Ken Oskrip
December 15, 1928 to February 4, 2012
Tisdale - Thursday, February 9, 2012
Wednesday, February 8 at 2:00 PM friends and relatives of Ken Oskrip gathered at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Tisdale to pay their last respects.
I did not meet Ken until September of 1995 and Ken was already sixty-six years old and coping with the day to day grind of operating the Tisdale bus depot. That in itself was a miserable task with buses arriving at several times from early in the morning until very late at night, seven days a week, month after month. It was no wonder that there were times that he was a little less than cheerful.
I was surprised to discover that this stern man in his sixties had a really affable and charming nature. Waiting to receive freight I was not the only person to be treated to Ken’s stories that resounded with the lessons of learning about human nature that only could be learned from twenty years of being a taxi driver in a large metropolitan city.
I too came from small town Saskatchewan but had the benefit of being involved in the mysteries of computer technology from its very beginnings until computers began a relentless invasion of the work place and pretty much every facet of our lives. That was what really impressed me about this man, who at retirement age had to cope with the computer age on a minute by minute basis. Printing out tickets, bills of lading and being able to deal with cranky printers and complex scales that were linked into the hardware and software that STC regularly upgraded.
Ken was already seventy-one he and Maxine decided it was time to get out of the whirlwind existence of meeting the buses morning noon and night and in July of 1999 I put together a story on this web site that featured the sale of the business and building. Ken was a definite candidate for cardio difficulties and it would be many more years before the burden was behind him.
Above is a picture taken by a Toronto street photographer of the young Ken Oskrip walking across the intersection at the corner of the Royal Bank of Canada. On the right is Ken on July 20, 1999 at the counter in the Tisdale bus depot.
It is hard to image how many countless people moved on with their lives with the assistance of this man. Passengers in his taxi, getting to their destination by bus or shipping and receiving valuables that were critical in their lives and businesses.
