhoe.

He was in Prince Albert as a contractor building a hotel. and so we called Ike and he came for a visit him. We were working out of the provincial building downtown because LML was there and I'd been working in LML for a while and Kevin came back from university so we just rented office space right there and stayed and expanded a little bit and he we'd called Ike and I was standing up in the office on the third floor and I watched this white Ford truck pull in

and this guy gets out and he's got a cowboy hat on and he walks around the other side of his truck and he digs out an arm full of blueprints and he comes up and I said Kevin I think we're going to build a hotel and he and I got together and had a lot of fun designing and specking that hotel.

And we had, well, a lot of support anyway. And it was great to work with and run for a short period of time. Then as it got going and the sales were getting reasonable there, getting very good, actually sales were good there. We had an opportunity. Ellen Remy said, why don't you sell it to me? So we said, yeah, we'll do that. And she bought it. And then the next one we built was in Fort Saskatchewan.

And pretty much same style of hotel quite a bit. But I like the kids working there. I didn't like the girls that were working there. They worked so darn hard. And then payday, there was always a guy hanging outside the front door waiting for their paycheck, you know, so often. I didn't like that part of it. but I sure liked the staff and enjoyed the operation,

but it wasn't a long-term. There are hotel people that are really good at that, and they should own the hotel once it builds volume enough to make it marketable. You enjoy the building initial stage, and then let's pass it on to somebody who wants to manage and carry on with it. Yeah, they're better at it than we are.

We could have stayed, could have hired somebody and got them in it, but they weren't bad projects either. Yeah. When you mentioned a man standing out front, are you talking drugs? No, I'm sorry. That was Ike Johansson,

who came up, who we were waiting to meet. And you could just tell, by the way this guy moved, this guy is capable of building, you know, he had a good reputation. The Ike made sense. Sorry, I must have missed something there. You said, you like the girls when they worked their butts off, payday came, and there was a guy waiting outside. Oh, no, no, sorry.

I'm glad I'm clarifying this thing, because I was going to leave alone. Oh, there was a guy waiting outside. Yeah, they all had a boyfriend that took their paychecks? They waited for their paycheck, yeah. Yeah. Really? Not a good story. Not all of them, but too darn many of them anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. We had some good front-end staff, too, and good cleaning staff. These were good kids. But anyway, that was the part I didn't like about the hotel business. But other than that, it was good. What's one of the most random things you've bought? You know, once again, I go back to the hotels, the houses, farming land.

I can't even think of it right now. A wash bay, not a wash bay, a car wash. Oh, yeah. Have you ventured into something that you were like, this is kind of off the beaten path? I don't know if I'm interested in this and you do it and maybe you enjoyed it or maybe you were in there for a year and said, nah, that's just not for us.

We bought sea cans for ourselves for storage for construction. And eventually we started renting some out. People wanted to rent them. So finally, we set them up on a development we did east of town. Yeah. And now they have a couple hundred sea cans out there rented and they have vehicle storage and that's a that's a happy business they're running out there you're bringing back a memory when when uh on on what would that be 12th street you guys used to

have a little storage spot there of sea cans never no i don't think we did because wasn't that wasn't that 12th street am i thinking wrong no you're thinking of the right spot but it and uh it's it Anyway. Well, is that a sore spot? Well, no, just two things about it, I guess. First of all, they shouldn't have been there from zoning. But, and they weren't that secure there either. So that's when we decided we had to.

Well, I have happy memories of that spot because one of my first jobs working with dad, Dad and my two brothers have the trucking company in town, T-Bar-1 Transport. Oh, yeah. And so we used to haul and line up those sea cans. And working with Dad and Jade Harley, as a swamper out on the big trucks, you get to be like a little kid kind of, right? You get to scale things that you probably shouldn't. You know, as a kid, your parents would yell at you don't climb on that. And sea cans probably would have been one of them.

But as a swobber, you get to climb all sorts of things and hook up chains and whatever else. Oh, yeah. And so I used to climb the sea cans all the time, and we'd move them around for you guys. Yep. And that's one of the spots, which I guess. Yeah, it's gone now. Backspace delete Lloydminster. You never knew this happened.

No, it's gone. They're all out at Storwright on the east side of town. Yeah. They're, do you know Dennis Foss? No. As I tell everybody in here, I'm horrendous with names. I'm great with faces. He's

he's terrific. He was the airport manager. Okay. And he, uh, he, he just, like Dennis has been

doing a lot of things for us for quite a few years, but when we got into store right, he really got into that. And he's been looking after it, right, for, for, for,

for, for, from the beginning, I guess. And he's very valuable. Likes everybody quick to look after them and doesn't understand why anything can't be done. He just gets it done. If you were talking to a young business guy,

let's say a guy in his first year of maybe trying to do what you've done, and he's looking for some advice, What advice would you try and pass along to future generations? Manage your debt, I guess, is big. Make sure you have a poorly developed sense of fear because you're going to run into some things that might require that. I made a couple notes, but learn to read the room. That's important to understand who's there, what they know, and what is valuable to you.

Be realistic in your long-range planning, because today things can change so fast on you in the marketplace. but if you're realistic and it changes, it's not going to hurt you. Too much. Always be fair, but don't be foolish. You have to be fair with everybody. But keep an eye on yourself, so you're not being foolish with it. Be sure the customer never has a reason to not want to come back and deal with you. that's always important.

I think that's... You know, that's... That was all, I mean, very... I think it's always good to pull some wisdom out of what you've experienced. I assume with dealing with customers, you've learned some things over time that just is very transferable to anyone listening. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and the boys have grown up through that, you know, and carry a pretty solid outlook on the business for sure. When it comes to Lloyd Minster specifically, what is one of the, the Russell's told me the story about the golf course and how they played their part in that. And what I was looking for and what I'm looking for again is maybe, you know, I was born in 86. So there's a lot of years there when you've already started into Lloyd and seen a bunch of it developed that I probably have no idea

and a lot of people would have no idea happen. What's one of the big developments in Lloyd that you've either been a part of or seen firsthand and know a bit of the story about? Well, of course, I always tell the realtors if you haven't taken time to show your move-in client, Budmiller Park, you haven't done a job. because Budmiller Park is such a tremendous asset.

And we're very fortunate. We live and look over it from where we live now. And to see the activity and the hockey games going on out there right now and the people skating around the other rink and the other families walking. And it's just, boy, if you're going to live in town, Bud Miller Park is important to you and to your family. Do you remember when they were developing Bud Miller? You betcha.

Yeah. And I remember the battles Bill Conroe went through to get that to happen. Do you care to share? Pardon? Do you care to share? Well, just a bit about building of Bud Miller. Oh, I'm a guy that has... You know, by the time I'm old enough, it's there.

And I use it all the time. And I think a lot of us truly appreciate Bud Miller, Park for what it is. It's probably, I don't want to knock any other part of Lloyd, but it's probably the best spot to go if you want to be outside, outdoors, and enjoy some entertainment. Like, I mean, oh, for sure. No, no, it's great. Yeah. Of course, Roger had quite a bit of trouble with administration to, or Roger did, Bill Conroe did, to give that land up to a park. But, and there were other, there were lots of other people supporting it, but I, I have just watched Bill Condro do a lot of these things. And he just never settled for why it

wouldn't be done and finally got the used a lot of land you know and yeah and the city maybe could have turned that land into profitable development i don't know but but it's but it also becomes a selling feature of the city now it's a big asset to the city no that's uh that was a smart uh project how about how about naming it bud miller do you know the story behind that oh yeah well uh You know, I remember the days of representation for Lloyd Minster. We had Don Mazenkowski, we had Bill McKnight on the Saskatchewan side, and we had Bud Miller. Man, we're strong as a community.

Bud Miller was an MLA, and he understood that everybody within 80, was one of his constituents that he needed to work for, and he worked very hard. He was, when we were on the exhibition board, I remember Bud's strategy for getting funding for the exhibition and just generally watching him work for Lakeland College. Again, he and Bill Conroe certainly worked very hard on that. There were other people, but these guys are key to making that happen. That's really important, and Lakeland to us. The Upgrader, of course, Bill Condro and Bud Miller drove to Edmonton and met Maz when he

got in off the plane. Maz was such a hardworking guy. They'd go and meet him and drive him back to Beggerville while they beat on him over. The upgraders worked him over, you know, mostly informed him, but they really worked on him. And, of course, Maz was such a clear-thinking, capable guy, such a valuable asset here. So, yeah, they, that's three things that are really important. I'll give you two more before I let you go, because I've really, really enjoyed sitting across from me this afternoon, Bill.

One is, if there was another guy I could sit across from, because you've been in Lloyd an awful long time, who would you suggest then? I mean, you've rattled off a lot of names today. Is there a guy you go, or a lady, that you go, You should probably do this for the archives. It would be great to have his story. Oh, for sure.

Ken K. From Agland. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Richard Klinger. Okay. Yeah. Are we talking Klinger's trucking?

Yeah. Scorpion. Yeah. Sorry, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Ross Ulmer. Okay.

If Ross would do that, yeah. Well, I sit here and I go, you know, you've been on the list for a long time. And the fact you'll come and sit and do this and sit and share a bit of your story and a bit of Lloyd's growth and some of your insights, I go, I don't see why I can't get all Lloyd, you know, the people we want doing this to do it.

No, no, I think they would. Yeah. They should, not for their sake, nobody needs like Ken Kaye. We talk about donations and community contributions. You know, these guys don't want their picture on the paper for $20 gift or something. They, or don't let me see. No, no, I get what you're saying. Something insignificant.

but boy when they do they support the community really well and don't look for any recognition for it. And that's what this project's all about. It's all about the community pillars that have

helped build Lloyd to where it is and that have been in the community for, you know, you've been in the community for a long time, Bill. Yeah, yeah. And if all I got out of this was the Ivan home motel story. I'd tell you what, I'd probably be, well, I'd be happy.

And, I mean, the rest of it is just bonus. Like, it's been really, really enjoyable. My final one for you is, over your lifetime, did you ever, this is kind of pie in the sky, but we'll throw it out you anyways. But what's your meaning in life? I think to enjoy the people. Yeah.

Well, I've really, really enjoyed sitting across for me. I hope you, it's been an enjoyable experience for you. Yeah. And it's been great getting to know you, and I wish you all the best here in 2021 and moving forward. Well, to you as well. This two will pass, and nobody, I shouldn't say nobody will suffer because a lot of people will. but I guess if this is our worst experience, then the world will continue even after Trump.

Well, thanks, Bill. I appreciate you coming in today. Good. Thank you. 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.