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The Wingham Advance-Times, 1983-02-23, Page 15Serving over 25,000 homes in Listowel, Wingham, Mount Forest, Milverton, Elmira, Palmerston, Harriston, Brussels, Atwood, Monkton, Millbank, Newton, Clifford, Wallenstein, Drayton, Moorefield and Arthur. Wednesday, February 23, 1983 Donates hand -carved memories to the Agricultural Museum Out came the horses, the plow, the haywagon, the harrows, the big, old threshing machine — the line of implements seemed endless. On that sunny, but bitterly cold February morning, as the horses and implements were carefully placed in a waiting van, one couldn't help but think that for Cecil Zur- brigg it must be like leaving the farm all over again. Only this time the farm was leaving Cecil Zurbrigg. But because this farm was of his own making, because he had poured his love of horses and the land into it along with his talents, the parting had to be as hard for him as leaving that hundred acres in Wallace Township back in 1960. No, this was no Mennonite farm auction in the heart of the best farmland in the nation. It wasn't even a sale. It was a give -a -way. A wonderful kind of give -a -way. The kind that would go on to delight and educate all ages of people for generations to come. Those horses and farm implements going into the van were not of flesh and metal, but of plastic and wood. But that didn't make them any less real to Cecil Zurbrigg of 254 Elora St. East, Listowel. And the one thing which made the transaction all worthwhile, which made the parting bearable, was the insignia on the side of the van. The plastic horses with their hand -carved implements and farm workers were going to a good home. The Ontario Agricultural Museum at Milton. It all seemed to have happened so quickly that the decision just had to be the right one. Cecil Zurbrigg was sure that it was. On the day before the van arrived to take away his labor' of love he had said with a voice choked with emotion, "Tomorrow is going to be a pretty hard day for this old man, but it's only because I'm so happy." There was another reason why Cecil Zurbrigg was' sure he was doing the right thing in supervising the moving of his miniature farm creations. The decision had been made by his own sons and daughters. And one daughter, Thelma, and one son, Lyle — all the way from Edmonton — were right there with him, assisting in the moving of the collection. I Just Started It wasn't that long ago, "back about '72", that Cecil Zurbrigg took it into his head to start carving his collection of farm operations. By the time he had finished — or at least by the time they were turned over to the museum — he had 59 pieces, portraying every conceivable operation a farmer might have carried out with his horses during the four seasons making up the year. Besides farming operations the collection includes such bygone sights as horse-drawn delivery vans, bake wagons, junk wagons, coal wagons, even a horse-drawn bus. All of the non-farm, pieces have special meaning to Cecil Zurbrigg. The bake wagon carries the title of Zurbrigg's. bakery, the. coal wagon is the Hay Coal and Lumber wagon, the-jun1rwagor is that Cif `Lazarus Dry Goods and the bus is a replica of the old Union bus which was owned and operated by Wm. Donegan. Could it really have been over half a century ago that all of these wagons could have been seen in around Listowel? Story and photos by Marion I. Duke It seems like only yesterday to Cecil Zurbrigg. "I was always whittling away at something, even as a small boy," he says of his carving ability. "I canremember sitting in school with my jacknife and before I knew it, I'd have a little bob -sled made. The teacher would take it away from me and it wouldn't be long until I had another one made." He remembers the teacher. She was Mrs. Warren Reid and she was some impressed a few years ago when she saw her one-time pupil's collection of whittling. Little wonder. The collection completely covered the walls of Mr. Zurbrigg's little workshop at the back of his home. There really wasn't room for another horse or wagon. But that wasn't why he stopped and decided something had to be done with his collection. "The doctor told me I had to stop working and that's when I decided I'd turn the whole thing over to my family." The family, Thelma (Mrs. Don Bode) of Seaforth, Ken of Kincardine, Lyle of Edmonton and Shirley (Mrs. Glenn Lamb of Goderich) got together around Thanksgiving and Thelma came up with the idea of contacting the Agricultural Museum. "It was their idea," said Mr. Zurbrigg's wife Mabel. "They decided it would be best to keep the collection together if they could." Thelma then contacted R. W. (Bob) Carbert, general manager of the museum to see if he would be interested in adding it to the museum's collection. Would he be interested? When he saw it, Bob Carbert was overwhelmed. Born and raised on a farm in the Mitchell area, he not only knew the scope and value of the collection, but realized the emotion which had been poured into its creation. "It is rustic art," he says. "We consider it to be the finest collection of primitive models in all of Canada." And so the collection that Cecil Zurbrigg "just started" working on after his wife told him about a little model she had seen at an area craft show, will now go on permanent display behind glass in the main exhibit hall of the Ontario Agricultural Museum at Milton. "It is an extremely valuable collection," Mr. Carbert says. "We're absolutely delighted to have it." Loves Horses Along with the 10 years of whittling, a lifetime of farm knowledge has gone into the Zurbrigg farm collection. Cecil Zurbrigg was born on a farm on the fourth concession of Wallace Township. —Mrs. Zurbiigg, the former Mabel Gedcke, was a farm girl from the second concession of the neighboring township of Howick. Following their marriage in 1934 they were eager to take up farming on their own 100 acres in Wallace, just across from the Mayne Corners' church. Air traffic controllers are a breed of their own by Kim Dadson compared to other jobs i ety, air traffic eontrdlling is a stressful position. However controllers at Waterloo -Wellington Airport say they don't find it stressful. They find It a challenge. From left are Doug Green, Maureen McNena and Ginette Roncall. It seems fitting that same church is now the little white country church visited by thousands each summer at the Agricultural Museum at Milton. "This community," says Bob Carbert, "has been very good to the Agricultural Museum." The Mayne Corners' church was donated to the museum a few years ago by Gerald Winger of RR 4, Listowel. It is obvious Cecil Zurbrigg loved his life on the farm. To this day his daughter Thelma can recall her father working. "Dad used to sing," she laughs. "He'd sing so loudly we could even hear him over the tractor." And when he worked the soil behind a horse-drawn, single -furrow plow, Cecil Zurbrigg used to whistle. "At the end of the day, you'd be pretty well whistled out," he recalls. A farmer behind a walking plow could whistle or sing — or curse his heart out — all day long, but he still had to keep his mind about him. "If you hit a rock you could get a nasty crack on the ribs," Cecil Zurbrigg said. "And I had many a sore rib." And how much land could a farmer with a team and a single -furrow plow turn over in a day? "At the end of a good, steady day's work, about two acres. He couldn't do much better than that and in that time he'd walk maybe 10 or 11 miles." By his own admission, Cecil Zurbrigg has always loved horses. While he didn't carve the horses for his collection, he diff make every piece of harness they wear. Over the past decade his collection has been seen by hundreds at craft shows throughout the area. During those years Mr. Zurbrigg has had the satisfaction of talking to many -children about the days of early farming. They have been fascinated but not very impressed with the results of the long, hard days put in by their forefathers. "I was down near Stratford one time and I was telling them about plowing and this little boy pipes up, 'Why, two acres, that's nothing. With our big tractor my dad can do a lot more than that.' " Cecil Zurbrigg would have liked his collection to have remained in the Listowel area, or at least in Perth County. "I was hoping we'd get a museum here (in Listowel) but it doesn't look as though we will. And I was asked to donate the collec- tion to Perth County and I thought maybe I would, but now the idea of a county museum has kind of fallen through too." And now that his workshop walls have been cleared, what will Cecil Zurbrigg do? "Oh I have lots of old things I can put up on the shelves. I'll have them filled in no time. And I'm working on a set of horses and the Zurbrigg bake wagon for each of my children; I'd like them to have that." Then Cecil Zurbrigg's eyes light up. "And you know I didn't give away everything. I'm keeping this one — I don't think the museum will mind that." He points' to a shelf in his living room. There in all its glory is a replica of the eight - hitch Carlsberg beer wagon with its load of wooden barrels. To paraphrase an old saying, you can indeed take the man out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the man. It's a job that requires the talents of a "good short order cook" (as they say in the business), a decisive mind, an independent, highly motivated personality, three dimen- sional eyesight, an excellent memory and above all, a high threshold for stress. Air traffic controllers are a breed of their own. While many jobs may include any of the above requirements, there are not too many which combine all in a position which can involve life and death drama. There, are many who look to controlling as a possible career but statistics prove that few are chosen. Of 1,000 who may apply to a course, 500 are interviewed (as a result of an exam given upon application), 100 make it through the course and 25, at the most, get a licence. Maureen McNena, an Elora resident, has been an air traffic controller for 10 years, six of those years at the Waterloo -Welling- ton Airport (WW) outside of Breslau. She has also taught courses and worked at Buttonville, Oshawa and Toronto airports. Maureen's speech is characteristic of her career it's fast, almost clipped; she doesn't waste breath or words. She can't afford that luxury when she's talking down a pilot in trouble. One pilot she did help later alluded to the fact she is a woman — he wrote that while many would disagree with a woman being in the tower, it was due to her efforts that he landed safely. "The only thing that counts is whether you can do the job, not whether you're male or female," Maureen says. The training to get into the tower as a licenced controller has already weeded out s}i BVI m ti It was an emotional moment for Cecil Zurbrigg when he started to empty his workshop shelves of the farm models he has created. The entire collection will_ be housed behind -glass-in`tire main hail Of -the Gntairo Agricultural Museum at Milton. See more photos on page 6. those women and men incapable of handling the job. Even after completing the course, a student may not be licenced. "A lot can do it academically," says Maureen, but applying what has been learned in the classroom to the tower is another matter. There's no room for error and plenty of room for the unpredictable. There are two types of control — visual flight rules (VFR) and instrument flight rules (IFR). WW is a VFR tower, Toronto International Airport is an IFR centre; they use radar. At WW the controller works with the actual plane in sight which can be any- where in a five mile radius, up to 3000 feet above the ground. down across the country but prior to this year WW stood about 16th in Canada for traffic volume; 1,000 take -offs and landings a day at the busiest. Course instructors attempt to overload a student to see just por far and long they can go. "In simulation they try to saturate a trainee — to push a person beyond his limit," says Doug Green, another controller at WW. Just the memory work alone, of air highways, airports, airport names, "volumes of memory work," says Maureen, may intimidate a potential student. A situation in which two planes are com- ing at each other may occur for the control- ler in the tower. The controller planned the landings, he now has to replan them quickly and he may have 10 other planes to worry about at the same time — who they are, what route he has assigned them, and any particular problems they may have. Mau- reen once had to talk down a first time stu- dent pilot whose instructor had a heart attack. "Here, nothing waits for you," says Doug. "You can't say stop. If you can't keep 'up, you work harder." "It's your responsibility, your job, you do it," says Maureen. Yet Doug says the stress in the tower has been overrated by the press. Maureen agrees; "It's not a high stress job as far as I'm concerned. Due to psychological train- ing and education, it's a matter of choosing people who see it as a challenge." Doug adds, "Compared to the bench- marks of society, it is stressful. You have to know your limits, and to know them in ad- vance." d- vance." Maureen says controllers don't like to talk about the occasions when something did go wrong. There could be a lot of "ifs" in the mind of a controller who was working dur- ing an accident. The situations they deal with are those which comprise "shop talk", with other controllers who can empathize. This leads to a sense of camaraderie. The field also has a high divorce rate. After a busy day of talking down pilots. Maureen says the last thing you want to do is go home and talk about your day. Hours are odd — working weekends and eight hour shifts that don't include breaks. But they all agree, "the stress won't get you, the boredom will kill you." The adrena- lin is up when they come on shift and it has to be'maintained through the slack times as well — anything could happen suddenly. Controllers have to be very independent people and highly motivated, capable of working on their own without constant re- assurance from someone behind them that they have made the right decisions, says Maureen. Ginette Roncali, another controller, says two controllers may be working side by side but each is unaware of what the other is doing. Each concentrates on their own job. Doug claims competition is the toughest part of the job. '`It's a young man's job," agrees Maureen. Retirement before 50 years of age is the norm and the three con- trollers measure the number of years they have left in the job. A very real decision is whether they'll retire at 45, 48 or younger yet. That's providing their annual medical is approved. If it isn't, they are out of a job then. Maureen started flying when she was 16 years old. "The two guys who taught me fly- ing were controllers. I have about 700 hours flying time." They suggested Maureen try controlling. There weren't many women in the field of flying at all but Maureen says she got in before the push for women in jobs became a public issue, "Many women did in different fields," she adds. A love of flying came first for Maureen while Ginette grew up with an Air Force father and was turned down as a steward- ess. Controllers come from all walks of life, gas station attendants, factory workers — not all have a pilot's licence. Pilots and passengers depend upon the controller for a safe landing or take -off. The stringent requirements of the Federally funded courses at Cornwall, Georgian Col- lege and Toronto assure that there is room only for the cream of the crop.