Who remembers the sourdough raft races on the North Saskatchewan river during Klondike days? At one time I had pictures and even the writeup from the Edmonton Journal featuring the song we sang that was written by Pat Banks, Bawden Safety Supervisor.. I had all of it until 4 years ago when I moved and decided to thin out some of my memorabilia. The pictures had gotten quite faded as they had been taken with a polaroid so I decided to chuck them and I guess the journal writeup went along with them.
I went on the raft a couple of times along with Bernice Reichert, Janice Helm, Gil Winters, Wally Grimshaw-Jones, Tim Black, David and Joann Lewthwaite, Pat Banks, Lois Jehn , Alan Macdonald, Wendy Dougan, Doug Rourke, and Ernie Leonhardt as well as others that have slipped my mind (or what's left of it), These rafts were built by the Bawden Shop staff, overseen by Bruce Meston, they were equipped with all the necessities- a barbecue, beer coolers and an outhouse. Bawden had entered a raft for numerous years but I only had the courage to go on it twice. It really was a lot of fun but incredibly exhausting. We would get back to shore hours later suffering from voice hoarseness. severe sunburn and feet that were completely shriveled up from being in water for hours. We would also be so dehydrated, as it seems we never brought enough water. Surprisingly, they even ran out of beer on one trip and so the males on our raft negotiated a trade with another raft - the garter girl on our raft that Gil Winters had "kidnapped" off the shore for beer with the the raft that had plenty of beer but no garter girl.
It really was a lot of work to laugh and talk all day long, that even took its toll on me!! Our captains were supposed to keep the raft from running into things like bridge girders but it seemed their attention span was short so as an added "safety feature" Janice Helm became the visual navigator who was perched on the roof of the outhouse and if we came close to anything threatening - like the bridge, she was to shout directions to Wally or whoever (if anyone) was handling the controls.
At one point in our cruise down the river, Bernice had just gone into the toilet, when Janice started hollering, bridge girder, bridge girder, go left, go left but her warnings were not heeded in time and the barge hit the corner of the girder, bringing us to an immediate halt! Bernice came stumbling out of the toilet with her Bawden hard hat pushed back on her head and her glasses on the side of her face screaming "what the hell did we hit" I can't stop laughing as I write this. Fortunately not enough damage to stop us and
we continued to the finish line. This was the year we managed to get featured in the Journal, if it was these days perhaps we would be invited to participate in "Survivor".
i had pictures and the writeup about
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