Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
Surely, surely, Y2K fatigue has worn off sufficiently to permit a bit of belated sentimental rambling about the changing of the century.
Would that I could have written this earlier, but holiday season postal delays, and a few more excusable constraints, compelled me to postpone comment, even on something as memorable as the Review's Century Edition which all readers received, and which surely will be sealed in many a time capsule. I feel free to applaud it without embarrassment, because for the first time in four decades a Review commemorative issue has been published without me up to my neck in it, spending sleepless nights dreaming up new ideas and twists. I truly enjoyed the luxury of reading it all as an appreciative if not completely unbiased reader.
Was I jealous? Not a bit! Okay, just a twinge of envy at not being able to bask in the welcome words of praise occasionally earned by such an effort.
But there was real fulfillment wallowing in memories summoned by the many featured pictures and stories from past years, including a few in which I had played a part perhaps as writer or photographer, and occasionally even as the subject.
One example is the picture, taken when I was a mere lad of 40, immortalized milking a goat. At some agricultural event, a local business enterprise shamed radio station manager Jim Laing and myself to lend our talents to a goat-milking competition. It was a lifetime first for both of us, but I out-psyched poor Jim. While he looked at the two animals disdainfully and with downright revulsion, I unashamedly pandered to their femininity, and stroked them alternately but generously until the starting bell. It worked! My nanny yielded her milk generously, though constantly licking my face in the process, while Jim barely got a drop out of his creature. Heck, I got at least half an inch at the bottom of my little peanut butter tin or whatever. Wonder whatever happened to it.
Another memorable shot, for me, was the photo of Mayor Jun Staveley and Premier Tommy Douglas, both beaming and looking like old buddies, turning on the natural gas at the SPC flame-lighting ceremony in August of 1958. Recently arrived in Weyburn, I had come with photographic experience limited to little more than a cram session of a few hours insisted upon by a sympathetic Manitoba kinsman. A camera nut since he was a child, he considered it the least he could do to prepare me for the many demands of newspaper "management" in which I was sorely lacking. Two months into my career of publisher, I had probably snapped off a few hundred shots, but it was summer, and inexperience and rare prudence dictated that I avoid flash photos.
But there was no avoiding it on that late-August evening, when a blanket of darkness was awaited for effectiveness, as those two worthies shared the honor of turning the wheel-like valve which allowed gas to eject from a special pipe through a pilot light to turn it into a pillar of flame to thrill the waiting multitude.
Through good management or luck, but more probably publicity-hungry accommodation, Leader-Post reporter Pete Wenger and I were allotted a strategic location to record the moment for posterity. I aimed and focused my camera, preset at 1/100th of a second, and desperately gasped, "What opening?" Veteran Pete said "Try F8." I snapped off two shots, seconds apart, at F8 and F11, and placed myself at the mercy of fate.
One I don't know which turned out beautifully, and about a year later when a Time Magazine writer wrote a feature story on Weyburn's handling of the petroleum bonanza, and desperately needed a photo of long-time political rivals Douglas and Staveley, he borrowed this photo and ran it in the magazine beside his story. (My Manitoba "tutor" for years had submitted photos to Time, but for all his expertise and talent, had never succeeded. A plum for me!)
Other "Century" pix with special personal memories included the Weyburn Hardware store fire on a 1959 October night, when typesetter Ray Lariviere, rooming at the Soo Hotel and roused by the fire-fighting activity, phoned me and helped me get a scoop; stetsoned P.M. Pierre visiting Weyburn on the crest of Trudeaumania in 1968; a 1958 photo of a rare double-triple wedding at St. Vincent de Paul R.C. Church three Downings and two Jablonskis among the principals; milkman and alderman Gordon Miles beside his horse (possibly the last milk delivery horse in Canada) on the occasion of the animal's retirement in 1960; the raising of the "new" Canadian flag in 1965 (probably taken by Mary Greer); hail devastation in 1968 (snapped by son Eric).
I was touched by "The Soldier in White Marble", a poignant story submitted by Weyburn native Gordon Bruce McLean, now of Nanaimo.
Well done, Review management and staffers! You now have this grateful reader's permission to relax. Ummmm until 2005, when Saskatchewan's 100th year as a province rolls around.
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
Box 400, 904 East Avenue
Weyburn, SK
S4H 2K4
Phone: (306) 842-7487
Fax: (306) 842-0282
E-mail: weyburn.review@sk.sympatico.ca
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Review (1987) Ltd.
