Mr. & Mrs. Fred Bidulock

Fred Bidulock was born in the province of Romania under the Austrian rule on the 25th day of August 1890. He was the only son and youngest in the family of five. His mother died when he was twelve years of age. He had to leave school and go out to work. One could see he was a hard worker by the huge hands he had developed.

Maria Bidulock (nee Semenowich) oldest daughter of a family of five, was born in Romania on November 4, 1896. Maria and Fred got married in the late fall of 1913 in the Shepenetz area and settled in the Ispas district and resided there till Fred Bidulock died on January 28, 1970 and Maria Bidulock died on August 6, 1978.

Fred and Maria had a log house with a sod roof which Fred built before they got married. Both had to work hard to clear some land for a garden and some mixed farming - cattle, grain, chickens and ducks.

They first started to till the land with a pair of oxen, but the idea was soon given up and he traded the oxen for a pair of skinny horses from a rancher. The horses were more versatile. The cattle would roam in the open range and grazing land was plentiful. There were no threshing machines around. So threshing had to be done by flail or laying of sheaves or the horses running on top round and round.

Fred Bidulock migrated to Canada by boat in 1907 with his brother-in-law. He knew very little of how to read and write and soon picked up the English language and learnt Italian working mostly with them in mines and railway construction and with other people with foreign languages.

During the war Fred worked in the Coleman and Blairmore coal mines. Natural gas and other gases were very active in these mines and not many wanted to work in these mines. Just a few years before, the Frank Slide covered the town with rubble. The authorities of the mine asked Fred if he would stay with the work in the mines, he would receive some recognition or serving in the army during war years. He got to know the mine work very well for he was there for a considerable length of time. He also worked on the railway between Banff and Field. There were no Spiral Tunnels at that time, most of the time the train would go down and up once the tracks had to be changed at the grade because of it steepness. Later they decided to build the Spiral Tunnels. There again it was dangerous work. The blast engineers would set up charges by the fuse method and when the blast would go off. Some charges were missed and when the steam shovel would pickup the rubble the missed charge would go off, causing casualties. When the power line was brought in and the charge would be set by electrical fuses then there was not the danger of missed charges.

Near Steven Lake a water tank and locomotive jumped the tracks and fell on its side into the lake. Fred ran to the turned locomotive and noticed the fire man was completely under water. The engineer pulled himself out while Fred helped the fireman and rescued his life.

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