Jack and Edna Secord took over the six rural mail routes operated by Cliff Norton on Oct. 1, 1949. On that day they were at the post office at 6:45 a.m. sorting and tying the mail into bundles for easier handling and loading it into the car for the morning route.

Delivery was scheduled for three routes per day. Each route was done three times a week, averaged 35-to-45 mail boxes and took 1-1/2 to 2 hours to complete. Then it was back to the post office to pick up the mail for the next route. Typically, the day ended by 4 p.m..

“Our first route was a nightmare. The roads were terrible. Half of the mailboxes had no names on them. I had never gone around the routes, so I had lots to learn in a hurry.” (December 7, 1993, Dauphin Herald)

That year the winter was very severe with a great deal of snow. Jack started out using a car but he knew that he would need a vehicle that could handle heavy roads. He went to Winnipeg and bought a bombardier designed to go over snow banks. He paid $3,960 and it was the first of its kind in Dauphin. The first winter the bombardier put the Secords $1,200 in the hole, but it did get the mail through and proved its value in the community.

The phone rang day and night with people needing the service of the bombardier. Many calls were from people with someone sick and requiring to get to a doctor or the hospital.

The bombardier often freighted people to do business, freighted cream and eggs to town and groceries and tobacco back for those who couldn’t get to town.

The idea was that if people needed help one tried to help them. As a result, the people on the route reciprocated. Their doors were never locked and if Jack and Edna had trouble and needed to use the phone they just walked in.

“I had many scary trips. On one mail route southwest of Dauphin there was a note in the mailbox to come to the house because they needed help. I found a little child in convulsions, turning blue. I remembered my grandma saying dunking a child in water as hot as he could bear would bring him out of it. That’s what we did and it worked. Then they wrapped the baby well, took him to the bombardier and to the hospital as fast as we could go. The mother stayed at the hospital with the baby and I had to go back and finish the mail route.”

Delivering the mail ended up as a family affair. When Jack took on the contract to deliver the mail to Swan River from 1960 to 1965, Edna handled the rural routes and was often accompanied by her children. Carol, Greg and Judy took their turns helping when they were not in school. Edna had an orange crate for them to sit on so that they could reach the car window and put the mail into the box.

For deliveries on Saturday to Swan River, Carol recalled getting up at 5 a.m. to get ready to accompany her father. They dropped mail off at communities including Ethelbert, Garland, Pine River and Minitonas. Since Jack knew the owner of the store at Garland they often stopped for a break and had a soda. At Swan River they ate their bagged lunch in the truck.

Throughout their 44 years of delivering the mail the Secords wore out 25 vehicles. In spite of the poor roads during the 1950s they had no serious accidents.

They did slide into mail boxes on slippery roads and were once surrounded by a herd of elk near the Park.

Flat tires also posed delays. On one occasion Edna removed the flat tire and found that the spare was also flat. She had to walk a mile to the nearest farm to get a pump. Luckily, the farmer came to help her.

Oct, 29, 1993 marked the final day for the countless miles and adventures when Jack and Edna delivered the mail for the last time.