Looking Back: A Blizzard Arrived

100 years ago - Dec. 17, 1925

A Benevolent Protective Order of Elks lodge started here on Dec. 16. It set an Elks provincial record for the most members, 160, at the time of inception.

80 years ago - Dec. 11, 1945

James Roberts trapped a rat at the barn near the dairy.

Army engineer craftsman Ralph Hare arrived to visit his parents. Gunner James H. Brown got here too late for the funeral of his father, Charles E. Brown. Both soldiers saw action in northwestern Europe.

70 years ago - Dec. 15, 1955

A blizzard arrived on Monday, Dec. 12. “Oldtimers tell us that for concentrated viciousness” they had never seen anything like it. Schoolchildren and shoppers from the country were storm-stayed in town, many for 48 hours.

At noon, George Wickett, 25, left Forgan in his truck for his farm five miles north of Glamis. After going 1 1/2 miles, Wickett got lost and at 2:30 p.m. the engine died. Wickett stayed in the truck. He had sandwiches, a thermos of coffee and warm clothing and didn’t panic. Wickett wrapped seat padding around his feet. After two hours sleep, Wickett awoke “so numb and stiff with cold” that he dared not fall asleep again. When drowsy, he stamped his feet and beat himself with his hands.

About 7 a.m. on Wednesday, he could see distant buildings. He walked to the buildings, on the Bourbon farm where he phoned his wife. Wickett was in hospital here from exposure and frost-bitten feet.

On Monday morning, commercial travellers W. F. Bacon of Rosetown and Stan Wilkenson of Saskatoon left here by car for Kindersley. After stopping a few miles west past Fiske, their car wouldn’t start. After a night in a deserted farmhouse and out of fire fuel, they left. On Tuesday afternoon, they reached an occupied farm house, where Bacon phoned his wife.

Margaret Fleming of McGee stepped out of a Rosetown store and was blown into a parked car, dislocating a shoulder.

A farmer’s wife, alone on the farm, gave birth. Her husband had gone to get help to take her to the hospital.

50 years ago - Dec. 17, 1975

A photo showed baby Brandy Jedlicka, father Charles Jedlicka, grandmother Beatrice (née Kotaska) Jedlicka and Mrs. Bohun, a woman who’d come from Czechoslovakia in 1928 to work on the farm of Mr and Mrs. Charles Kotaska. Mrs. Bohun had babysat Beatrice.

Stan and Anne Vavrik of Dodsland held a dinner party for her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Boudy, on their 60th anniversary.

30 years ago - Dec. 11, 1995

A Dec. 4 blizzard meant the Rosetown RCMP couldn’t get out. Saskatoon and Delisle RCMP went to an accident scene two miles east of Harris. A tractor-trailer jackknifed. Another sidelined. Other vehicles hit the trucks or ditch. Geraldine Boychuk of the Tessier area went to University Hospital with a neck injury after her vehicle went under a trailer.

Firefighters Richard Franklin and Jason Kazakoff on snowmobiles helped Cpl. Bob Sutherland find driver Bev Masse west of town.

About 40 people, from as far away as Kelowna, B.C., and Montana, slept on gymnastic mats at the civic centre. Firefighters brought food from the Highway Host. Cam and Susan Stanek hosted 19 people at their farmhouse north of town.

Fiske Hotel proprietor Joel Brown served travellers soup and coffee. Among them were Jodi Taylor and family of Melfort going to Calgary with shoeboxes of gifts for Bosnia.

20 years ago - Dec. 12, 2005

Water and money were unresolved issues for a large-scale greenhouse project at the TransGas compressor site.