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Memory of the month the way things were (Part Sixteen)

Kingsteignton bypass A380 No2

Following on from the last episode another sad event happened, the dumpers had to cross the main Teignmouth road their crossing was controlled by man operated traffic lights, it was downhill to the crossing and as two dumpers approached a Ford Anglia jumped the lights thinking he could beat the first one a 35 tonner, he didn’t and the left hand front wheel hit the middle of the front passenger door, the car wrapped around the wheel and jammed under the bumper it was then pushed across the road onto the site opposite, the truck driver was so shocked he jumped out and ran away.

The driver of the second 50t truck was brilliant he jumped out, ran over to the car and managed to get the car driver out and away. We always thought he was a bit of a scatter brain, the life and soul of any party, but he certainly came good that day.  Unfortunately the woman in the passenger seat took the full force of the collision and died instantly, I had to go down and lift up the front of the truck so the firemen could remove her body which was a really awful job as you can imagine.

Holding up the truck wasn’t easy and dangerous for the fire men, Why they didn’t pull the car out once I’d lifted it I don’t know, in some respects the car driver was lucky it wasn’t a 50 tonner in front as it would have just rolled right over the car.

In those days we all carried our nosebag with us on the machines and when we stopped for snack at 10 o’clock, one of the chaps had the Sun newspaper and there was an advertisement for operators in northern Canada, I thought, I’ve been nowhere and seen nothing, so I said I think I’ll apply for that and the second driver said I’ll come with you, so I rang up and we had a meeting at the Canadian embassy in London and we got the job with no problem, but we needed passports and that was a problem for both of us, but especially for me because I had no birth certificate as it had probably been destroyed during the war.

However the Scottish records office and the passport office were brilliant after I told them I had a job waiting they quickly came up with a copy and passport. For Doug Hamilton a slightly different problem arose as his father was a Canadian who was killed in the war so he had the choice of a British or a Canadian passport so he plumped for the Canadian one, a very wise move. About ten days after we received the passports I arrived home from work to find a telegram telling me to be at Heathrow a couple of days later, Terminal 3 the Air Canada desk had our tickets so off we went.

I have to say Whites were very good about letting us go and wished us well, so giving up good jobs much to the amazement of our colleagues for an adventure and the hope of earning a decent bit of money.  The contract was for eleven months and I intended to stay on site for the whole of that period, bearing in mind I was leaving my wife Angela at home she took it very well and I knew she would cope with it given her past and being quite independent 

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The job turned out to be a hydro-electric scheme on the Nelson river in northern Manitoba, when we arrived on site via the company plane and a ferry we got a room together and after lunch were taken out to the site, the job was to cut a double channel about 2¼ miles long ¼ mile wide and about 30 feet deep with a burm in the middle making it effectively two channels much of it through granite in order to create a good flow of water to the dam.  It was slightly S shaped so the large slabs of ice would break up before reaching the dam.

On the way the superintendent asked if I operated a cat & can or a road patrol I said I didn’t know what he was talking about but whatever they had I’d run it, by this time we had stopped to watch a Cat 988 loading dump trucks he said that’s our best operator, and I thought hell, he wouldn’t get a job in England but kept quiet, anyway they put Doug on a 35 ton truck and me on a Cat 988 loader so we both had the type of machines we liked although much smaller than we were used to.  A cat and can turned out to be a D8 and box scraper and a road patrol a grader. More of Canada next month. The co-operator