You don’t get to be 95 in the valley without a few brushes with significant moments in history.
For Blake Vickers that means serving Kirk Douglas during a late night pharmacy run, being selected to be on a rescue teams for J. Robert Oppenheimer, being on the receiving end of a bombing by conscientious objectors and a face to face meeting with the King of England.
These are just a few details from the life of Blake Vickers, who turned 95 on June 1. He is the son of N.B. Vickers, the first merchant in Drumheller, and has spent his entire life in Drumheller area.
Blake was born at 117, 2nd Street West, before there was a hospital. Dr. Gibson, a neighbour was there and his Grandmother came out from Ontario to be the midwife. The house is still in the family and a couple years ago, Blake’s grandson Joe Vickers used the home to record an album.
Growing up, the Vickers store on Centre Street was a second home. As the business grew, N.B. Vickers traded for the neighboring lot with Thomas Greentree for a Ford car to expand. In fact, N.B. Vickers knew Henry Ford himself and had an early dealership. The cars were sent in pieces, and assembled in the valley.
As a youngster, he would tag along on deliveries twice a week, and then began doing them himself. This is how he came to know residents from one end of the valley to the other. His favourite stop was at the ferry in Cambria.
As youngster in Drumheller, he was busy on his bicycle, making his way to all point in the valley. He went to Central School, and was active in sports both playing and watching.
In fact, he and few other youngsters had what the thought was a foolproof way to enter into Drumheller Miner games at the arena.
He always has a few cents to get in to the arena to watch the game, but this was a mining town, and a few of the boys built a tunnel from the bank of the Red Deer River to under the bleachers at the arena. Blake figured he might be able to save the few cents he had and went underground.
“I remember going through this tunnel, and I had a big overcoat on, and I got stuck in it,” he laughs. “The kid behind me when I got stuck in this tunnel, he grabbed me by the legs and pulled me out. There was shale and it scraped my face. I was still bleeding when I went around and paid to go in.”
He was also active in the Scouts and became fast friends with his leader Gordon Taylor. In fact, Mr. Taylor was his best man at his wedding.
He recalls that the Prince of Wales was on a train trip through Alberta and he and Taylor went to greet the train. They a saw a huge gathering at the station.
“Taylor said, ‘lets go to the other side of the tracks’… the train pulls up and low and behold, the Prince of Wales, instead of getting out where the crowd was, he got out on the other side! He said to Gordon and I, ‘did you see him?’ That’s how I met the Prince of Wales. He then went back in an out the other side where the crowd was.”
Blake went on to be District Commissioner of the Scouts.
As a young man, he joined up with the army during World War II. He took his basic training at Camrose, and he was posted to Kingston, Ontario. As an accountant, he was made Pass Clerk of the 10,000 men stationed there. He was the one to sign off on leave and then get it approved.
“We knew where any person was at all times,” he said.
He was selected to be part of the team to go to Camp X, a group that was going to Sweden to smuggle Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the A Bomb, out. Fate stepped in.
“There was a bunch in Kingston called Conscientious objectors. My bunk was beside a pot belly stove and a conscientious objector threw a homemade bomb into the stove and I was burned,” he recalls.
Because of this, he was honorably discharged.
Coming home he was back at the store. His father hired a young woman, and it didn’t take long before he and Jennifer Serkownak were wed in 1946.
Blake was trained as an accountant, however, his dad wouldn’t let him at the books until Charlie Christensen, a chartered accountant, told his dad he was capable of handling the payroll.
“In our store, we employed 20 people, including the truck driver, four or five in the hardware, and we had the groceries and the furniture was upstairs, he recalls. The store burned in about 1930 and was rebuilt.
The store celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1961, and shortly thereafter N.B. Vickers sold the business to Ashdown’s.
That is when Blake began a career in agriculture in the Horseshoe Canyon and began farming. They had five children.
Blake and his wife would work for their son Jack at the Pharmacy. He recalls that one time Jack was snowed-in in Edmonton. Blake and his wife opened and closed the store. One evening, they had closed the shop, but then heard a knock on the door.
“We opened the door, and you know who it was? It was Kirk Douglas. He went around bought the stuff he needed,” said Blake.
Mr. Douglas was in the area working on a movie called Draw! Blake needed proof however the Hollywood star stopped in, and convinced Douglas to autograph a small paper bag. This was 1983, and he still has the bag.
At 95, Blake can still spin a good yarn, and he enjoys it.enjoy telling them, but whether they believe me or not is another thing, he chuckles, adding it is important for to tell the stories and let people know the hard times that many faced.
“The early bird had it a lot tougher.”
