New memoir explores Pass life in 1950’s

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on July 15, 2022.

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LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

With the contributions of a few of his fellow “Coal Town Kids,” former Crowsnest Pass resident Duane S. Radford has written a book about life in that community during the 1950s and early ’60s.
Radford, now living in Edmonton, left the Pass when his father’s trucking company folded after mines shut down in 1962 and finished high school in Calgary.
Radford spent years in Alberta’s Fish and Wildlife department, including time spent here in Lethbridge. He retired as director of the province’s fisheries management division. He’s also a past president of the Outdoor Writers of Canada and both an award winning writer and photographer.
His book features memories of life in Bellevue, Hillcrest, Coleman and Blairmore with much of it focused on Radford’s family – the Radfords and Sapetas.
A book launch is scheduled for July 22 at 3 p.m. in the art gallery at Frank.
In a phone interview, Radford said the book is the first non-fiction work about the Pass in about 50 years, the last being “A History of the Crow’s Nest Pass” by William Cousins.
He’s working to get the book into various places including the Crowsnest Museum in Coleman. It’s also available online.
The book will bring back memories for Pass residents with many names mentioned throughout its 198 pages which also included photographs of Radford’s family, classmates and local places known to residents such as the old Bellevue Motors. It looks at the history of the region and details hockey games, “gate night” shenanigans, school bus rides from Bellevue to Hillcrest and even delivering the Lethbridge Herald.
Radford friends who contributed their memories include Allan Amos, George Dowson, Dennis Amos, Marilyn Costigan (Svoboda), Tony Stoklosa, Lawrence Kryzanowski, Jim Jepson, Jim Svoboda, Peter Costigan and Louise Costigan-Kerns.
Submissions talk about Bellevue gangs, growing up in Bellevue, a visit to a dentist, Christmas in Blairmore, summer jobs, playing pranks, junior and senior high school, neighbours and summertime in the Pass.
In the book, Radford dedicates it to his parents and “friends from the Pass who enriched my life; they deserve my heartfelt thanks in so many ways. As a member of the vanguard of Canada’s baby boomers, I can attest there was no established trail to follow, so we made our own.”
It’s written in a folksy style with plenty of interesting tales that may appeal to even non-residents of the Pass.
Radford said he started the process of the book a few years ago and broadened its scope with the contributions of his old friends.
Those contributions, he said, made “Coal Town Kids” a better book. He calls Dowson’s contributions “really hilarious.”
Both sides of Radford’s family settled in the Pass before the turn of the 20th century. His dad Samuel Owen Radford was born in Bellevue on Feb. 7, 1915 and died of cancer in December 1969 in Calgary at the age of 54. His mom Caroline Ann Sapeta was born in Coleman on Dec. 8, 1914 and lived to the age of 99.
Life in a mining town was tough and he recalls the women of the communities feared hearing the mining companies’ sirens because it meant either death or a serious injury recalled.
“Every woman in town had a fear of loved ones being injured or worse,” he said.
One member of his family, James Radford, died in the Bellevue mine in 1943.
“My parents never talked about it much,” said Radford, who still occasionally visits the Pass where he still has friends.

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