STEPHENVILLE, N.L. — Bill Pike has committed his retirement to preserving historical snapshots of the community he loves.
Pike has a little more than 6,000 pictures from western Newfoundland in his collection, with some going back to the first three streets in Deer Lake and many of Stephenville and the Ernest Harmon Air Force Base.
His favourites are from the Bay St. George area, although there are others from the early years of the Corner Brook and Deer Lake areas.
For four and a half decades, Pike dedicated his work career to the Town of Stephenville public works department. His service ranged from general labour to operating heavy equipment. He retired in May 2019.
Now that he's hung up the keys to the big machines, he still shows his fondness for the equipment he operated by making wooden replicas, all with moving parts.
He and Leonard Simon, another former employee with the town’s public works department, collected photos together.
Pike once had more than 5,000 printed photos, which were destroyed when his home flooded in September 2005.
Soon after, he started a campaign to replenish his collection of historical photographs and spent three years contacting people stationed on the former Ernest Harmon Air Force Base and nearby radar sites, who shared photographs.
Of interest to him was the location of buildings during the base days, information he didn’t want to see lost forever.
“My pictures have been across Canada and the United States. I’ve donated some to the Town of Stephenville, now mounted as part of a display on the Zion Drive side of the Backyard Liquidation Center,” Pike said.
His love of his hometown was also exemplified in another project he did with Jim Thibeau, a fellow public works employee. Based on a 5x7-inch photo, the duo built a replica of the former entrance booth for the base. Each summer, it is placed on the bridge connecting Main Street to Carolina Avenue on the property.
During his long career, he considered every summer day spent as a maintenance worker a pleasure because the work he was doing made the town look cleaner.
He remembers in the early years, offloading bags of salt from the trains onto trucks and even spreading the salt by hand, something that wouldn’t come close to the safety standards of today.
Pike marvels at the fact a lot of the original water and sewer system installed on the base is still being used today.
Town equipment has improved considerably and he’s proud of what today’s workers have to use compared to what he worked with in the early years.
Overall, he loves the town in which he lives.
“I’m dedicated to try and keep the history and memory of Stephenville alive,” he said.
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