Thank you for coming today to help our family express our appreciation for a life well lived.
Grandpa passed away last Tuesday at the Grey Nuns Hospital after being admitted on Saturday with pneumonia.
It was a characteristically quiet and peaceful passing while surrounded by
his most important possession, his family.
Ed and his twin brother Fred were born at Wabamun, Alberta on October 9,
1919, the first born of Edwin John Woollard and Freida Viola Woollard, the
former Freida Lent. They were the first twins in the district and were quite
a novelty. One pessimistic lady who came to see the twins said, “of course
you won’t raise them both!” The family later grew to include three sisters;
Marguerite, Pat and Lois.
Ed’s parents were true pioneers of this district. His father, Edwin J., came
to Wabamun with his parents Bernard and Annie, two brothers and two sisters
in 1902.
His mother, Freida, came to the Duffield district with her family in 1900 when she was two years old. Her father was David Lent, a Methodist missionary and teacher on the Duffield Indian Reserve. Edwin J. and Freida were married in September 1918 and lived on his homestead.
Grandpa really was born in a log cabin on the top of a hill overlooking Moonlight Bay on Lake Wabamun. When he was young there were no fences in the country except around some farmer’s fields, and there was no herd law, so when the cows decided to wander they could really travel, and did. He and Fred would take the horses and follow the herd and fetch them home from as far away as Wabamun (even cows like to go to town, I guess).
In the spring of 1920 the family moved from the homestead east of Wabamun to the farm two miles north of the town.
Ed and Fred started school in the Sylvan School District in 1926. This school was about two and a half miles away and mostly they walked, although their Dad took them occasionally.
In 1931 two families moved away, taking most of the school population, so Sylvan School was closed and they went to Rexboro which was a little farther away, about three miles from home.
Ed grew through his teenage years and just into adulthood during the Great Depression. Roads were poor, transportation was not very sophisticated and money was scarce so entertainment was mostly playing ball, going to dances, and chasing girls of course. Times were tough but he said that his parents always provided lots to eat and the kids didn't suffer. In 1939 Fred and Ed went harvesting in the Dewberry area. They had an old 1925 Star car that Fred got from Uncle Roy Lent. It wasn't in very good shape and broke down east of Vermilion and a guy towed them into Islay (eye lee). It turned out to be a very hair raising experience because the thing was hard to drive at the best of times and being towed at 40 M.P.H. was frightening. They got jobs stooking and threshing and Fred fixed the car. The war broke out that September and there was an early snow so they headed for home. The highway was in terrible shape, it took two days to get home, using low and second gear most of the way. While they were away the family moved into the new house which had been under construction for a couple of years. In October 1939, his parents had a housewarming and birthday party for he and Fred with many people present. Among them was the girl who would become his wife and partner for 56 years. Gertie Campbell had come to the party with her sister Murdina whom Fred was courting. Ed went along to take the girls home and never looked back.
Gertie and Ed were married on May 10, 1941, just ten days before he answered his Army call up. When he joined the army he had too much education (grade ten) for cannon fodder so he was picked as a clerk for the Army Service Corps. He was in the Forces for four and a half years, in Camrose, Red Deer, Calgary, Edmonton and Camp Borden, Ontario. In Camp Borden he was in charge of fuel for tanks and transport. Six 25,000 gallon tanks in a compound would be loaded from tanker trains then issued via pipeline to a service station with ten pumps. Gasoline, diesel fuel and hi-test (aviation) gas was used because some of the training tanks had radial aircraft engines for power. He told the story of an incident on Armistice Day when a bunch of troops were milling around, shooting off guns etc., in celebration and were moving toward the storage area. The consequences of a stray bullet or grenade in a high test tank were dire so he went out in front of the mob and led them down a side street away from trouble, then faded back into the crowd after a couple of blocks. It strikes me that this is typical of how Grandpa was, a quiet man who led by example.
Family was always important to Grandpa. While he was at Camp Borden he used to take his weekend leaves in Toronto where he worked as a labourer in warehouses for fifty cents an hour to make enough money to go home on his furloughs. While working he usually stayed at the Salvation Army Hostel. He did have time to visit Niagara Falls one time with his sister, Marguerite, who worked in a munitions factory. They had a tour of the Falls and rode the cable car across the Niagara Gorge. While he was in Toronto he was on a radio quiz program; he didn't get the correct answer but won a consolation prize of one dollar, which we still have.
He got two fortnight leaves and one ten-day Christmas leave while he was in Ontario. He spent 3 nights and two days on the train each way and the fare was sixty dollars for men in uniform.
He got his Army discharge in October 1945 and came home to his family, Gertie, Freida Anne who was born in June 1942, and Lynne Joy born in March 1944. That was a happy day.
His Grandmother Woollard had died in 1942 and left him her small house, which she had built on his Dad's farm. He lived there and got a job at the coal mine, which was to last almost 40 years until his retirement in 1984. Grant was born July, 1946 when they were still on the farm. The family moved to the mine housing site in 1948. Kerry was born in February 1951 and Laine on June 2, 1956.
Grandpa worked as a labourer and tipple operator at the mine until he became tipple foreman, which was an increase in responsibility but no reduction in workload. By the late '50's he felt it was time to learn a trade. The opportunity arose to apprentice as a welder and he started his training at the Chicago Vocational Institute in Edmonton in 1958. He worked at the trade and continued his schooling at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. While in Calgary for his six weeks of school per year he usually stayed with his cousin Helen Miller and her husband Art, who was an instructor at S.A.I.T.
The mention of “the old mine” to the many kids who grew up there and the miners who worked there, is sure to generate memories and stories. The old mine site was more than a work place; it was a tightly knit community with a host of shared experiences. The skating rink, the tipple and the sound of steam locomotives were all part of a unique environment shared by the families that lived there.
Throughout his long career at the mine Grandpa saw the business of coal mining change considerably. When he started, the primary reason to mine coal was to ship it to other parts of the country to provide heating for houses, hospitals and office buildings. At the end of his career the mines were in full operation with an output of millions of tons dedicated exclusively to the production of electricity from the power plants in the Wabamun area. This change in marketing had a significant impact on the employees involved in the business. Skills developed from basic hard and dangerous underground work to the sophisticated use of engineering technology involving mammoth machines and their maintenance. It was an exciting time to be working in the field of coal mining and Grandpa thrived on the changes that occurred. Throughout all these changes Grandpa still purchased coal and hauled it home in the back of his pickup to use in his coal fired furnace on the acreage. The trips for coal were a highlight for the grandchildren who often got to ride in the back of the truck. This guaranteed that there would be no shortage of laundry to do by the time we got finished helping Grandpa unload the coal.
All the time his kids were growing up Grandpa was involved in the community. He was Secretary Treasurer of the Rexboro Social Club, which was very active in organizing dances, whist drives and bingos, not to mention plays, movies, and especially the annual turkey suppers. He was also Treasurer of the Gainford Elks Club and was an active curler at the Darwell Rink. Grandpa was also active in his union because he believed, that the best interest of both the workers in the mine and the Company lie in the need to have a profitable employer and a well paid workforce. His commitment to both was illustrated by the pride he took in the many long service awards he received from the Mannix Group of Companies. It is well known amongst the grandchildren that the highest form of praise from Grandpa was to be told that you were “a good hard worker”.
In 1963 Grandpa obtained a loan from the Veteran’s Land Affairs department of the federal government and he and Grandma built their dream house on a 20-acre parcel of the home farm. He got the land from Uncle Fred who had bought the farm from their Dad. All those years living in a coal miner’s shack at the old mine made the move to the new house even sweeter. Grandpa stayed in the house until 2003, when he moved to the Mewburn Veteran’s Centre, where he resided until his death.
Throughout his life Grandpa maintained his strong interests in crib, baseball and reading the newspaper. He could count a crib hand faster than anyone I ever met and find any points you missed in your hand. In fact he actually once achieved the perfect twenty-nine hand. The interest in baseball that he developed in his youth (and I understand that he was an excellent player) continued, as he remained an avid fan of watching his grandchildren play the game. As far as newspaper reading went; his interest in this quiet pursuit was, truth to tell, sometimes a point of friction with Grandma, who was an inveterate talker and visitor. Talking wasn’t really Grandpas style. His enjoyment came from listening to his family talking and laughing around the kitchen table rather than talking himself.
Grandpa’s other joy was his family. In addition to Grandma and their five children the family includes thirteen grandchildren, seventeen great grandchildren and one great great grandchild. When Grandma passed away in 1997 at the age of seventy-nine a light went out of his life. It is a comforting thought for the family that he is now reunited with her and it is appropriate that the woman who was responsible for planning all those Ceilidhs would welcome him on Robbie Burns day.