This feature will attempt to renew some acquaintances with those who called Sperling and area home at one time or another. I have randomly selected people to answer questions of their past and present so the readers can be brought up to speed on their lives.
Q. Firstly, let’s get familiar with you again. When did you live in Sperling?
From 1944 to 1962. My first year on the family farm north of town, and then in the house built for my great-grandparents, the William Wilsons, in town.
Q. Did you attend school here?
Grade 1 to the last grade 12 class before the high school moved to Carman.
Q. What did you do for jobs as a student?
Mowing lawns and then there were lots to do on my dad’s farm. Later I worked at the Hooper farm and on heavy earth-moving equipment digging the Norquay Channel.
Q. What activities did you participate in as a student?
Sports were a huge part of being a kid in Sperling. Being a small town, everyone had to play to have enough players to field our teams. My dad was a keen curler and he got me started early – curling in the men’s league, high school and bonspiels. I was class president of the high school in my last year.
Q. Did your family live here? Who and what did they do for a living?
My dad, Bill, was a farmer and a sales representative for the Great West Life. He was active in the Masons, the Eastern Star, an Elder in the church, and executive in the curling club. My mother, Audrey, was a homemaker and sometimes substitute teacher.
Q. What was your chosen career after school?
I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Manitoba, worked for a few years as a technical rep with Shell Canada in Thunder Bay, then went back to school for an MBA at University of Western Ontario in London. My career after that was in management – first with a consulting firm, McKinsey, then with manufacturing companies; American Optical, General Electric and Asea Brown Boveri, all in Southern Ontario – Toronto and Peterborough. I moved back to Winnipeg in 1993 and worked in management for two smaller manufacturers.
Q. Did you meet your spouse here?
My first wife was from nearby Kane. A few years after our divorce, I moved back to Winnipeg, and connected with Carolyn Vogt, who I had known in university. We married in 1996.
Q. Did you raise any children?
With my first wife, we had two children, Jennifer, and Andrew in Ontario. Both are university graduates, married, and call Victoria home. Andrew is dad to twins, Ariana and Owen and they are a big part of our lives. Carolyn’s son, Dan, is the chef at a golf resort in Courtenay so all our kids are on Vancouver Island.
Q. Do you have extended family living here?
There are many Peckover cousins living in the Sperling district and surrounding area, and we try to stay in touch.
Q. What do you do now?
Well, I retired in 2002. After Carolyn’s retirement from nursing education, we started spending winters in Victoria. We moved full time to Victoria in 2015.
Q. What passes your leisure time? Hobbies? Sports?
I’m an avid reader, crossword and puzzle solver, amateur genealogist, and daily walker. No more sports at age 79.
Q. Have you travelled for leisure and where?
We have travelled to Europe several times, we come back to Manitoba every summer, and sometimes to Ontario.
Q. Any future plans or to do list?
We do want to get back to Europe, but we don’t have a “bucket list” – we are happy with all we have done, and if our fate is to live quietly in Victoria, that is just fine.
Q. Do you ever return to Sperling?
After so many years, we don’t know many people there, but we do a drive around every time we come back.
Q. What are some of your fondest memories of your Sperling days?
It was a great little place to grow up; the school and the rink were central to our lives: sports, Christmas concerts, playing hide and seek, “give me a wave”, bicycling all around town, Halloween antics. Sperling memories are all about the people! Starting in about 2003, some of my Sperling schoolmates and I started to get together a couple of times a year for lunches or “happy hours” in Winnipeg. The reunions we had are very fond memories. The school reunion of 1987, when something like 700 gathered on a weekend, then similar gatherings for our 2001 centennial, and our 2005 Homecoming. For the Homecoming, I wrote a play about Sperling’s history, getting actors together, and staging it in the cemetery. A video of the play is available on YouTube.
Q. Any last words you wish to send to our readers?
I had a website created after the 2005 Homecoming, “sperling.ca”, and I have a Facebook page, “Sperling, Manitoba”. For anyone interested, they are a way to share memories and keep some of our history alive.
