BODMER – Memories of Roderick Ian Bodmer
Son of Grant and Elsie Bodmer of Bassano, Alberta
Rod was born November 4th, 1947
Sadly, Rod rode off into the sunset on May 18th, 2020, due to a sudden illness of cancer in Sechelt, BC. At the time of his choosing, Rod was surrounded by his daughters, Nicole, Brittany, Caitlyn and one of his many best friends, Rosemary Roberts. Rod was the middle child, brother to Hugh Bodmer and me, his sister, Shelley Peters. Rod’s ashes will be returned to the ranch Fall of 2021, now the Bell place.
This is Rod’s story as remembered by Hugh and I…
Rod was a true family man, sportsman and athlete: hunter, fisherman and hockey player. A unique individual who lived quietly but colorfully.
Rod was born in Brooks, lived in Rosemary, and raised in Bassano. While living in Bassano, one of Hugh’s earliest memories is the move to Bassano from Rosemary, AB.
Mom, Hugh, and Rod made the momentous trip to Bassano as the house was loaded and moved by trailer, with them in it, to its new foundation on 1st Street. The neighbourhood on 1st Street was full of lifetime friends of Rod and Hugh’s: Clarks, Hislops, Brents, Hales, Kellys, Smiths, Bells and Stewarts.
Not long after the move to town, Mom acquired Mag, our Great Dane pup. Mag was a great defender of the property and loved to leap the fence to lead a pack of dogs around town, tipping the garbage pails. Rod was a big animal lover, superb horseman and a dog whisper, long before the term was coined. Over the course of Rod’s life, he had many dogs, Mag, Al, Bear, Scotty, and Zoey adopted him. And he had many memorable cars, two of his favorites was an ’67 Austin Healy and a ’69 Dodge Charger. The Austin Healy spent the winters parked in a snowbank in the Hat.
Mom and Dad used to tell the time when Rod at 4 years old, jumped on a darning needle and it went through his knee. Doctors decided that the needle should be left as it had broken in half. Hugh remembers how the neighbor, Scottie Frazier, packed Rod around on his back everywhere till his knee recovered.
Another one of Rod’s miss adventures was the time when he had broken his arm. He had fallen out of a tree and landed on Hugh breaking his right arm. Mom looked everywhere for him. She found him, hiding under his bed in shock amongst a nest of hatching eggs.
Another classic Rod and Hugh’s renegade stories is Saturday morning music lessons. Our mother insisted that the boys take piano lessons, but at 6 am Jack Peake would roll up to the house, truck and horse trailer, and the boys would sneak off to ride the Community Gem Lease with Jack.
Hugh recalls how often Rod and Roy Smith would walk the 5 miles to the Bassano Dam to fish all day and Hugh would go pick them up at the end of the day in his Dodge ½ ton truck.
Rod athletic career included baseball. He pitched ball in the Pony League where Dad taught him to throw the “curve ball”. I caught ball for Rod in the dugouts at home and I remember missing one of his fastball pitches and having to go to the hospital for an x-ray for a broken shoulder.
Rod’s hockey career started playing minor hockey on a team called the Bassano Bums, coached by Bill Lee, an RCMP officer stationed in Bassano. He took two years to complete grade 12 so he could play for the Brooks Senior Men’s Black Hawks with the Picket boys from Gem. He went on to play Junior College Hockey and voted Most Gentlemanly Hockey Player of the year in “73. He tried out for the Medicine Hat Tigers where Lanny McDonald got his start. Rod’s hockey career did not advance because of his knee injury as a child.
However, he played for the Lethbridge Pronghorns and the Halibut Kings in Prince Rupert. Jack Groven of Prince Rupert gave Rod his first job as a cook and deckhand on “Miss Barbie” an 82-foot ex Dragger vessel converted to a Cash buyer for salmon and herring. In one bad storm, Jack insisted they cross the Hecate Straits to make sure Rod could be in Rupert for a hockey game that night. Jack remembers what a great hockey player Rod was and could not let the team down. The love of the game saw him continue to play old timers’ hockey into his 70’s in Sechelt.
Back to his formative years in Bassano, the family moved to the ranch in winter of 1960. Hugh was 15, Rod was 12, and I was 6. Rod shined as a cowboy and the boys became Dad’s righthand men running the operation. I remember Rod and Bobby Hale at the age of 16 took the ‘56 International ½ ton with a barrel of gas and headed off to Fairbanks, Alaska, “to look around” as Bobby put it.
After Grade 12, Rod when to Medicine Hat College to continue his education but really it was to play hockey.
From Medicine Hat he went on to Lethbridge University to pursue a degree in Phys Ed. But after completing his 3rd year at Lethbridge University, he took an abrupt about face and headed to the logging camps of Prince Rupert. He worked in the camps as a boom master manoeuvring logs for the lumber mills. His dream was to acquire a fishing boat to fish commercially for Salmon. He subsequently bought “The Grass”, the first of many boats that he would own and operate as a commercial salmon fisherman. “The Lions Gate III”, was a seining vessel that he manned for several years and then decided to return to single operatorship of gill netting. He had a succession of gill netters, “The Miss Robin” being his last vessel.
All of Rod’s nieces, Jennifer, Robyn, and Andrea, and nephew Tom, as well as his daughters, Brittany and Caitlyn, and his son, David, all deck handed on his various vessels at different times during their young lives.
Lots of family members got in on the action. Mom and Dad fished one season on The Grass. “Mom’s baking bread!” went out over the radio air waves. Hugh and Caroline fished several times to keep Rod company and learn the ropes. I deck handed a summer between years at NAIT, which looked great on a resume. Great memories for all our family. Rod had many buddies that came and fished with him, Roy, Frank come to mind, and friends from Medicine Hat, Gem and Cessford.
Rod commercial fished for many years out of Prince Rupert and Gibson. As his fishing and hockey career wound down, he took an opportunity to play on the UBC Alumni hockey team in a tournament in Tokyo. The same trip after Tokyo he met up with his childhood buddies, Roy Smith and Frank George for an African Safari. Once he returned from the Safari and fished the summer, he needed emergency heart surgery. Crazy stamina.
After he recovered from his heart surgery, he started to travel once again to escape the winter cold. Brittany lived in Mexico and he loved to visit her. He saw much of Europe in his youth skiing in the Swiss Alps, and traveled in his later years to Belize, Cuba, Thailand, and Vietnam when he took ill in February 2020.
This is only a glimpse of Rod’s dynamic life! But what a life! Rod’s classic sign off was “That’s All Folks!”
