William John Maguire (Mac) Kennedy was born in Seamans, SK on October 10th, 1924. He moved from Regina, SK to Dawson Creek, BC with his family in 1929. When he was 15 years old he worked on a dairy farm south of Dawson Creek, BC for $15/month. On December 7th, 1941 he left Dawson Creek for North Pine and Montenay on a D4 Cat Train. It took three months to reach Fort Nelson, Mac wrote a song: “Crawl Along Caterpillar, Crawl Along”, he played in a band with Bob Tucker on the banjo, a fiddler and Mac on the guitar.. The National Geographic made a movie which featured Mac working in the Blacksmith Shop. In 1942 he joined the railroad as a watchman. Later he worked as a fireman – this consisted of shoveling coal to burn in the fire box and keeping water on hand. Mac joined the military in 1943. Since he had played hockey with the Rycroft Rockets, he continued to play while serving. He was with the 14th Calgary Tanks, they went to Holland and Germany; he played hockey for three months in Amsterdam. Six months after his discharge in 1946, he went back to working on the railroad – his total railroad service (which includes three years in the Army) was from 1942-1986. He was very active with the Legion, worked bingos for 21 years, was President for 2 years and served as a Service Officer for 11 years. He received the Meritos Service Award from the Legion. He passed away in Grande Prairie on April 12th, 2005 at the age of 80 years.
– Interview by Margaret Heath, March 1981