Eatonia’s Ted Douglas has lived a great life

By Joan Janzen

Ted Douglas from Eatonia has led a long and interesting life, which began on Dec. 31st, 1924, at Empress, AB. He was the oldest of four kids, growing up on a farm between Empress and Eatonia.

His first-grade teacher was Max Braithwaite, who wrote the well-known book ‘Why Shoot the Teacher,’ which was later made into a film. Ted began helping out on the farm beginning at a young age.

PHOTO BY JOAN JANZEN: Ted Douglas lives at Eatonia Oasis Living and plans to do a bit of writing about his 98 years, during which he says “he’s done it all.”

“We were pretty big farmers prior to the Great Depression. Then we hit the dirty thirties, my dad got diabetes, and it was a tough time. We had a small ranch, raising about forty horses,” he explained.

The horses were sent to Ontario, where they were used to work in the bush. “One horse sold for $100, and there wasn’t much that sold for $100 during the depression,” he said.

Ted attended the rural school until he was 17 years old and then attended technical school in Saskatoon for a year. “The Air Force grabbed me the next year,” he noted.

He spent the following three years in Winnipeg working on aircraft that came in to be rebuilt. “There was a major overhaul base there,” Ted said. He noted it was a perfect location because the whole landscape was a landing field. “We had people from all over ... London, South Africa ... training there. Honestly, I grew up in the Air Force.”

Towards the end of the war years, Ted worked as a machinist with the army at Suffield. “I was there for a year and a half after the war ended because of the concern that we’d have a scrap with Russia.”

At that time, Ted returned to the farm for a year before moving to Winnipeg, where he worked as a tool maker. He returned to the same boarding house where he had stayed while he was in the military.

“I lived with eight girls at the boarding house, and my wife was one of them,” he said. “So I got to know her pretty well.”

Ted’s friend invited him to come to Vancouver to check out a business opportunity. During his holiday break, Ted was packing up his car preparing for the drive to Vancouver. Allene used to live in Vancouver and asked if she could hitch a ride with him. “That was the beginning,” he smiled.

“I looked in the paper, and a married couple had placed an ad, wanting to share expenses on a drive to Vancouver. Sometimes I think my grandmother was looking after me,” he laughed.

Allene ended up staying in Vancouver, and eventually, Ted moved there as well. The couple was married there, but Ted couldn’t recall the date of their anniversary, which he confessed, at times, proved to be fatal.

Ted worked for Trans Canada Airlines, which is now Air Canada and was transferred to Montreal. “We didn’t like Montreal, so we up and left and went to Los Angeles, which wasn’t any better,” he said. In Los Angeles, Ted worked as a project engineer in the engineering department, making tools. Although he enjoyed a profitable career in Los Angeles for seven years, he was glad when they left.

“My dad had died, and I was getting tired of trying to raise a family in LA, so we came back to Eatonia and the farm,” he said. Ted has three sons and now enjoys his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I had a shop in Leader and built campers in the winter time and farmed in the summer,” he said. “Eventually, Southwest Manufacturing became a year-round business.”

“We made storage bins as well and shipped them as far away as Hudson Bay. We originally started because we used scrap from building campers to build nut and bolt bins. I’m a Scotsman; I don’t like to throw stuff away,” he laughed. When Ted’s oldest son took up air spraying, Ted phased out his business and worked with him.

Ted learned how to fly and would fly over the hilly farmland capturing photos of ancient formations, including the Roy Rivers medicine wheel in southwest Saskatchewan. He learned to read the land and saw things that others didn’t. As a long-time member of the Sask. Archaeological Society (SAS), his work was showcased at the 59th Annual Gathering of SAS in Kindersley in April of 2022.

Throughout their years of marriage, Allene and Ted enjoyed travelling throughout the world. Ted was also a long-time member of the Legion. He joined the Eatonia branch 75 years ago, which eventually became part of the Kindersley branch. He was also instrumental in building a licensed airport at Eatonia.

Ted may be 98 years of age, but he’d like to get in a couple more years. “I come from a family who tends to live close to 100. My grandfather was 99 when he tripped on a board and broke his hip, which turned out to be fatal. And he was still in a bowling league,” he explained.

Now Ted resides at Eatonia Oasis Living and seems to be following in his grandfather’s footsteps. “The doctors can’t find anything wrong with me, and I don’t take any pills. I’d like to do a bit of writing about my life,” he said. “My school teachers would laugh about that.”