The Val Marie Elevator: A Living Heritage Project

WO RKING ON ELEVATOR CR E W S Eugene Dumont i everyone, my name is Eugene Dumont. I am from Val Marie, Saskatchewan, which is located in the corner of southwest Saskatchewan, about 75 miles south of Swift Current. I was asked to write about my personal working history on wooden elevators and concrete elevator construction, which I did for twenty years.

At the end of Grade Eleven, I got a job at the local Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator here in Val Marie. My position was as a helper. My job as a helper was to get box cars ready to receive grain, to ship by rail to the grain terminals on the coasts. I also got to weigh incoming grain trucks and send the grain to different bins throughout the elevator’s storage. I swept the elevator down, from top to bottom, cleaning up the grain dust which was always present. I also got to clean out the boot pan for grain dust. The boot pan was where the bottom part of the elevating leg was located, in the grain elevator. I was stationed in Val Marie for about three weeks, then I was sent to the town of Climax to work and help them out. I guess that’s what they did with the helpers, if the other town’s grain elevators needed help. Climax’s elevator took in a million bushels of grain almost every year.

That summer job seemed to me a good one, and the money was good! I think that’s many a young lad’s dream, to take lots of money, to buy fancy cars/ trucks and other little toys.

Summer time moved on and time came closer for school to start up again. I thought of not going back to school for Grade Twelve and staying on the job with the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, but in the end I did go back to school for Grade Twelve in Val Marie.

At the end of Grade Twelve I was seeking employment. In 1975, just fresh out of high school, I got a job at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevator being built in the town of Bracken, just down the road from Val Marie. From there I followed the construction crew to other locations in the province of Saskatchewan, building wooden grain elevators. My mother once suggested that I should write down the different places where I was building grain elevators. That didn’t happen, but I can still remember most of the places I was: Bracken, Cupar, Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Maidstone,