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The school was heated with wood in a round barrel stove, light at night came from a coal oil lamp and the teacher lived with the family of one of the students while being paid the handsome sum of $600 for the year.

As teenagers, Norman and his brothers Ollie and Wilbert joined Sykes Robinson and other boys of the district to develop their rodeo skills on the neighbour’s steers, horses or even milk cows. The furious owners occasionally caught them snubbing-up an otherwise tame wheel horse.

Vern and his brothers were very musical. In 1953 they started their own Country and Western Band which consisted of Vern, Ray, Gordon, Al McMahon and Fred Steinmetz at the beginning with Ted Westerson joining the Lambert Brothers later on.

Our bus driver was Mr. Eddie Rowe. He liked his chewing tobacco and carried a spittoon on the bus, which he never seemed to hit.

At this time, Slim Fenton started practicing with his horses to use on a chuckwagon. Slim asked Chet and I to help him. We were outriders for Slim for several years, participating in the Calgary Stampede, and different rodeos throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

I have watched Cochrane grow into the large town it is today, and I am sure it will retain a great deal of its character through the many changes.

During the 1930’s the government was paying men $5.00 per month to work on farms and ranches and paid farmers $5.00 per month towards room and board. This was the first so-called “government assistance” Grandpa ever got.

At the time the Scott Lake Service Station and Restaurant was the only place to get service or something to eat between Calgary and Canmore. It was welcomed by many including the Cochrane and Canmore RCMP who could now stop for a bite to eat and coffee on their long shifts patrolling this new highway.

Clara Jeanette and John Johann Mjolsness had raised eleven children in Minnesota when talk began of some of their boys coming to Alberta to take advantage of the homesteads being made available to encourage settlement.

The refinery suffered a huge explosion and fire in 1953 and then closed down in 1961. As a result of the closure, Gordon took a job as an operator at the brand-new Wildcat Hills Petro-Fina gas and sulphur plant (now Petro Canada) ten miles west of Cochrane and moved his family to their new home in the summer of 1962