Former Acklands, 2009

Shot by my brother Sean on black and white film on Mom and Dad's Canon T70 in 2009 in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba. Mom and Dad set up the store and Dad managed it until we left in 1979. I used to play in a bin of Zorbal in this building, and cut up my Star Wars novelization to photocopy the colour photo section. The results were disappointing. I also loved playing with the Telex machine and watching for incoming messages. And I was fascinated by the display of vehicle lights up on the wall near the ceiling behind the sales counter. One of them was a big red police or fire engine flasher, though I don't know if Dad ever sold any of those. 

Acklands from All Angles

When Sean and I went to visit Leaf Rapids in 2009, I took along Mom and Dad's old T70 and shot in both colour and black and white - on film, that is. This is the building that once housed the Acklands Dad managed, and which he and Mom, in fact stocked and opened for its grand debut in Leaf Rapids.

Here I am, surveying the building.

And here I am posing in front of it.

Sean was born in Leaf Rapids, but we left too early in his life for him to remember much of it, which is why I'm glad we went.

Sean and the door. It used to be glass, of course.

This was shot digitally, as was the next image, but this shows the building's colour (such as it is).

This image was shot on film, but in 2006, when I brought Sylvia to see the wonders of Leaf Rapids.

Here's the back of the building in 2006, which often served as my gateway to adventure those times when I wasn't in school and Mom and Dad were working. There's a steep sand dune on the other side of the Acklands, which I used as the locale for the many adventures I had with my Kenner Star Wars action figures and my die-cast Corgi Batmobile.

Here is a panorama of the sand dunes behind the Acklands building. I also remember the really great blueberries that grew wild here.

And there you have it. This may be the single most comprehensive collection of the Leaf Rapids Acklands location ever assembled.

Special bonus image! They're too small to see, but poor Sylvia was swarmed with bugs during her time in Leaf Rapids. They left me alone. I made it up to her by proposing, though!

Harrier vs. Locomotive

Mom and Dad dropped in for a short visit today, and in passing I mentioned that I might accompany my friends Stephen and Audrey and their family to Churchill, Manitoba in August. I knew that Dad had made the trip, but until today I didn't know that his train voyage in 1972 also involved a game of chicken with a Harrier jump jet.

Dad was sent to Churchill by Acklands Ltd. on a business trip, who generously paid for a sleeper berth, which gave him access to the dining car and "the best prime rib I've ever had." The trip from Thompson to Churchill takes many hours, and the train would periodically stop in the middle of the bush to allow fur trappers to snip into their snowshoes and egress into the wild.

As the train approached Churchill station, Dad noticed a Harrier jump jet flying about. As he and other passengers craned their necks out the windows for a closer look, the jet swooped down to hover over the tracks, directly in the train's path. It was perhaps the deadliest game of chicken ever played, with the train's horn shrilling angrily and the exhaust from the jet's powerful engines blasting ground debris everywhere.

Of course in a game of chicken with a locomotive even a multimillion dollar fighter aircraft must yield, so at the last possible second the pilot cranked up the throttle and leaped forward and upward, soaring over the rumbling train.

"What happened to the pilot?" I asked Dad, who had made inquiries after the incident; the fellow was a British national.

"He got sent home," Dad answered solemnly.

What a photo or painting that would have made.

Thompson Tales

In northern Manitoba, winter's embrace is long, tight, and bone-chilling. Having shown how a typical southern Manitoba winter looked in the 1970s yesterday, here's an equally frigid image of Thompson, several hundred kilometres northeast of Virden. That's our backyard, buried in snow, with a huge drift looming off the roof's edge, ready to collapse. Dad managed the local Acklands branch, supplying the commercial and industrial automotive industry. Cold winters generally meant good business.

Here I am all bundled up for some forgotten excursion. I was a preschooler at the time, so at least I didn't have to walk to school in weather like this. (In fact, we moved further north, to Leaf Rapids, so I wound up walking to school in even worse weather.)

Despite the cold, I retain warm memories of northern Manitoba. In the summertime, the snow warmed enough to make snowmen. All right, so it was probably late spring. Still, note that the snowman's ears are made of snapdragons in full bloom. Note also the lush lawn peeking through the snow. Winter could hit during any month of the year, save perhaps June and July. Maybe. It was from this backyard that the kids next door stole my big beautiful Tonka dump truck, or at least that's what the clues seemed to indicate. Dad valiantly tried to retrieve it, but we couldn't prove the theft. I was pretty incensed by the injustice.

In compensation, Manitoba is beautiful in the summertime. Here's how our house looked during those elusive weeks. I sat on that very stoop, perhaps even in the same pair of pajamas, the day Mom and Dad set the breakfast bacon on fire. As soon as I became aware of the blaze, I retrieved my most prized possession: a suitcase full of toy cars, a prize Dad won from McQuay-Norris, a manufacturer of engines and steering parts for automobiles. Suitcase in hand, I evaded the billowing smoke and sat on the front step, playing with my cars while waiting for the fire department to arrive.

The firemen arrived minutes later, snuffing out the blaze with dry ice fire extinguishers. Damage was minimal (the insurance company simply paid Mom to scrub the smoke damage off the walls), but the firemen had to place a huge fan on the front step to suck the smoke out. According to my parents, I was completely unfazed during the whole affair. Ah, the serenity of childhood.