BLIZZARD HORROR

Hokitika Guardian, 9 December 1930, Page 2

BLIZZARD HORROR

FIVE MEN FOUND DEAD, ■ “ VANCOUVER, Ocober 29. All Canada has been horrified by one of the most lamentable tragedies in the history of ’the Dominion,' in which five Wayfarers met death under frightful circumstances on.the Canadian praiiie. Stalled' in towering, snowdrifts on the Outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan, a closed-in motor car was the place where five persons died in . a prairie storm of unparalleled virulence. Two passengers in the 1 -stalled car lived to tell of the gruesome night in the screaming blizzard when, one by one, the five men dropped into "death slumber in the crowded--.car. : The! dead were: G. R. Dowswell, plumbipg contractor, Regina ; Walter (“Scotty”) Tyndall, plumber, Regina; Leslie HaUsworth, Regina; Thomas M. 'Houston; Regina; and H. M. Savage, Regina. ... . Dawn breaking over the snow-crusted wheat fields disclosed the tragedy to Ted Evoy, farmer, whose house was but 100 yards away. Evoy had left a lamp hi the w’indow for the nid of wandering ptissersby, but, It, had gone unseen in tfio .fury of the blizzard. The farmer VrtW the oar stalled in the- drifts, . and went to it immediately. He found the driver, George Bell, of the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company, Regina, in a delirious condition, and David Whiting, of Regina, sembconsciouß. The five dead men were huddled head-down In their seats, PS jf seeking to-keep, warm, ! Half-screaming from his horrifying experience, Bell staggered out of the ear, unable to talk. Later he said: “1 would run the heater every half-hour to keep us warm, then shut it off. The other fellows kept going to sleep all the time. I didnlt like the way they would drop off in the middle of a sentence. It scared me. We took turns in punching each -other awake.-1 punched until my arms were tired.” He could not remember' the farmer freeing him from the car. Bell’s story of the battle through ♦•he- blizzard tale of .o struggle aga’r.st drifts bat rose shoildai-louh rich a the Qu ? Apn°He-Regina br'ghwuy he was traversing. First be drove alone through the night; he had set out from Qu’Appelle an hour before midnight. Tt- was not until be reached McLean half-way along the 40-mile route to the city, that the storm broke. Just outside of McLean he encountered a motor oar. snowbound in mid-road. His automobile struggeld past, and he picked up fpur men who had been pnssengers in the-stalled car. Drift after drift halted the car, but the men stepped out and piqved the machine ahead by sheer strength of arm. Farther along on the road was a stalled truck, and later its two passengers were picked up. The two men had abandoned the mengrd shelter of a schoolhouse. They had but one. match between them, and their efforts to start a fire had been fruitless. They staggered on through the night, hoping to reach a farmhouse along the road. Thev were grnteful ns they stepped into the car. On and on Beil drove, stopping, ploughing on, stopping again. Eventually, according to Bell, they stopped exhnu-ted. “Couldn’t go any. further,” he said. “The car went into the snow and stuck as if it were in cement.” The night wove on, and its fitful conversation, in the crowded sedan, and the blizzard roaring outside. The sleep—and death—followed.”

“The coroner said we might have had e-rhou monoxide gas in the car, and it might have killed the others,” said Bell afterwards. “My heater was a water-heater, and that theorv won’t work. It was exhaustion that killed them. I never dreamed I should see anything like that in my life. I’ve read about it in hooks, but—”