Bruce Trampe Transcription

[Transcript of Bruce Trampe interview by Sam Waller Museum staff, edited for clarity]

DY:         I’m Dylan Young, and I’m interviewing Bruce Trampe. The date is July 16^th, 2015. We are at 115, 3^rd street, and Bruce is going to talk about the Kinsmen. My first question for you is if I knew nothing about your organization, how would you explain it to me?

BT:          Kinsmen is a service group in The Pas, our motto is “serving the community’s greatest needs”. Basically, we do fundraising, and we do various projects to meet some of those needs in the community. Whether it be a bike path, or helping a young child go to camp, or we also do bursaries for the high school. You go through town, we’ve invested money into the workplace, that new building that’s in town. Many, many different projects, the list would be too long to even mention them all. Since our club has been in existence since 1961, we’ve done a lot of things around the community, if you just walk around, you’ll notice that we have done a fair amount, whether it’s ball-diamonds, helping out with the fire department, the library, the schools, and individuals in The Pas, and all sorts of other service groups including Kin Centre, that houses the Golden-Agers, and Manitoba’s Trappers’ Festival offices. So it’s a group of young individuals, well, I shouldn’t say young anymore. It used to be that you have to give up being on the executive once you’re forty, now that has changed, and there’s no age-limit in Kinsmen anymore. So it’s a group of very sage individuals, all men, of course, and it’s just people of like-minds that like to help out in their community, and have a lot of fun doing it.

DY:         Okay. What prompted you to join Kinsmen?

BT:          One of my co-workers, when I moved to The Pas, I moved here from Winnipeg, knew nobody here. One of my co-workers was in the Kinsmen club, and he talked about it, and it sounded pretty interesting, so I kind of left it on the back-burner, and a few years later, another friend of mine that was in Kinsmen asked if I wouldn’t mind going to one of their fish derbies. And that’s where I met the rest of the club members, and I decided this is a great group of guys, and I’d like to get involved with what they’re doing, and get more involved in the community, and meet new people, and that’s how I joined.

DY:         So, fish derby, that’s like Bill Bannock, right?

BT:          No, a fish derby is sort of a wind-up for all our members. It’s members only, and their invited guests.

DY:         Okay. Could you talk about some of the projects or programs you’ve participated in or know of?

BT:          Well, for one, we have several projects that we run yearly, one would be, that’s quite familiar with a lot of people in town, is the Four Hundred Club raffle that we have, it’s a year-long raffle that we conduct weekly. We also have the Manitoba’s Trappers’ Festival World Championship Dog Race, we’ve been running that since 1960, I believe, sixty or sixty-one. And, so it’s continually improving. We actually run the entire dog race for the Manitoba’s Trappers’ Festival, and it is the focal point of the Trappers’ Festival in The Pas, each year. One of our other projects, I guess you could say, is Kin Centre. We have a building there that’s available for groups to use, free of charge, such as Girl Guides. We also have a space upstairs that we have dedicated to the Golden-Agers group. We don’t charge rent, they do pay a portion of utilities in the building, although we do not charge them any rent. Same thing with the Manitoba’s Trappers’ Festival, we have office space available for them in the building, so that itself is a community service project, just keeping that building maintained. Some of the other projects that we run for fundraising on a yearly basis would be Ladies’ Night. We do that each year, we also do catering to Manitoba’s Trappers’ Festival banquet night, we have various other projects that we run continuously for many years. You’re probably familiar with the Comedy Jam that we do, we’ve probably done that for at least twelve to fourteen years now, some of the other community projects that we’ve been involved with, as I’ve mentioned the community workplace, that new building that’s built across from McDonald’s, we were involved in getting that to fruition. We also have, like I mentioned, ball diamonds, we’ve helped out the fire department with various things, one of them being that boat that they have, that rescue boat. We’ve put money into the library for renovations, we have, on countless occasions, helped out individuals for various things. You’ve kind of put me on the spot here, trying to think of all the things we do, it’s a very busy year that we have, every year. For many, many years, I believe it was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, we had The Pas Peewee Hockey Tournament that we ran, we no longer do that now, anymore, but we had done that, I believe, for twenty-eight years. Hmm, I really have to think.

DY:         So, 4H, is that the Four-Hundred Club?

BT:          The Four-Hundred Club is a raffle that we conduct. Its four hundred tickets that we sell for fifty-two dollars each, and we have draws each week on that raffle.

DY:         What I’m referring to is that I’ve heard the name 4H a few times before, and I’m just wondering if that’s short for Four Hundred?

BT:          No, it’s, 4H is a club as well, it’s more of a youth club, I believe, and it focuses more on country-living type things.

DY:         That makes sense. And the Workplace that you mentioned, that’s where the Dunkin’ Doughnuts used to be?

BT:          Well, it’s that new building that’s just east of that, right across from McDonalds.

DY:         Oh, okay. I think I’m familiar with that.

BT:          It’s the Workplace and Yeal Thrift Shop, I believe it’s called.

DY:         So, the dog races, those are like the biggest events you have going on throughout the year?

BT:          That’s one of the busiest events, because it’s pretty much handled sort of in the background in our club, throughout the year. The chairman of that project would have to join the Trappers’ Festival Board, as a director, and attend their meetings, and basically, he’s the liaison person between the Trappers’ Festival and the Kinsmen. So he would attend, and also he would have a race marshal as well, sort of a co-chair, and the race marshal would attend those meetings as well.  So the two of them run the project, and they delegate that authority to get our members involved in getting the project set up for the year, and it could be as easy as sending out letters to mushers, to get them involved in the race, or to get the race known, to send out invites, it could be getting the trailers set up for use at the starting grounds. And there’s a lot of work involved there, including getting the power hooked up, getting the trailers leveled, getting MTS hooked up, speakers hooked up, and the PA system, and so on. We have people that would organize any food that we need for the workers during the event, it’s a three-day event plus one day of getting the tagging done on the dogs, so there’s people involved in every aspect of it. It’s a project that takes a lot of manpower, our club of, I believe we have fifty-one members right now, it takes more than just that to run this race.

DY:         I remember another member of Kinsmen saying it took around 4400 man hours.

BT:          Typically, in a year, we’re looking at somewhere between 1500 to 2000 man hours, I would say. Over the years that we’ve run this race, we’re into well over a hundred thousand man hours since it started. Trappers’ Festival has thanked us on more than one occasion. Every year, we get that from them for the amount of work that we put into this project. It doesn’t cost the club or the community in turn, any money, per say, the race is sponsored, in most part, by commercial sponsors, by business sponsors in the community. There’s no admission or anything that’s charged to the people to watch the race, the mushers, themselves, they pay an entry fee to be in the race, and they also pay to get their dogs tagged and so on. So, it’s purely a spectator thing, and there’s a lot of followers on the dog races, and you know, probably as well as I do, living in The Pas, that it’s a very popular thing, the Trappers’ Festival, and I think it’s the focal point of the Trappers’ Festival.

DY:         You sound as though you’ve been a member for a long time. When did you join, again?

BT:          I joined the club in 1996. Since, I believe it was 2013, I got my life membership given to me in our club. So I’m actually a life member of the Kinsmen Club of The Pas.

DY:         Have you been a member of the executive?

BT:          I’ve been a member of the executive since I joined. I started on the executive after my first year in 1997, I joined the executive, and I’ve been on it since.

DY:         You haven’t been in any other service clubs?

BT:          No.

DY:         Okay. On a more personal note, what have you learned from having been a Kinsmen?

BT:          Well, you learn a lot about business. And the way, basically reporting on projects, everything is done in our club to the T, where we have to write project reports. Obviously, a lot of our projects involve large amounts of money, so everything has to be kept track of, records on everything. Being on the executive, I’ve done written bulletins, I’ve been [unintelligible] many times, I’ve been president, past president. So you learn a lot of that, you do grow in a sense. That is part of the motto as well, “to learn grow and have fun” in Kinsmen. And we do that in this community. And, so, you learn the voting system, and how things work. Democracy, in that respect. You learn to get along with 50 individuals, or more at times. And they all come from different walks of life, so it’s very rewarding.

DY:         How would you personally describe the Kinsmen?

BT:          How would I describe the club?

DY:         I mean from experience. I can also mean that, how do you describe the people in the club, as well.

BT:          Well, like I said, you got members from all walks of life. You know, we’ve had from plumbers to lawyers, type thing, and so we got pretty much, we got a lot of different talent in our club, in that respect, because of that. Again, it’s a great group of individuals, we range from age nineteen to, up into the sixties, so it is a very diverse group, in terms of age, especially, and the funny thing is that we all get along. We can work together, whether we’re nineteen or sixty-five. So we get along as a group, you do learn that to work as part of a team. I can’t say enough good about Kinsmen. It’s an awesome experience, to be a part of it. Obviously, you get out of Kinsmen, what you put into it. Everybody, there may be different reasons why people are in the club, some like that sort of brotherhood type thing, where you’ve got some very, very good friends, some like to be part of that organization, some get very involved, where they spend a lot and a lot of time working on various projects, others spend a little less time on some of these things. It’s just basically what you can give, and every little bit counts. I’m not really sure what else you’d like to know about that, and about the kinsmen, per say, but-

DY:         I was just looking for a personal viewpoint.

BT:          A personal viewpoint? I can’t say enough good about it. It’s changed my life. I moved up here in 1990, and by 1992, I was thinking of leaving the community, and starting to look for a different career in a different place, go back to Winnipeg, where I was born and raised. And when I joined the Kinsmen club of The Pas, it changed everything. It made this place home, I met, you meet so many different people, obviously members come and go in the community, so we always have new members coming in, you’re always meeting new people. They have friends and acquaintances that you meet through the various projects. Obviously, you meet people that have never been in Kinsmen, that you meet working on a lot of these projects, whether it be running a bingo, or running a ladies’ night, or running a social on New Year’s Eve. You know, you meet a lot of different people from all walks of life. So you actually gain some respect in the community, from other people, because they see you out and about, doing various things in the community. So, I can’t say enough about it, not to mention I’ve met people from various, from other Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs, especially throughout our district here, which is all of Manitoba, and North-Western Ontario. There’s so many people I know, that outside of our club, and outside of this community as well. It has changed my way of thinking from wanting to move back to the city to calling The Pas my home.

DY:         Is there a general reaction someone has, if they learn that you are a member?

BT:          I wouldn’t say, really no, I don’t think so. Sometimes, people say “oh, that’s good”, everything that you do, good for the community comes back to you, tenfold, I don’t know if I believe that or not, but you know, we don’t do it for personal recognition, so much as we do it to help our community out, and make it a better place for people that are growing up and living here. So no, I don’t think I get any special reaction from people when I tell them I’m with Kinsmen.

DY:         What is the best part, and the most frustrating part of being a Kinsmen?

BT:          The best part is, when you walk into that room for the first time, and you have fifty new friends. Most frustrating part is, sometimes you have meetings, and you can’t get fifty people, or fifty-one people, or whatever you have for members to agree on a certain motion. Not everyone can be happy. But that’s something that you learn over the years, is that you may bring up a motion, it may get voted down, it’s not a personal attack on anybody, and it’s just what the members believe is best for the community, and/or the club. So that can be frustrating sometimes. Also, having new members come out, they have to meet a requirement to join our club, which is, come out to three consecutive meetings, and that may change this year, we may be making that a little more stringent. It is a little frustrating when you get new members that don’t want to get involved as much as some of us do. You kind of expect people to do much the same, you know I’m very, very involved in the Kinsmen club, and I have been since I joined. So that is frustrating when I can’t get that out of other people as well. But you gotta understand everybody has a different lifestyle, everybody has a different type of life, different jobs, some have kids, some don’t. So all that takes time as well, and although it gets frustrating, it’s understandable. So, there really isn’t a lot that frustrates me on a regular basis, in our club.

DY:         Do you have a story you can share that has to do with the Kinsmen?

BT:          There’s so many… No, not really. I don’t really have anything I can share with you.

DY:         What would be your group’s greatest accomplishment? And this can be at any level of the organization, national, provincial, municipal.

BT:          In terms of what we’ve done in the community, or elsewhere? I think one of our greatest accomplishments is, is that the Kinsmen Club of The Pas, no matter where we go, is known. In that Kinsmen and Kinette group of people, there is over ten thousand members, I believe, or close to ten thousand members across Canada. When we go to a district convention, it seems like we’re known by every other group. We have one of the largest clubs in all of Canada, and for a small town, I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment. We are very well respected in the Kinsmen/Kinette community. So, I think that’s the biggest things I can say.

DY:         Do you think your time within this organization was well spent?

BT:          Yes. Guaranteed. I couldn’t even fathom how many hours I’ve spent on Kinsmen projects, on creating bulletins for members, before every meeting. The meetings themselves, travel to various Kinsmens groups, and district conventions. I couldn’t even fathom the number of hours that I’ve spent in Kinsmen working on certain projects and so on, to make it a better club, and to make it a better community, and it’s into the thousands, if not the tens of thousands of hours. I couldn’t think of anything better to do with my time. It’s been an awesome experience, and will continue to be that way in my life. It is definitely a part of my life.

DY:         On a final note, is there anything you want to bring attention to about Kinsmen?

BT:          Not much more than I’ve already said. Again, we’re a great group of individuals. For somebody new coming to town, that wants to experience it in a different way, and meet people, then joining a service group, and I don’t mean necessarily just Kinsmen, there’s other service groups in The Pas as well. It’s definitely a great experience that you won’t forget, and for most people that join our club, they stay, unless they’re moving out of the community, they stay in our club, and we have a lot of long-term members. We have, right now, in our club, we have four active life members, and a lot of our members that are in there right now, have been in there for twenty plus years. So, anybody that can just say, for anybody that does comes to the community, they should look into contacting a member to come out and just see a little bit what The Pas has to offer, in terms of service groups, and what we would have to offer to them.

DY:         So those are all my questions. Thank you.

BT:          You’re welcome.