Fonds PP - Peter P. Dyck fonds

Peter was born December 7, 1911, near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, as the eldest son of Peter R. and Justina Dyck (nee Schmidt). Peter’s family was poor and as such were forced to move around rural Saskatchewan and Alberta frequently as his father looked for seasonal agricultural work. When Peter P. grew up, he began to also travel to find work, the first few years he would travel along with his father and after a few years he would travel on his own but would always return to his family when the work was done.
When Peter was 26 years old, on July of 1937, he, along with some friends, traveled to Winkler to find work during the harvest season. As per usual, once the work was finished, Peter intended to return home to Saskatchewan. Peter and his friends were riding back home in the back of a big truck when they were hit by a car coming off a side road. The truck flipped over, and Peter was thrown from the truck clear from the accident, the fall, breaking his spine. Having been just passing Carman on the road to Elm Creek, the rest of the friends rushed Peter to the Carman hospital, arriving at 11:00 PM on September 24, 1937. Upon taking an x-ray of Peter’s back, the doctor predicted that Peter would die in as little as two and a half hours. The friends sent a telegram to Peter’s family in Barnes Crossing, Saskatchewan, and they set off for Carman as quickly as possible.
Peter remained unconscious for several days before he awoke in severe pain. With the doctor’s diagnosis that Peter may never walk again or even survive much longer, Peter made it through his first winter at the Carman hospital with many visits from his parents and his girlfriend Maria.
With even small movements being excruciatingly painful, Peter was forced to remain confined to his bed, laying only on his stomach. This is how he stayed for the summer of 1938 as well as his second winter. In the spring of 1939, some of the nurses at the Carman Hospital decided to carefully carry his bed outside and they set him on the lawn for his first breath of fresh air in nearly 2 years. After this, the nurses installed wheels to Peter’s bed which allowed them to take him on outdoor excursions into the town of Carman. However, with the belief that cool air would be a detriment to his health, Peter was once again confined to his bed indoors at the Carman Hospital once the weather began to change.
Peter began to be well-known among the people of Carman as the nurses wheeled him around in the summers. He even began building small wooding model houses during the winter to keep himself occupied. These houses he would put up for sale by way of raffles, which turned into a successful business for Peter.
In August of 1943, nearly 6 full years after arriving at the Carman Hospital, two men came to visit Peter from a nearby village. They were a Mr. Friesen and a Mr. Siemens. Neither of the men had met Peter before, but they had heard a lot about him. They discovered that what Peter really wanted was a vehicle of some sort to be able to travel on his own. During that fall and winter, the two men planned and built an automobile for Peter that he could operate while laying on his stomach in his bed. In the summer of 1944, Peter drove his new vehicle nearly every day even though it had no sides or roof.
The problem of having no sides, roof, or even windshield on Peter’s vehicle was resolved when Peter used his money from selling model houses to buy a Jeep in October of 1946. The Jeep would need to be altered to accommodate him and so Peter brought it to a mechanic south of Plum Coulee by the name of H.H. Gerbrandt. The Jeep was remodeled during the winter months and returned to Peter in the spring of 1947. With a fully functioning vehicle that blocked out the elements, Peter was able to further his trips to visit the nearby communities.
As Peter's condition grew better, he would travel to different communities with his vehicles to receive care and would live there for periods of time. He lived in Carman, Winkler, Winnipeg, Steinbach, and Altona for periods of his life while receiving medical care. Peter passed away in Altona on January 6, 1970.