Anyone born in Canada in the last 100 years should be counted among the most fortunate of people in the world. Canada is a country where hard work and sometimes a little luck will result in a good life. Quite a bit of good luck combined with hard work, some risk-taking and solid decision making can lead to an extraordinarily good life.
As a baby boomer born in the late 1940’s, after the Second World War, my life and career fell in the latter category. Now fully retired it seems appropriate to document some of my experiences. The internet provides that outlet.
I am most proud of what has been accomplished, especially considering never graduating high school. There have been so many fascinating and interesting people over the years that have contributed to my success. My hope is that at least a few young people will glean a nugget of information from some of the experiences to help shape a successful career path of their own.
The following 18 segments are no coincidence, since golf has always played a big part in my life. The inspiration came from a lifelong friend who never quite published a book he was writing titled “Life is like Golf.” It seems appropriate as does the 19th segment of “odds and sods” to be enjoyed while having a beer.
While some personal and family events are woven into these experiences, most private dealings will be left for others to tell at a future celebration of life. A Lucky Man is primarily about my start in life and a career that spanned almost 6 decades.
The Beginning
October 8, 1949, Ronald Liepert was born in Saltcoats Saskatchewan to Fred Henry and Helen Elizabeth (Hudak). Fred, of German heritage, was a middle child of 13 with his parents immigrating from Russia with the first 4 children several years before Fred was born in 1920.
Helen immigrated to Canada from Budapest, Hungary in 1929 when she was 2. Fred spent a few years in the army during World War 2 but never left Canada. Helen was a farm wife, and each had the equivalent of about a grade 8 education.
Fred was a nice gentle man but was difficult to get agreement on most things. He was adamant that a middle name was just a nuisance as he often had army cheques made out to Henry Fred and had difficulty cashing them. Hence Ronald Liepert. His stubbornness would play a major part in shaping my career.
Four years after entering the world my sister Judy was born and like clockwork another 4 years later it was brother Dave on September 1, 1957. The 5 of us lived in a small house with no electricity until I was about 15. We had no indoor water or sewer, so it was an outhouse on cold winter nights. This and passing the evening hours away under a coil-oil lamp was a time to forget.
A few years after leaving the army Fred bought a section of farmland 6 miles northeast of Saltcoats, about a half hour drive from the city of Yorkton. As a veteran he had privileges through the VLA to acquire land. This decision was made following their marriage and being away for a year or two working in Ontario picking tobacco, among other jobs.
The section Fred acquired through VLA did not have an acre of cultivated land. His older brother Edward and younger brother Albert had now assumed the home section about 5 miles north of Fred’s land. They helped Fred get established since the farm equipment had been inherited from their parents. Helen’s parents farmed a quarter section across the road from Fred’s land and were also helpful in getting established.
Helen performed the role of obedient farm wife very well. We had around a dozen cows which were milked by hand, a few hogs and about 100 chickens. My mother always had a large garden, preserving a host of vegetables, garden and wild fruit. Very few meals at our house growing up did not entirely come from the land. We sold cream and eggs throughout the year and in the fall, cattle, hogs and chickens as well as grains that were not for animal feed.
Not surprisingly I don’t remember much of my first 10 years. What I do remember was farm work was hard and money was scarce.
Click this link for additional information on early years and pictures
School Years
I began school about 3 miles from home in the Graham district. Marguerite Bradford was the teacher in a one room schoolhouse for all 6 grades, in total around 30 kids. There were 6 in our class, 3 boys and 3 girls.
Helen Torrie, Linda Trowel, Marlene Toth, Perry Kirkham, Ronald Torrie and I were in first grade. At some point Muriel Willis joined the group and eventually 7 of us went on to take grades 7 & 8 at Saltcoats elementary.
Both Ronald Torrie and Perry Kirkham were skilled students and went on to attain university degrees. However, both returned to the Saltcoats area and farmed most of their lives. Unfortunately, both have passed away. Torrie died of a heart attack the night before a 50th, high school reunion in 2017 and Kirkham several years prior.
Grades 7 & 8 meant taking a school bus to the town of Saltcoats (population 500) one grade per classroom in a school that had approximately 200 students. I don’t recall my teachers in grades 7 and 8 but do recall that school was always a struggle.
Saltcoats didn’t have junior high, just elementary and high school. Our high school was quite modern, especially compared to the elementary school and had students from a wider surrounding area as some rural schools provided grades 1 through 8. I never liked books much but did enjoy the sporting activities and recess.
My entrance to high school coincided with the arrival of a new principal, Mr. Gross. Rumor had it he was fired from a previous role and hoisted onto Saltcoats. Mr. Gross, a nice man but legally blind, was way in over his head. Discipline didn’t exist and chalk fights took place at the back of the classroom throughout his entire math/algebra class. I’m sorry to say Ronald was one of the least disciplined.
Grade 9 was difficult but my teacher Mrs. Lowe from Bredenbury, the next little town about 6 miles east of Saltcoats on the Yellowhead highway, managed to get me passed onto grade 10.
History was a subject that we didn’t have until grade 10, or at least not ancient history. We had a wonderful teacher Mrs. Sinclair who lived early British history 24 hours a day. I couldn’t care less who the King of England was in the 1400’s. I recall scoring 8%, yes 8 out of 100, on the first history exam in the fall of 1964. It didn’t get a lot better as the year progressed and I ended up repeating grade 10.
By this time, I had lost interest in school but passed onto grade 11 although firmly believe a few of us were moved up so we would be that much closer to leaving school behind.
Grade 11 saw a major changeover in teaching staff including a new Principal, Mr. Hrytsak, who many of us thought had served time administering a German concentration camp. The teachers, other than Mrs. Lowe, were all from Yorkton and carpooled each day. Obviously, their attachment to the community was pretty much zero.
At some point during the year, Mr. Hrytsak had a nervous breakdown and had to leave. He was replaced by the local United Church Minister Walter Farquharson who later went on to be the moderator for the United Church of Canada.
By 1966-67 skipping class and not attending school became commonplace. I enjoyed the activities and camaraderie but failed several classes in grade 11 and did not advance to grade 12.
That year the school division also decided that students in grades 10-12 would travel to Yorkton starting in the fall of 1967.
That held no appeal to me and since post-secondary wasn’t an option I decided not to return in the fall of 1967, discontinue my education and find a job. I refer to this as my centennial project.
Post school years
In the late 50’s and 60’s several potash operations opened in Saskatchewan, including mines located in Esterhazy and Rocanville, each about a 30-minute drive from Saltcoats. Most guys who did not go to university ended up working at the mine.
I was always reticent about going to work a mile underground every day. The pay was double any other unskilled job in the region and it was a career for life, with a good pension. Another drawback was the mine operated 24 hours per day with rotating shifts which would have interfered with participating in sports activities.
The only other option was farming full-time with Fred who wasn’t about to retire anytime soon. As mentioned earlier we agreed on almost nothing. He refused to borrow money to buy more land or make other improvements. The only future in farming was to expand or work at the mine to supplement farm income.
I had intended to find outside employment in the summer of 1967 but ended up working full time on the farm. After harvest was completed, instead of getting on a school bus headed for Yorkton or applying to work at the mine, it was a Greyhound bus to Calgary and finding a job.
In the late 1960’s several Saskatchewan young men migrated to Alberta after completing high school and found good jobs. I decided to try my luck since there was little work to do on the farm in the winter. My parents gave me $100, bought a bus ticket and dropped me off at the Greyhound depot in Yorkton.
After an 18-hour Greyhound ride I arrived in Calgary and about a quarter of the money from my parents was for a hotel room that night. I had never been to a big city and planned to look in the Calgary Herald for job opportunities the next morning. There wasn’t much for leads in the jobs section. I did one interview and was offered a busboy position at a restaurant but turned it down.
Unable to afford any more nights in a hotel, I phoned my aunt and uncle, Sandy and Clara (Fred’s sister) Rubletz. Clara invited me to their house in Ogden and to stay for a bit while looking for work. I was extremely grateful to them for allowing me to stay at their house.
The next day it was time to look for work, and I went to the area of the old Shamrock Hotel. Several large industries were in this area including Burns Foods where many of the ex-Saskatchewan guys worked but they weren’t hiring off the street. I walked a little further down Ogden Road to Westeel Rosco.
This company manufactured steel door frames for hospitals and other large buildings. After filling out an application form, I was told to show up the next day to start work. I was to find out later that being from Saskatchewan was what got me hired immediately.
Westeel Rosco was probably close to the dirtiest place in the city to work. My job was grinding the weld bead on the corners of steel doors before they were painted. However, it was a job that didn’t require heavy lifting, was indoors for the winter and my supervisor would be happy if the corners ended up smooth.
This seemed like something that could become permanent, but Clara believed I would return to farm in Saskatchewan in the spring. She convinced me to stay in the spare room in the basement and pay $60 per month for room and board. My hourly wage was $1.78 but things were starting to come together, a good paying job and a place to sleep and eat.
As it turned out Clara was right about returning to Saskatchewan, however, for other reasons.
For several years before moving to Calgary, I would wake up in the middle of the night, writhing in pain. It would last for a short period of time, minutes not hours, and then go away. My parents took me to the doctor, and nothing could be found.
The pain returned shortly after arriving in Calgary, but now I was turning yellow. A visit to a local doctor determined I was passing gallstones. This rarely happens to young people, so it was never considered, however the yellow jaundice was now the tip-off.
I needed to have the gallbladder, which produced the stones, removed. In the late 60’s that meant a 10 inch slice up the gut and a month of recovery. I was also becoming terribly homesick and decided going back to Saskatchewan made the most sense, especially since some of my recovery time would be over Christmas. So, in late November it was another 18-hour red-eye Greyhound back to Yorkton.
My operation was successful, recovered over Christmas and within a few days of the calendar turning to 1968 it was back to Calgary. I got a job at CP Rail in the Ogden yards unloading boxcars. It paid more than Westeel and was a 15-minute walk from a small room that I rented in Ogden.
Rather than staying at Rubletzs’, I wanted some independence so entered into the craziest living arrangement, sharing a 2-bedroom basement suite, with an older guy who owned the house. He was separated from his wife who lived upstairs with the kids. I had my own bedroom, but we shared the kitchen and TV room. It was about 5 blocks from my aunt and uncle’s house and could walk to work. Paying only $60 a month and living mostly on a can of spaghetti-o’s every night meant some money could be put aside.
That winter however Fred hurt his back and was pretty much bedridden. I had no choice but to quit my job at CP and return to the farm in the spring.
Fred’s inability to do much that summer kept us from arguing about everything. I worked closely with my uncles and we shared equipment, something Fred refused to do.
As mentioned earlier, Fred refused to go into debt to buy more land or even clear the more than half-section of trees from our farm. A few years after the passing of my grandfather in 1958, Nana decided to sell the quarter section, where they lived, across the road from us. It would have made total sense to purchase the land, but Fred refused and eventually it was sold to my uncle Albert.
While Fred was laid up, I was now farming the quarter with my uncle when it could have been my land for the future. I enjoyed running the operation for the summer, but Fred was recovering nicely and so once harvest was completed it was time to go back to Calgary.
I returned to my old job at Westeel so I could afford something better for accommodation than the previous winter. Well maybe not better but more of it.
A friend from Calgary, Joe Bauer, and I rented the same 2-bedroom basement suite in Ogden. The owner moved elsewhere and rented the entire basement to us. A young family was renting the upstairs and every weekend our suite became party central, mostly because it wasn’t possible to damage anything more than it was already beaten up. A dozen or more guys from high school days were now working in Calgary with more coming every day it seemed.
The job at Westeel was incredibly dirty and after working a full winter grinding, concluded this was not going to be permanent. There is a saying “You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy” so it was back one more time for the summer of 1969 to try farming.
While another summer working on the farm with Fred had its challenges, larger issues were surfacing.
Farming in the late 60’s was challenging. International grain markets had collapsed and after harvest in the fall of 1969 wheat was still sitting in the bin from the previous 2 years. We were really going nowhere on the farm. My dad had recovered nicely and so in October it was goodbye to Saskatchewan, or so I thought, but this time not on the Greyhound.
My first car
Working an entire winter at Westeel and living in a very affordable basement suite allowed me to save enough money that upon returning to Saskatchewan in 1969 I was able to buy a sleek 1957 red Chevy 2 door hardtop. No longer did I have to rely on the family vehicle to go drinking with the boys on Friday night or to a weekend softball tournament. Now my 57 Chevy was taking me west to start a new permanent life in Calgary, or so I thought.
Burns
With Saskatchewan in the rearview mirror, it was now time to find a permanent job in Calgary. Several of the Saskatchewan boys ended up at Burns Foods mainly because a local guy, Francis Docherty, had worked his way up to a foreman’s position.
Francis would get friends a job at Burns but under one condition, they had to commit to permanent work and not return to Saskatchewan in the spring. The pay was good, everyone belonged to a strong union, and it was inside work. He also made sure we didn’t get the lousy jobs like the killing floor or the coolers packing hinds of beef all day.
He got me a job in the cheese department. Large, almost 80-pound crates of cheese would arrive on a weekly basis and had to be unloaded into the refrigerated warehouse. That was the hardest work but was only about 5% of the week. Most of the work in the cheese department consisted of mixing the 80-pound crates with powdered milk and some other ingredients on an assembly line with soft spreadable cheese pouring into one-pound packages at the other end.
This was a relatively easy job but after a day of dumping powdered milk into a vat, a man in coveralls resembled a snowman.
The other major line of work was packaging margarine. A large tanker would bring vegetable oil to the plant and over time it would be processed into different kinds of margarine.
Working at Burns for 6 months meant saving up enough money to buy the car of my dreams, a 1963 Plymouth Sports Fury. It was a two door, console shift, leather interior and purchased from the same Francis Docherty, who wholesaled used cars on the side.
Linda Lelond
In the fall of 1967, staying at Rubletz’s, the only people I knew were my cousins Tom and Sandra. Tom, who was my age, and his friends were interested in cars, drag racing and just about everything I could care less about. Sandra seemed to have only one good friend, Linda Lelond, and they were inseparable. They were 3 years younger than me, and both had very strict early curfews. However, even though they were only 15, I seemed to have more in common with them than the guys.
While sharing the basement suite for the previous 2 winters I renewed contact with Linda. My accommodation was hardly a place that would impress a young lady, so we met a few times at the outdoor skating rink.
By 1970 things were getting a little more serious. Linda had graduated high school and was working at AGT, the telephone company, in directory assistance. These were the days prior to internet and cell phones.
Linda lived at home to save money so even though she was working a curfew remained.
In the summer of 1970, with enough time accumulated for a week’s vacation, we planned to drive the Sports Fury to the coast. I had never travelled west of Banff while Linda had been to an art school in Penticton. Linda was just shy of her 18th birthday, working full time but still living at home. We discussed the idea with her parents, but they refused to allow her to travel with me.
I got along fine with Linda’s parents, even though they were incredibly strict as to what she could do and could not. In some ways, one could see their point of view. They did not know me all that well. The last thing they wanted was a pregnant teenager and grandchild to look after and me disappear.
It was this decision however that led to us getting engaged shortly thereafter and married on April 24th, 1971. If we wanted to do things together, and not operate under a curfew, it seemed like our only option. Moving in together before getting married was clearly forbidden and would have likely resulted in an estranged relationship with her parents. We did not want that.
April 24, 1971
It was a beautiful wedding in Calgary, a nice spring afternoon for pictures in the park and off on our honeymoon that evening. We were still kids, I was 21 and Linda 18, but we headed south in the Plymouth Fury. Our honeymoon meant spending the first night at the Carriage House on McLeod Trail. Her parents thought they were sending her off to sleep with a man for the first time. We then visited the tabernacle in Salt Lake City, attended baseball games (and almost freezing) in San Francisco and Anaheim, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm and staying at the Imperial Palace on the strip in Las Vegas. This was a trip of a lifetime that neither of us had ever come close to experiencing in our young lives. However, the credit cards were charged to the maximum. The two weeks went by quickly and it was back to work at Burns & AGT to pay for all this extravagance.
At Disneyland with Mickey Mouse
