Here is a picture from the past. It is from February or March of 1970. The picture says 1971 but that makes no sense to me. We had just purchased a new 1970 International truck and it was the first winter we had it. I had driven it for just a few months and we had an old box on it that got replaced for the first full summer we drove the truck. This picture is taken at the Griffin open pit mine at Bruce Lake in Ontario. We worked together with Aron Penner on a land clearing project that covered about 200 acres. The bush was to be cleared from this area because the mine drained it's tailing water into this area and the trees were dying and when they rotted they were killing the fish. We cut down the trees and piled them and burned them. Because of the wet ground underfoot Aron had lots of trouble with his big cats and it was hoped that the small ones like this TD-6 would work better because they were lighter. It did in some areas but we ended up doing most of the work by hand. We cut down the trees with chainsaws and cut the wood into lengths we could pile by hand and then we burned it. The building in the background is part of the mine's processing plant. All the trees that we cut down or pushed down had to get burned. Here we were using the TD-6 to keep the fire supplied with wood. This was one area where the cats could drive on the site. A large part of the site had a layer of ice and then upto 15 feet of water underneath. And other area's had mud underneath the snow. Guy's worked on snowshoes and sank into the mud upto their knees with snowshoes underneath. Dad bought this grader from Dept. of Highways in The Pas. For our first wedding anniversary my wife and I went to pick it up. We were gone 2 days and enjoyed some beautiful fall colours while driving. The grader is still in running condition for a local contractor. When Landmark Motors moved to the north end of Landmark some years ago I had the privilege of blading the yard with it during construction. In spring of 1978 Jake's Gravel bought a new truck. I flew to Toronto and then a bus to Oshawa. I picked up this set of trucks and delivered them to Loewen Chev. The lead truck was the one we had ordered. I hauled gravel with it till Dad sold the gravel operation and then I hauled fertilzer and grain with it. It was unit 122 at Jake's Gravel. When Dad sold out I purchased this truck and owned it for a number of years. I saw a lot of country with this truck. On one trip to Missisippi I had my wife and 2 youngest children along. The youngest one was about 6 months old at the time. My dad used to own this airplane, a Piper Arrow. When we moved to our present location we made a runway accross the creek from where my wife and I lived. In summer we parked the plane beside the runway. In winter we built a road accross the creek with snow and parked the plane close to the house trailer so we could plug it in. When we went to look at the 88B up in Gilam we used this plane to go look at it. This was the return load on one of my more memorable trips. On the way out we had a big box on the front of the trailer with household goods and on the back we had a compressor mounted on a 28' trailer. The household goods got dropped off in New Brunswick and then we continued on to Sidney on Cape Breton Island. From there it was back to St. Steven's in New Brunswick with a load of compressed chip board for western New York state. Then I went up to Alma, On to load up this load of Husky farm equipment and then back home. I put on about 6000 miles in 10 days. My dad purchased this loader new in the mid 60's. I'm not sure which year exactly. He bought it from Kane Equipment when they were still somewhere in the middle of Winnipeg. In those days this was a big loader, it had a 2.5 yd bucket. As a teenager I spent many happy hours operating this machine. This picture is taken in the southwest corner of the present day Fast Bros. pit. In those days there was still gravel above the water. |