Typical Work Day

Heroes Remember

Typical Work Day

Transcript

We call them a modified work day because of the heat. We were pushing close to 50 degrees Celsius in the daytime. I'm pretty lucky because I'm from Windsor and Windsor in the summertime gets up to about 40 in August when we get the hot summers. So for me I was able to adapt pretty quick to the temperature. It was really humid down there, it's humid in Windsor too. I knew other guys from up North and they were having big problems because they just could not work in that extreme heat for the whole day so we ended up having to basically have extended lunch hours. You'd start early in the morning, probably about 4:30, 5:00 o'clock in the morning, work during the day, probably shut down for lunch for maybe 2 hours or so, take a little siesta, work for a couple of more hours in the later day, evening, once things started to cool down, when the sun come around a bit more. So it was different that way. The trucks the drivers were in were those old deuce and a half trucks which were basically Vietnam War technology trucks with diesels. So you had to drop all the sides down on the engines and everything else to try to keep the engines cool. They didn't want to, they're diesels, they like to run hot, right, so the guys in the cabs were just boiling. Some of the trucks they actually ended up pulling the tops off of them, tried to turn them into convertibles just to get the air flow going through it. You pull the windows out of them, that kind of stuff, but then you had to wrap the cabin ballistic blankets and put extra heavy plates in them, just for the mine protection so that put a lot more wear and tear on the engines, put a lot more heat on the engines. It was difficult but again, get to bed early, up really early, it wasn't a 9 to 5 job that's for sure.

Description

Mr. Beresford explains a typical work day and how the excessive temperatures affected their routine.

Tony Beresford

Mr. Tony Beresford was born in Windsor, Ontario June 11, 1961. He grew up in a military family where his father served in the Navy and his mother in the Air Force. Military life was a very positive decision for Mr. Beresford who first joined the Navy reserves in Windsor and after serving there for three years, joined the regular force. Mr. Beresford later joined the Canadian Forces where he decided to obtain a trade in electronics technician and ended up advancing as a fire controls technician, a very unique trade to the military. In 1992 Mr. Beresford went overseas on his first tour to Cambodia as part of 92 Transport Company. In addition to in-Canada service, Mr. Beresford was sent on tour to Bosnia in 1999. Military being a big part of his life, Mr. Beresford met and married his wife who also served with the Canadian Forces. After 30 years service, Mr. Beresford retired and resides in Ontario with his family.

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