Page 272 More Big Hill Country 2009
Bill and Jude Bancroft Family
Bill and Jude Bancroft lived and farmed on NW Sec 19 Twp 27 Rge 3 W5M, about fifteen kilometres north of Cochrane in the Westbrook area. When Bill bought the farm, in the British custom, he named it “Spruce Springs”. Over the years it was known as that on a good day, and “Bill’s Bog” on a bad day.
William Arthur Bancroft was born January 30, 1947, at the Grace Hospital in Calgary, Alberta. His parents, Jack and Betty Bancroft, like most people in the Bearspaw area, ran a dairy farm. The Bancroft family took a 6-month trip all through the United States in 1953 and ended up in Ontario, visiting Bill’s aunt, so Bill started grade one in Belfast, Ontario. They returned home at Christmas time, and Bill finished grade one riding a horse to Glendale School. Time had progressed by grade two and the school bus then picked him up and took him to Bearspaw School. In grade six, he moved from one-room schools to the Cochrane Elementary School in Cochrane. Grades seven, eight and nine were held in the Old Brick School. In grade ten the big move to the new High School on Cochrane hill was undertaken, the students walking up the hill carrying their books.
Bill curled at the Old Cochrane Curling Rink with Don Hutchison, Charles Young and Roger Teghtmeyer. After the games they would go to the Cochrane Hotel where beer was twenty cents a glass.
n 1970 Bill bought the farm from Stan Spicer who had bought it from Karl and Bebe Sammons. Bill continued to milk cows and lived at home so he rented the farm house to Wally and Daphne Admussen for a couple of years.
Judith Lynn Knight was born November 6, 1952 to Harold & Hilda Knight of Irricana. She was active in 4-H and curling. She graduated from Beiseker School and worked at the Royal Bank Main Branch in downtown Calgary. She worked with Bill’s cousin from England who introduced the sheepherder from Cochrane to the grain farmer’s daughter from Irricana and wedded bliss ensued. They were married May 6, 1972 and moved to Spruce Springs where they raised commercial cattle and sheep for the next 28 years.
Jude worked for 4 years with the Royal Bank in Cochrane until she retired to raise a family. During the time that she worked at the bank construction was done to turn a rough gravel road into Highway 22. Bill and Jude drove a small Datsun 510 to work. The workers on the road crew saw her every day and they enjoyed sandwiching her in between two huge dirt movers. All she could see out the front window and the rear view mirror were huge tires. She always thought she would be a little spot on the ground when they ran over her. The guys would wave and grin when they finally let her out.
Bill then worked at the Parrish and Heimbecker Elevator and Feed Mill for Harvey Thompson. From 1978-80 Bill and Harvey operated a mail truck contract that ran from Calgary to Red Deer, stopping at all the small towns in between, three times a night to pick up and deliver the sorted mail. Bill then began to deliver Calgary Herald newspapers to Radium B .C. 3 days a week. The whole family loved to go with him and have a swim in the hot pool at Radium and have supper at Smitty’s Restaurant and be home in time for Jennifer to be in bed to get up and go to kindergarten the next day. In 1987 Bill started to work for the RCMP, guarding prisoners in the local detachment, until his retirement December 31, 2005. All of these jobs helped pay the bills on the farm. Through all of the 28 years of farming Bill and Jude fought to keep the sheep safe from coyotes that loved to dine on lamb chops. Many things were tried over the years including llamas and donkeys and an electric fence to discourage the coyotes from getting in. All of these things worked for a little while until the coyotes, in true “Wily Coyote” fashion, figured out how to get in anyway. In March of every year Shearing Day happened and with the help of many good friends and great neighbours and a lot of laughs they got the job done. Great laughs over how many of the women Bill could get in the sack (the wool sack of course!)
In 2000 Bill had a hip replacement and Jude went back to work for a while with her partner Judy (Spaulding) Mcinnis as interior painters with their company Two Old Broads and A Brush”. At this point Bill and Jude quit actively farming and started practising for retirement. In June of 1996 for their 25th anniversary Bill and Jude took their dream holiday in a motor home and headed north to Yukon and Alaska with Jude’s parents. They spent 5 weeks in a 22-foot motor home and they still speak. They enjoyed this trip and want to go back again. Bill stuck his toe in the Arctic Ocean. Bill and Jude enjoyed camping and touring many of Alberta’s small towns in their camper and motor homes.
Jennifer Isobel Bancroft was born February 25 , 1976 at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. Jennifer took grades 1-9 at Westbrook School and grades 10 through 12 at Cochrane High School. She belonged to Brownies at Westbrook, 4-H at South Cremona and Jumping Pound. She enjoyed Public Speaking and did well at it. She started her work career at an accounting firm in Calgary and then worked at Pasu Farms at Carstairs in many capacities. She managed The Wooden Apple and worked at Madrina’s Restaurant in Bragg Creek. She worked as a secretary for the Plains Indian Cultural Survival School in Calgary. Jennifer belonged to the Cochrane Activettes and enjoyed making parade entries for the Labour Day Parade. She then started work at Agro Equipment in Calgary and transferred to Agro in Ponoka. She presently runs her own company, A Bushel of Baskets, from her home in Lacombe. She met her husband Jay Bruggencate, son of Dick and Elaine Bruggencate of Coronation, through 4-H Alumni. Jay worked for Dow Agro Sciences for 11 years. In 2004 Jay started his own Agronomic Consulting Company “Demeter Solutions” and enjoys working with farmers. On September 16, 2004 Jay and Jen presented Bill and Jude with their first grandchild, Janna Olivia Bruggencate. Jay and Jennifer became the parents of twins, Trina Lynn (2 pounds) and Gerrit William (1 pound 12 ounces), on July 29, 2006 three months early. Unfortunately due to complication Trina passed away on August 4th, 2006. After he spent 100 days in the NICU at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, Jay and Jen were thrilled to take wee Gerrit home.
Guy Michael Bancroft was born May 9 1978 at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. Guy took Grade 1-8 at Westbrook and 9-12 at Cochrane High School. He then attended the University of Calgary and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Drama. Guy enjoyed Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, and Ventures. He received his Chief Scout Award and canoed the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City in 1994, a trip he will always remember. Guy started out cleaning funeral cars for Mcinnis & Holloway Funeral Homes, but as this was no way to pick up girls, he moved on to be a groundskeeper at Watergrove Park in Calgary. He worked at a Castle in Scotland and pulled pints in a Pub in London. He spent a summer following the RCMP Musical Ride through Quebec and Ontario, then worked construction, which led to him starting his own painting company “That Painter Guy”. At the present time, he is the Service Manager for Janssen Homes in Calgary, where he resides. Guy started out his Drama career in Grade One at Westbrook School as the Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was fortunate enough in 2000, his last year of University, to travel with some of his classmates to Knebworth House in England and perform “The Captives”, a play by Edward Bulwer Lytton, that had never been produced. Bulwer Lytton was famous for penning the lines “The pen is mightier than the sword” and “It was a dark and stormy night”. Guy continues to enjoy his acting and performs in Murder Mysteries at the Dean House in Calgary. Guy is engaged to Megan King, daughter of Ken and Terry King of Forestburg, Alberta, and they were married on June 9, 2007.
The Bancroft family continues to grow!
Jack and Betty Bancroft Family
Jack and Betty heard from their neighbours on the Lochend Road, Bert & Kay Franklin, that her brother and sister-in-law, Walter (Doc) & May Jenkins had land for sale. Being as there were few real estate agents at the time, word of mouth was very important. Jack and Betty bought the land in 1959. Prior to Doc & Mary Jenkins the land had been previously owned by Lahls and Neelys.
Jack, Betty, Bill and Judy moved from the Lochend Road west of Cochrane to SW Sect 16 Twp 26 Rge 4 W5M and W & SE Sec 16 Twp 26 Rge 4 WSM. Betty named the land “Sweet Sixteen” after the section number and the farm was always referred to as that. They were told Charles Pedeprat built the log house in 1896 and it is still being lived in. The house was built straddling the two quarter lines so that both quarters were occupied for homesteading purposes. Jack put an addition on to the log house and put in the power. There still is no running water. Bill remembered the hot water bottle getting away from him in the middle of the night and it was frozen in bed in the morning. There were no trees on the property. Jack and Betty planted the shelterbelt and carried bucket of water by hand to the trees. Betty grew beautiful flowers that the whole family enjoyed.
Jack Holloway Bancroft and Betty (Hawkwood) Bancroft were born and raised in the Bearspaw area where they dairy farmed. Partners were taken on to milk the cows on the Lochend farm, which allowed the Bancrofts to move to Sweet Sixteen. Jack & Betty milked a few cows and sent cream to the Cochrane Creamery. While living at Sweet Sixteen, they pail fed Holstein bull calves with the skim milk left over from the cream, and raised pigs. When they first moved there was no school bus service so the Bancrofts and neighbours George (Frenchy) & Grace Suel took turns car-pooling the kids to school in Cochrane. In the warm weather the kids would ride their bikes to school down the squiggly road that ran from township road 262 to about the entrance to the Cochrane Ag Society Grounds. Bill and Judy would ride their bikes to the newly opened Cochrane Swimming Pool at the east end of Town to use the yearly passes they had.
In 1961 the Bancrofts took the children out of school in early May and went on a 3-month trip to England to visit relatives. In 1964, the Bancrofts moved back to the dairy farm on the Lochend Road but continued farming Sweet Sixteen and rented out the house.
Over the years the following people lived there: Alex &. Hilda Squair (raised thoroughbred race horses), Buck Eagle (raised horses), David Sweeney &. Marjorie Stakenas who have lived there for over 18 years and raised their family there. Bill remembers Bill Cook stopping in for visits often. He also remembers men digging by hand the telephone poles on the south side of the road. Here are some of the neighhours at the time: Mackays, Marv Laye, Barker (an electrician), Ed & Ruby Labenovitch and Ross & Audrey Young (both raised Guernseys), Cliff & Maryann Sabin, George (Frenchy) & Grace Suel, Gordon & Mildred Davies, Herb & Kay Himmelspach, Gordon & Pat Andrews, Harold & Kathy Barton, Ed & Billy Beynon, Bruce & Dorothy Boothby, Newt & Betty-Lou Gilbert.
Jack & Betty had two children, William Arthur Bancroft, born January 30, 1947 and Judith Isabel Bancroft, born June 15, 1950. Bill married Judith Lynn Knight of the Beiseker area May 9, 1972 and they farm in the Westbrook area. (See Bill Bancroft Story.) Daughter Judith Bancroft married Rodney Gerald Sydenham from the Stavely area on August 4, 1973. They had raised their three children in the Millet-Wetaskiwin area before retiring to Cochrane in 2001. Their son Stephen Paul Sydenham was born June 20, 1979 and is completing a welding apprenticeship. Michael Thomas Sydenham was born October 12, 1981 and graduated with a degree in Engineering from U of A, Edmonton. Michael is presently employed with the City of Calgary. Laura Jeanne Sydenham was born May 12, 1983 and is completing her business degree in Tourism and Marketing at U of C in Calgary.
Jack and Betty moved from the dairy farm into Calgary in August of 2003. Jack passed away on April 27th, 2006 and Betty resides in an extended care facility in Calgary.
William Bancroft Family by son Timothy
William Bancroft was born at Kildwick, near Keightly, Yorkshire, England, on December 12, 1878. The son of a farmer and hackney breeder, he served his apprenticeship as a stonemason before emigrating to Calgary in 1905. Upon his arrival, he bought a second-hand bicycle and rode around the district looking at homesteads, filing first on the SE Sec 25 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M at Bearspaw. Later, he decided that the SW Sec 35 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M was better; he cancelled the first choice and proved up on the second. We still have the original homestead shack, which he built in 1905. Father didn’t keep cattle but bought, broke and sold horses. He also cut prairie hay and hauled it to the livery barns in Calgary. Sometimes, arriving at Calgary after dark, he would pull off the road where the Brentwood Shopping Centre is now, and sleep on the top of the load of hay to save the cost of a hotel room.
One day he met a man who wanted to go farming in the Peace River area, so he traded a few head of horses for a house the fellow owned. At that time, it was out on the prairie, but with Calgary’s growth, it was located in the centre of the Sunnyside district. We had the house rented until the middle 1950’s when my mother sold it to make room for an apartment block.
Around 1910, father dug a well by hand, going down 120 feet until he came to where a spring was flowing over a large rock. While he was digging, he had to do some dynamiting, so he put W. P. Biggar, who was driving by with a team and wagon, to time him climbing out of the hole so he would know what length of fuse to cut. Percy always declared that father made much better time coming up after the fuse was lit. A number of years later, a well driller drilled down 8 or 9 feet into the rock to form a basin. This well is still in operation and is capable of supplying all the water needed on the farm.
When the Glenbow stone quarry, located a half mile south of the homestead, opened in 1909 my father worked there as a stonemason. The quarry’s main contract was to supply the stone for the Legislature building in Edmonton. There was plenty of work for a stonemason in Calgary and one of the jobs my father worked on was the Brook Building on 8th Avenue and 2nd Street West.
Prior to 1914, father traded some building lots on Bellevue Avenue in Calgary to Arthur Norris for the NW Sec 34 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M. He also bought the NE Sec 33 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M from the Canadian Pacific Railway about the same time.
Like the modern housewife, bachelors in the early days had ways and means of saving work. For example, father would tie his bedding around his waist and swim across a slough a few times to wash them and then spread them over the brush to dry. Another fellow would spread newspapers on his table and when this became soiled or when company came, he would put a clean sheet over top. This would go on until there were two or three inches of paper on top of the table.
Joining the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles in 1914, father went overseas and was severely wounded when caught in machine gun fire at the Battle of the Somme. He returned to Calgary and the homestead in 1919. In May of that year, a big blizzard blew in which lasted three days. He had a number of cows due to calve; as soon as the storm broke, he went looking for them. They had bunched up together in some brush and the snow had piled up higher than their backs making a wind break. Three or four calves born during the storm were fine. A friend, who farmed where McMahon Stadium is now, remembers seeing hundreds of cattle drifting by during the storm. It had been a hard winter and cattle were in poor condition with many dying as they piled up against fences.
While stationed at Longmore in England, he met my mother, Bertha May Holloway, who was born at the “Wakes” Selbourne in Hampshire on May 4, 1893. She came to Calgary July 9, 1920 and they were married the next afternoon at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer by Dean Paget. They took the train to Glenbow that evening and walked the two miles over the hill to the homestead.
Transportation was usually by horse and buggy, although sometimes they would drive down to Glenbow, tie the horse up behind the Glenbow store and post office, take a red flag out of the tiny Glenbow station and flag down the train. Coming back in the evening, they would notify the conductor who would stop the train at Glenbow to let them off. Only certain trains could be stopped and the service continued until the late 1930’s.
My parents had two sons. Jack Holloway was born December 2, 1921 at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary. He married Betty Hawkwood from Bearspaw and farmed in the Glendale district. They have a son and a daughter William and Judith. I, Timothy, was born July 15, 1924 on the homestead at Glenbow. I married Frances Savage from Sedgewick and continue to live on the homestead. We have two daughters, Carol and Anne, and a son, John. Carol lives in DeWinton,Alberta,Anne lives in Calgary and John has a farm west of Innisfail.
Father died January 22, 1934 and Mother, Jack and I went to England in May of that year, renting the farm to Mr. Damgard. While in England, Jack and I attended a small two-room country school in Hampshire. When Jack left school he got a job as a garden boy on a nearby estate owned by Lord Horder, the King’s physician. When I left school I worked as a stable boy at Bedales, co-educational school for children of the rich and famous, about 1 1/2 miles from where we lived. There were twenty-six horses, a riding master and a riding mistress. I remember the students were extremely well-mannered.
Returning to Canada in the spring of 1939, we bought a herd of cows and quota from Ernie Thompson. We shipped milk to the Union Milk Co. in Calgary. Fran and I continued dairy farming until 1989 when our son John, and his wife Dawna, took over the herd and moved them to their farm at Innisfail.
Starting in 1928, the Norris and Bancroft families took turns having Christmas and New Year’s Day dinner. This continued every year except for the five years we were in England until 1952 when the families got too large for the houses.
Walter Gooding, who farmed south of Bearspaw on the SW Sec 24 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M who knew my father very well wrote the following: “One could not live in a district for twenty years or more without making contact with many different people, some lasting and some otherwise. One of the friendships I made was with ‘Billy the Yorkshireman’! Billy was a man worth making a friend of. Billy used to haul his hay to Calgary and sell it by the load. If you were on the trail going West anytime after midnight and saw a team coming, a load but no driver, you could be sure it was Billy, snuggled down in the hay, letting the horses making their own way.”
Although my mother had lived in the country all her life, she had never lived on a farm until she came to Canada. She soon learned to milk cows and help with all the chores associated with farming. Going to Calgary with horse and buggy, she would drive to a vacant lot at 8th Avenue and 3rd Street West, tie up the horse behind the large sign boards and go shopping down 8th Avenue, driving home in the late afternoon.
Apparently, this lot was a favourite parking spot for many farmers and Indians (sic). Eaton’s eventually built their department store on the lot.
Arthur Norris, who homesteaded the land across the lA highway from my father, was born with a deformed foot, but he drove a Model T Ford touring car. My mother would sometimes ride into Calgary with him. She rode in with him on a Saturday when he was taking two calves to MacLean’s Auction Mart. He had taken the back seat out of the car and as the latches on the back doors were broken, they were held shut by a piece of binder twine tied across the inside of the car from handle to handle. As they made a left tum onto 16th Avenue, where the Home Depot is today, one of the calves fell against the door, the twine broke and both calves fell out into the ditch. They were not hurt and took off across the prairie where the North Hill Shopping Centre is today. Because of his deformed foot, Arthur could not run, but my mother could and she spent nearly an hour, hampered by a long skirt, catching the two calves and getting them back into the car. They went on to MacLean’s without further incident.
In 1949, my mother and I decided it was time we took a holiday as we had been milking cows for ten years without a break. We had a 1947 Hudson car and bought an eighteen foot Ingle Shultz house trailer, made arrangements with Doug and May Masters to live on the farm and look after the cows. We left home on October 17, 1949 in a snow storm, traveled south to San Diego, California. Then went east to Keywest, Florida, north to Norfolk, Virginia, west to St Louis, Missouri, north and west through Minnesota and Montana back to Alberta, arriving back at the farm on March 15, 1950. We had no serious problems and added over 13,000 miles to the car’s odometer. I did all the driving as my mother had never learned to drive. Total expenses for the holiday were $911.00, the average price of gasoline was 37 .3 cents per gallon.
My mother retired from the farm in 1952 and lived in Calgary. She died on November 18, 1983. My brother, Jack died April 27, 2006.
Fran and I still live on the homestead. Fran keeps busy with her watercolour painting. Although we have no livestock, I cut and bale some hay every year. Fran has been a member of the Glendale Women’s Institute for over fifty years and I have been a member of the Bearspaw Lions Club for forty-nine years. We have both been actively involved in the Bearspaw Fair since it started, as well as other organizations in the district.
