“Where are you going?” asked my dad.
“I’m going to hitchhike to Alberta.” It was the first time I had ventured out of Saskatchewan.
Dad was astounded. “How much money do you have, George?” I had twelve dollars, I told him. Dad said, “I can’t give you any money. I don’t have any.” He was flat broke.
I told him not to worry—I would be all right. Much later in life I realized just how much of a worry that would be to any parent—a kid setting off in January who had virtually no money and nowhere to stay. I walked a couple of kilometres up to the Trans-Canada Highway west of Moose Jaw and stuck out my thumb. In no time I had a ride from one of many travelling salesmen who helped me along the way, not only giving me rides but sometimes buying me a meal. I never ran into any difficulty and was always well treated by my benefactors.
In a few days I arrived in Lethbridge, where a friend of my brother Bob was living. His name was Art MacKenzie; his family had lived next to ours on the farm during the Depression and in the first years of World War II. In fact, three of the MacKenzie boys served in the war. Jim and Jack returned home, but Dave was killed overseas. I looked up Art. He was staying with his older brother, Jim, and his wife, and they took me in.
In no time I found a job and moved to a boarding house. That first job was with Western Canada Hardware, a company that handled everything from steel to oxygen tanks used in welding. They also handled dynamite used in mining. I knew that our dynamite delivery truck was making a delivery to a coal mine in the Crowsnest Pass, west of Lethbridge. My sister Muriel and her family lived there, and I wanted to visit, so I asked for a ride. The driver was a real character. The dynamite delivery truck was bright red and was required to fly a red flag to indicate we were carrying explosives. Flying down a hill on Highway 3, the driver waited until we were approaching an oncoming car and turned off the ignition, quickly turning it on again. The effect was a terrific bang! The driver of the oncoming vehicle must have been frightened out of his wits hearing that bang and seeing the red flag of the dynamite truck. We laughed as we carried on, but the truck sounded noisy—he had probably destroyed the muffler.
My next job in Lethbridge was at a local butcher shop. However, on about the third day I cut my hand badly. The owner told me to go to a nearby doctor and have it bandaged. He said he would pay for the treatment and gave me my three days’ pay. He said, “George, I don’t think you’ll ever be a butcher.” I was fired but there were no bad feelings. I understood.
My last job in Lethbridge was with the Lethbridge Laundry and Dry Cleaners. I began by being a swamper—a helper on the truck delivering clean laundry and picking up dirty laundry like bed sheets, pillow slips and towels. Our main clients were the hotels. It was fairly heavy lifting for a kid. I “graduated” to working in the dry-cleaning plant where customers’ clothes were placed in cleaning fluid in a large drum, similar to a washing machine. The process ended with the machine—called an extractor—whirling at high speed to expel the cleaning fluid with centrifugal force. When the machine stopped, it was my job to lift the clothing out of the extractor and put it in a dryer. The wet clothing was heavy and the solvent turned my hands raw. Gloves were not supplied.
One of my fellow workers was a guy who owned a motorcycle. He invited me to go for a ride on a Sunday. It was in the days before helmets. We rode down to the US border at Sweetgrass, Montana, but to my disappointment we did not cross the border. However, we were able to see a very large American flag. I was thrilled. It was the first time I had seen the American flag flying in the United States.
My hitchhiking habits took me far and wide.
While living and working in Lethbridge I would travel on weekends, using my thumb to catch rides. Some weekends I would hitchhike to Medicine Hat and hang around Radio Station CHAT, known in radio as “The CHAT in the Hat.” In Lethbridge, at radio station CJOC, I would run errands for the announcers such as Wally Stanbuck and Ron Hunka, who later became a first-class CBC announcer in Edmonton. I was in heaven hanging around those stations, especially CJOC. I was devastated when I was told, “Hey kid, we don’t want you hanging around here.”
One weekend I hitchhiked to Calgary and took a room in a hotel. I then did something that was so out of character and so despicable that I am ashamed to write about it. I include this terrible story because it was a defining moment in my life.
In the late evening, I returned to my hotel room, passing a room with its door ajar. I looked in and could see a man sprawled across the bed. On impulse I tiptoed into the room and saw the man’s trousers on a chair by the bed. For some inexplicable reason, I decided I would rob the man by stealing his wallet. My heart was pounding as I thought he might wake up, even though I suspected he had passed out from drinking. Audaciously, I picked up a beer bottle with the intention of hitting the man if he woke up. In that pivotal moment I had a realization that I was about to commit a terrible criminal act that was not in my nature at all. I quietly put down the bottle and made my way out of the man’s room, gently closing the door behind me. I returned to my room with my heart still pounding, terribly ashamed at what I had just done.
The next morning, on my return trip to Lethbridge, I was picked up by a truck driver who happened to be a Mormon. We talked a lot about religion and the thought occurred to me that it must have been divine intervention that caused me to stop what could have led to a life of crime. Instead, a bright new career was about to open up for me. It was indeed a day of destiny!
Chapter 4
A Radio Career
On the excellent sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, announcer Ted Baxter, cupping his ear with his hand, would say in dulcet tones, “It all started in a little station …”
Well, for me it did start in that proverbial little station in the relatively small town of North Battleford, Saskatchewan. I had hitchhiked there from my home in Moose Jaw and was given an audition at CJNB in July, 1952. Somehow I passed the audition and was told I could start as an announcer on August 1. Winning the job was the culmination of years of dreaming about being an announcer. But I did more than dream. I hung around radio stations, getting coffee for the announcers, carrying their equipment for remote broadcasts … anything to get noticed. Finally, I had my first job in radio. I was terrified when I sat behind the control panel and opened a microphone for the first time. I stuttered as I introduced a singer named Tony Martin to sing “Tahiti, My Island.” I think it came out, “Here is T—T—Tony M—M—Martin to sing ‘T—Tahiti, M—My Island.’” I was a bundle of nerves.
However, it was not long before I was doing what the industry called “rip ’n’ read” newscasts. Wire services like Broadcast News (BN), a division of the Canadian Press (CP), condensed stories into short paragraphs for radio station newscasts. One problem was that announcers like me were also disc jockeys playing records that usually lasted less than three minutes. The announcer had to race down a long hallway to the teletype machines, rip off some news copy, and race back to the control room before the record ended. Any rehearsal of the newscast was done quickly as a few records played. Wire copy provided pronunciation guides for faraway places and foreign-sounding names, but struggling announcers like me often mispronounced them. I had no formal training. In essence I was a high school dropout inflicted on the unsuspecting audience of CJNB. Farmers in the area listened to the radio. One said he put a radio in the barn and the cows gave more milk!
I began my career at age seventeen. Within a few days, the Annual North Battleford Fall Fair was underway. First Nations people came from surrounding reserves, often by horse and wagon. They pitched tents and some teepees near the fairgrounds and stayed for the full week of the fair. Although the station had a very small staff, we did broadcasts from a booth in the fair for several hours each day. My first ever interview was with a young girl—probably about fourteen—whose calf had won a 4-H Club competition. I’d had some experience on farms so I wasn’t totally lost, but it was not a very enlightening interview. At the fair I met the local agriculture representative, a government official known as an “Ag Reg.” His name was John Allan, and he was a kindly man. He helped me a great deal with advice on how to cover agricultural