Looking Back: Local boys help Red Cross
110 years ago - Feb. 3, 1916
Two more soldiers wrote home from the front.
“There has been a great deal of rain here this winter and there has been no snow in this part,” wrote William Nixon.
The rain helped, explained J. Lindsay. The German fired artillery shells on them every day, he said.
“I nearly got mine, when a shell burst ten yards away and wounded a fellow standing right close to me and threw another up in the air,” said Lindsay.
“It is good that the ground is so soft, as the shells sink deep in the mud and stops the shrapnel from spreading.”
Rosetown council decided to start a fire brigade.
Cleland Grain Growers Association members organized the Rosetown Northern Rural Telephone Co.
100 years ago - Feb. 4, 1926
“The winter season has been unusually mild and the snowfall light.” Automobiles have been able to reach town from all directions until near the end of January. “Very seldom has the thermometer got near the zero mark.”
70 years ago - Feb. 2, 1956
In the fall of 1953, local boys Jimmy Gardner, Sterling McLeod and Donald Sanderson started a club to help the Red Cross. They raised money by shovelling sidewalks and cleaning back yards, said editor John Pinckney.
In the fall of ’55, they had $3.50 in the treasury and added members Garry Clarke and Everett Sanderson. Once they reached $10, they would donate that sum to the Red Cross, said Pinckney.
The Rosetown High School basketball teams played teams of local adults. The men defeated the boys 54-24 and the women beat the girls 22-7.
Norm Luker got 20 points and Bill Pfeiffer, 13 for the men. Bill Quinney had 10 high school points and Wayne Glass got eight.
Shirley Mullens scored eight points and Marg Brookbank and Marg Benson each got six points and Irma Irwin “led a tight defence” for the women. Liz Driedger scored three points and Betty Lust and Donna Evans had two each for the high school.
50 years ago - Feb. 4, 1976
A former resident made one of the fastest bank-robbery arrests.
A man entered a Bank of Nova Scotia branch in Nanaimo, B.C., and passed a note to a teller: “The money. I am armed. No fuss. No alarms.”
The teller handed over $945 in cash. As soon as the man left, the teller told accountant Hugh Clark, the son of Lloyd Clark of Rosetown.
Clark chased the robber down the street, along an avenue and back to the rear of the bank. There Clark knocked him down and sat on him until the arrival of Cst. Gary Appleton, who had been in the bank, for an official arrest three minutes after the robbery.
John Cloutier got 186 votes to win a Rosetown council seat. Denis Sabo received 134 votes and Norm Mackie, 122.
Nicole Normand was crowned as ice carnival queen.
30 years ago - Feb. 5, 1996
Deer were struggling to survive minus-40 weather. A photo showed Dean Morrison, Ralph Masear and Rick Waite unloading feed for the 250-300 deer near Anglia. Roughly 500 were in the Harris game preserve and 30-40 within the village of Harris, said RM of Harris administrator Jim Angus.
20 years ago - Feb. 6, 2006
A break-in at the Harris post office on Jan. 30 was connected to another in Vanscoy the same night, said Sgt. Mike Zens of the Rosetown RCMP. Another break-and-enter, at the Hood restaurant here on the night of Jan. 26-27, was apparently unrelated, said Zens.