1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Summer job pays for vet’s winter’s school

Summer is holiday time for most people, but for thousands of high school and university students across the country, summer is worktime as well. Summer is a time to accumulate that extra cash needed to carry a student through the winter and pay the next term’s university tuition fees.

Finding a job for the summer of 1968 was not easy. Across Canada there were 20,000 university students who hadn’t found a job by August and even in the busy Steinbach area, the summer employment situation was not that much better.

Ten university students and 100 high school students made applications through Canada Manpower in June and July that year.

Penner’s Tomboy employed from 15 to 20 part-time and full-time student helpers during the summer, but in 1968 the Seinbach grocer had to refuse jobs for three times as many as he hired.

Where some students are fortunate there is a summer job readily available at home in the family business, many are not so lucky and have to scrounge to work.

One young man from Kleefeld, came up with an original money-making idea to subsidize his university education.

Laurence Friesen, decided he wanted give up operating a dairy farm and return to university. To earn money to pay for his studies, he offered a cow-milking service for the summer months.

Friesen had owned and operated his own herd in a family partnership for eight years and he felt that provided him with the experience needed to provide a competent milking service for dairy producers who would like to take a summer vacation.

He came recommended by Steinbach Agricultural Representative Rod Siemens and Marcel Fraser of the dairy branch, Manitoba Department of Agriculture. In his promotional letter, Friesen pointed out that in four of the six years he was on the Dairy Herd Improvement Association’s testing plan, he had the highest producing herd in the Association.

“Have you been postponing a family vacation or trip because of a lack of reliable help to do your milking? To help pay for my next year of university (second year in agriculture) I am offering a cow milking service for the summer.”

For students like Friesen and the dozens of others who found summer jobs close to home, it was a perfect opportunity to gain valuable work experience, not to mention funds for a few extras when classes resumed in fall.