Richard Basil Pritchard

Richard Basil Pritchard of Glenavon, Saskatchewan died on Sunday, April 6, 2025 at the age of 93 years. Richard was born in Regina, Saskatchewan on February 3, 1932 to William and Maria (nee Booth) Pritchard. He was the 7th of 8 children.

When the 1930’s came along, his dad was laid off after 7 years working at Imperial Oil in Regina. They moved to White Beech, Saskatchewan (homestead) in the Arran Pelly area. The whole area was all bush except for small openings opened up for a meagre yard. Times were very lean as they had nothing to work with for machinery and no money. They basically existed there until a fire took their home in 1947 - 1948. His three brothers: Willie, George and Ted joined the army, of which Willie was wounded in Dieppe and later killed in Normandy by shrapnel---he was standing on the wrong side of a truck! After the war, brother Ted invited his homeless family: Mom, Dad, Richard (who was 16 years old with 5 years of education) and younger brother Jim (14 years old) to move to Hamilton, Ontario. There was lots of work there.

Richard got odd jobs until he was old enough to get a real job. He worked at National Rail Car, which built box cars for the CN and CP Rail. He was a riveter, consisting of someone heating rivets red hot and throwing them through the air to be caught and filling an empty rivet hole before it got too cold. You tend to pay attention when something like that comes at you!! He then got a safer job driving tandem truck (van) for Canadian Freightways, a trucking company that was contracted by Sears to deliver either large furniture and appliances all around Hamilton area, urban and rural, or smaller van delivering small parcels. The furniture delivery was easier, other than the back work. There was much more driving to deliver small parcels! He got gassed by one of the diesel exhausts leaking into the cab, something that should have been corrected. So, he quit that job and came to Saskatchewan and bought a quarter of land attached to the farm site of his sister Rose and Wilf Stamm. But, after a couple years he sold it and moved back to Hamilton. He worked for a number of years for Waste Management, which was recycling.

He was good at fixing small stuff like: brushes in electric drills, getting lawn mowers running and keeping them running. He was fussy about things like that.

He then retired and moved back to Glenavon and bought the Burdsay house. He made improvements on it to his liking, then the time came for him to move into the Long-Term Care Home in Kipling, where he passed away after a short illness.

He will be sadly missed by his many cousins, nieces and nephews.

A funeral service for Richard was held in St. Andrew's United Church, Glenavon, Saskatchewan on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 2:00 p.m., officiated by Rev. Lynette Callfas. The interment took place in the Glenavon Cemetery, Glenavon, Saskatchewan.