Thirty-Six Years and Still There! Regina - November 10, 1998 By: Timothy W. Shire In November of 1962, the frightening weeks of the Cuban missile crisis only over a few days earlier, covering a "ban-the-bomb" protest in front of the old Regina Court house in the background, is cub reporter Bob Hughes. Bob was in his second year as a sports reporter at the Leader Post living far away from his family in Southern Ontario where is father was with "Canada Dry". It is somewhat comforting to know that Bob then was a rather unpleasant fellow with loads of ambition and a cynical attitude. As editor of the Leader Post we still see columns from him every so often but he has spent his whole life in the News paper business right here in Saskatchewan.
	At the time this writer was in his first gruesome year of college and as a seventeen year old I thought Bob's tarnished view of the world seemed distinctly different from what we thought things were like in rural Saskatchewan. Harvey Manchuk, Danny Kawalchuk of Kamsack, Neil Kowal from Kenora and I lived in a rooming house at 2341 McIntyre Street with star boarder Bob Hughes, from September until Christmas of 1962. Danny and Harvey shaken by the reality of the Cuban missile crisis dropped out of their lab tech course and I got a light house keeping room on Cameron street where I was able to get my life back together and salvage four of my five university classes. My 19.25% in French had to be terminated for the sanity of the professor and the preservation of the French language. The picture on the left shows the protesters of November 62 and the second on the right (light coloured jacket) looks a lot like the talented Moose Jaw writer, Ken Mitchell.
The picture at right, was one of the last times we sat around the same table at the Christmas party. From Left to right is Neil, Harvey, Danny, Bob Hughes is in the foreground and I am at the back right. The landlady was a hard working sort who tried to make the Kamsack boys feel at home with borsht and perogies. I was developing an ulcer and thanks to my doctor's poor judgment, getting to experience chemical dependency. The various medications I was given to deal with my stomach problem were laced with healthy amounts of barbiturates and my English professor correctly assessed my Christmas exam as having been written by someone not altogether aware of things. Following a meeting with him I moved to Cameron Street, left Bob and the medication behind, and began, at age eighteen, a new life.