Posts Tagged ‘Car Crash on Highway 28’
Marie Lake: Crash on Highway 28 – Chapter 7 of 11
Family Photos via Mom’s Photo Keepsakes (July, 1948). I always remembered this photo and by good fortune on January 2, 2016, it magically appeared in a photo album my sister Dianne McNeill had preserved. It now stands as the lead photo in this story of this accident that nearly killed our father, Dave McNeill and injured several others. The photo was taken in the Cold Lake Hospital just before Dad was transferred to Edmonton for emergency surgery.
Photo (by Mom): Auntie Marcia, Louise and I stand beside geese shot by Mr. Goodrich our trapper neighbour. Dad love eating fresh cooked goose, but would have a tough time savouring these birds.
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July, 1948
In mid-July, our family made a regular visit to Cold Lake to buy groceries and other supplies. Heading into town was a big event as it meant visiting family and a chance to play with other kids, not something we had a chance to do very often. There would also be a lively party at someone’s home and while the men didn’t drink much while working in the bush, they made up for lost time when they hit town.
It took men many decades for men to learn that when it came to getting home safely after over consuming at a party, horse drawn wagons or sleighs gave a much better bet of arriving in one piece. Cars, in a hands of a drunk driver, were much more deadly.
Photo (mom’s files): Harold with guitar, u/k male and female, mom with frying pan, Louise in front of mom, not sure if the man is Uncle Emerson (Dewan) but also looks like Uncle Denny (Helen Pylypow’s dad), and dad with the violin. All standing in from of our home on the West side of Marie Lake.
At 10:30 one evening, after drinking for several hours at the Grand Centre Hotel, eight men pilled into old Chevy Coupe and headed to Cold Lake to catch the last call. Uncle Warren, man furthest to the left in the lead photo, was a front seat, right side passenger and as the car hurtled down the long hill leading into Cold Lake hollered: “Lee, for Christ sakes slow down, there’s a turn at the bottom of the hill.” This bit of information came from Uncle Warren some time later as he had not been drinking as much as the others and had been watching the road closely as Lee (Hobbs?) always tended to drive far to fast particularly when drinking.
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