Stone Policeman

I did many jobs for the Town of Cochrane and enjoyed working with the town crews. One of the first jobs I did in the summer of 1968 was to remove the stone policeman from the middle of the town’s main intersection, the Royal Bank being on the NW corner and Webb and Milligan’s Esso station on the NE corner. The stone policeman was a sandstone structure about six or seven feet high. This ensured the separation of traffic crossing east to the telephone exchange or the Canadian Pacific Railway station and traffic continuing west on lA Hwy. This monument consisted of a large sandstone base with a tapered top. Chiseled into each side was the direction and mileage east to Calgary and west to Banff. It was showing a number of scars from vehicles cutting the corner too close.

As the 1 A Hwy had been changed to no longer cut through the downtown sector, through traffic no longer had to travel this intersection, thus no need for the policeman. I loaded up the whole works on my lowboy trailer and hauled it to the east end of town. There it was dumped south of Bill Barley’s house into a big hole which was the result of clay being excavated for use at the brickyard. What a shame no one cared to save this as a historical monument!

Also dumped into the big hole were old kilns left over from the brickworks. These came from two curious mounds that had grassed over, across the street from Pete and Olga Flundra’s house, which the Town asked me to clean up.