Men - O - War in Wainwright
What a Riot!
On June 18, 1951 Wainwright witnessed a riot like they had never seen before. The result was a gaping hole in the front of Fire Hall, nearly every pane of glass in this building broken, and a loss of music and band instruments worth $3500. A news clipping from the time explains, 200 soldiers ransacked the town hall (which is attached to town offices) trying to free two of their comrades who had been arrested for drunkenness. The soldiers drove a jeep into the front doors of the building while others grabbed loose bricks ffrom the deteriorated fence of the Bank of Montreal lot and threw them through the windows. Glass on the big fire engine was broken and fire extinguishers were discharged.
First hand accounts of this and other incidents are confused, placing similar events on different dates, indicating perhaps the frequency of such happenings. Neil Deck (PPCLI in training), remembers what was likely the same town office ruckus.
"They brought the Van Doos in from Quebec… in the middle of the month and then they paid them when they got there… which was about the stupidest thing they could have done. Everyone got downtown and there was fights wherever you looked. It didn’t matter which corner you looked on there was fight… in front of the bar, behind the bars, on the streets…
The MP’s came down and they’d pick up truckloads of these soldiers, throw them back to the camp, go down for another load and when they got down there they found they were picking up the same guys!"
“We were soldiers…“
William Carsell Jr. who was born and raised in Wainwright also remembers the incident. “The Van Doos got the blame of it… but the RCR’s were just as bad” he said.
Carsell drove a bus between camp and town during the summer. He said the soldiers who’d broken into city hall were looking for their buddies, previously arrested by town police, but their buddies had already arrived back into camp. “They got the police, the MP’s pretty well all cornered in the building and took one of the trucks and rammed it there… But the cops by that time were out of the back door and gone.: Carsell remembers the soldiers using the Legion hut just across the street at that time, as a ‘home free’ area.
“Anybody who got hurt and wanted a rest, they’d go in there and the others went out and kept on going.”
The buses took quite a beating, with the seats knifed and torn out frequently. “We’d count our seats and pick them up on our way back again.” Carsell and his partner were operating three buses supplying transportation to and from camp at fifteen minute intervals. During a disturbance, the buses were pulled off the route until things calmed down.
Neil Deck summed it up matter-of-factly by stating, “We were soldiers, and soldiers fight.”
This particular disturbance lasted for approximately one hour, until finally RCMP officials, town policemen and members of the Provost Corps and Officers, were able to contain the mob.
Now That’s Profound!
When asked for some profound statement about the riot, Len D’Albertanson, mayor of the town during the outburst, reflected the only profound thing was that he read the riot act and then nobody was sure what to do next!