Tag: Medicine Hat

52W Mark III – Week 20: Taking Care of Business

When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. People often asked my if my dad was in the military. No, he was a Woolworths manager.

My father entered the Woolworth manager training program right out of high school. Back in the day, the program involved a lot of moving around. Later, promotions almost always meant a transfer. He was with the company for 28 years, leaving the company about six months after Wal-Mart bought it out in Canada. That’s a story for another time.

My sister and me at the Woolworths in Regina

My dad began his career with Woolworth’s in Lethbridge, Alberta as a management trainee. He once told me that his very first assignment on his first day was to unload a shipment of bras, and the female staff stood there giving him a hard time. Next, my dad trained in the Regina, Saskatchewan and Medicine Hat, Alberta stores, where he was an assistant manager.

Dad’s first store as manager was in Flin Flon, Manitoba. After Flin Flon, dad was transferred to Terrace, B.C., and shortly afterward to Duncan, B.C., where he opened a new store there as the Associate Manager.

Grand Opening of the Woolworths in Duncan. My dad is second from the right.

At one point, the Canadian head office in Toronto transferred dad to Kirkland Lake, Ontario. However, when the international head office learned about the transfer, they cancelled it. They thought it was too much to move a man with young kids halfway across Canada.

My dad (left) at the Canadian head office in Toronto.

Dad transferred to North Battleford in 1974 and was General Manager when Woolworths opened a large new store there as the anchor tenant of the Frontier Mall in 1975.

Big news in a small town.

Dad quit in the early 80s and went into business as a sales agent for a furniture company. The new career was not what dad anticipated, and he did not enjoy being separated from his family as the job entailed a great deal of travel. He returned to Woolworth’s a few months later. As he had been replaced at the North Battleford store, he was assigned to the Woolworths in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. He commuted from North Battleford to Swift Current, a distance of about 320 kilometres. Dad was there until he was transferred to Terrace, British Columbia six months later.

Four years later, the company transferred dad to William’s Lake, B.C. In 1989 Woolworth’s converted all of its larger Woolworth stores into Woolco stores, which included the Williams Lake location.

Until last Christmas, I had no idea my mom still had these.

In August 1991, dad was transferred to the Woolco in Chilliwack. In March 1994, Woolworth’s sold its Woolco stores to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart transferred Hans to Hinton, Alberta that same month. Dad left the company in August 1994. My parents and younger siblings then moved to Lethbridge, where we still had a fair amount of family. My dad briefly went into sales before he and my mother bought a small motel in southern Alberta. My dad has now been a motelier longer than he was a Woolworths manager. My youngest sibling and I have had much different fathers!

One of my brothers had this on his bedroom door for years.

52W Mark II – Week 47: This Ancestor Stayed Home

Stayed home??? This is not the  52 Ancestors theme for me! My ancestors never stayed anywhere for very long! Even before moving to North America, my ancestors moved around a lot.

I follow in that tradition, having lived all over western Canada. By the time I moved away from home for university, I had lived in Lethbridge AB (two places), Regina SK, Medicine Hat AB, Creighton SK (on the Manitoba border), Duncan BC, Chemainus BC, Terrace BC, North Battleford SK (two houses), Terrace BC (again – and two houses!). The longest we ever lived in one house was the second place we lived in North Battleford. I was always the new kid in the class.

We lived in one of these houses in the first year of my life. I need to ask my mother if this was the first or second place we lived in Lethbridge. The other place we lived was in an apartment on the north side of the city. Decades later, one of my sisters lived in the same apartment complex when she began university.
(For the life of me, I cannot figure out why images no longer centre!)

Even after I moved away from home I didn’t stop moving. While I lived in two different residences during undergrad, I spent the summers in Terrace, Coquitlam, and Vancouver, respectively. After graduation, I lived in North Vancouver for a short time until I relocated to Victoria BC for a six-month legislative internship (where I stayed at two different addresses). I then relocated to Vancouver for a few months until embarking on a seven-week trip to Europe. On my return, I stayed at my folks, who by then had moved to Williams Lake BC (with several moves still yet to come for them). I moved back to North Vancouver, followed by longer residencies in Vancouver, Burnaby, and Richmond BC.

By my count, to date I have lived at 25 different addresses since I was born. The longest was 13 years, a record I set in the 90s. I would be very happy to beat that record. Our children, on the other hand, have only moved once in their lives, and have attended the same elementary school for every grade. I can’t even imagine what that’s like!

I feel like I lived a Johnny Cash song.