Saskatchewan, 1928 - Part II

Port Townsend, today. Browsing through an album that hasn’t been touched for years. In it, I found some real gems. When my Dad was 18, he and his brothers Hector and Alfred and a couple of other fellows decided to seek their fortunes working the crops in Saskatchewan. It is our good fortune that he had a folding camera and a couple of rolls of film and captured some rare images for us to enjoy!

So. The boys ended up in Bengough, Saskatchewan. Bengough was named in honor of one of Canada’s more famous cartoonists; John W. Bengough, and is located in the southern part of central Saskatchewan.

Here is a wonderful shot of a Leslie farm tractor. That’s my Dad in the middle. The tractor has a power take off, running a massive leather belt to power other farm implements. Uncharacteristically for me, I came up empty trying to find more information on this tractor. I hope a reader can help us out and drop off information in the “comment” section below!

It seems to me that the group broke up here, with Dad and his two brothers heading back to Victoria. As I mentioned before, they hopped freighters without incident ‘till they got back to the Rockies, and got caught by a no-nonsense conductor. He gave them the choice of hoofing it back to Vancouver, or shoveling coal in the cab! And so Dad learned about the workings of a Canadian National Railways “Mountain Class.”