In spite of his clean, sharp haircut, spotless home, and meticulous record filing, retired Captain Bob Tannahill has messy handwriting.
Tannahill, 79, invited the News-Optimist to his house in Battleford overlooking the river valley recently. No stranger to publicity, Tannahill had binders of archives laid out on a table in the living room that detail his life.
One page on the table was off-limits. It was a page of scribbled notes.
“I’m the only one who can read it,” Tannahill said.
Tannahill was born and raised in Lumsden and lived “on a farm in the dirty thirties.” His father died of cancer when Tannahill was five years old, and his mother was left to raise four children. The family had to move off the farm they were renting so his mother could find work.
Tannahill said his first job was working in a pool hall shining shoes and waiting tables. When he was nine he got a job working on a farm, stooking oat sheaves he said weighed as much as he did.
The farmer would “get us up before daylight, feed us breakfast, take us out to the field with no lunch in-between, took us in for supper, took us out after supper, and brought us back to go to bed when it was dark. Two bucks a day is what I got,” Tannahill said.
Tannahill graduated from Lumsden High School, then worked a year at the Federal Department of Agriculture, followed by two years in the oil fields before moving to Battleford in 1958.
After operating a service station with his brother Barry for two years, Tannahill then joined the North Battleford City Police. North Battleford had its own police force, which ended in 1969, Tannahill said. He said the force only had constables and that he was about to receive a promotion before the force disbanded and the city adopted the RCMP.
Tannahill said some of the former constables joined the RCMP. Others went to Prince Albert, others joined border patrol, others started their own businesses, and others died.
Tannahill stayed with the RCMP until 1984, after which he spent 10 years as a social service worker with the young offenders incarceration unit in North Battleford. In 1997, he became employed as an enforcement officer and investigator for Saskatchewan Finance.
Cadets was also a major part of Tannahill’s life. In 1968, Tannahill joined 2537 Battleford Legion Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps as a volunteer in charge of their firearms program. He later became a civilian instructor and, after multiple courses, received a Queen’s Commission as second lieutenant in 1975. Tannahill later achieved the rank of lieutenant, then captain in 1980. He remained a captain until he retired when he was 65 (the mandatory retirement age) in 2003.
In the various positions he’s held, particularly cadets, many of Tannahill’s years were spent dissuading youth from crime.
“With my involvement with the cadets, I took so many kids out of drugs and gangs,” Tannahill said. “I’d get calls from mothers saying ‘My kid’s out of hand, he’s now getting involved with drugs and gangs and police. Would you put him in your boot camp?’ I’d say we don’t have a boot camp, but we’ll put them in cadets.”
“And if he doesn’t behave, he gets kicked out. While he’s in cadets, if he gets into the justice system, he’s kicked out.”
Tannahill said the cost to incarcerate is very high. He isn’t sure how many kids over the years he’s helped keep out of the justice system.
The intention of cadets training wasn’t necessarily to turn people into soldiers, but rather to “give them a new strain in life to help them along and just get them on a different path.”
The corps had grown from 12 when Tannahill joined in 1968 to at least 100 in the late 90s, when it won an award for best enrollment in the province.
“Anyway, it was my contribution to society,” Tannahill said.
In the early 2000s, Tannahill spent summers training cadets in Whitehorse, and some responsibilities included training for one of the companies, working in supply, and looking after physical fitness.
The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 9 Battleford takes up a lot of Tannahill’s time now. He encourages everyone to join and the commitment level is what one makes it. Meetings are once a month excluding July and August.
Contributions come from donations and from renting out the hall, located along 22nd Street in Battleford by Home Hardware and the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Legion’s mission statement is “to serve veterans, which includes serving military and RCMP members and their families, to promote remembrance and to serve our communities and our country.”
The Legion takes on a number of initiatives in the Battlefords.
“Any money we bring in goes to different funds and we pay that money out back into the community,” Tannahill said.
Tannahill still participates in what brought him to the cadets in the first place: the firearms program. The year 2018 marks the 50th he’s spent volunteering his time. Tannahill said the program has worked to lower the fatalities resulting from accidental shootings to, on average, less than one per year, compared to the quantity years ago. The program’s area for which it is responsible spans a large area including St. Walburg, Spiritwood and Unity.
A few more of Tannahill’s projects include being one of the founding members of the Battlefords Gun Club, located along Highway 29 to Wilkie, (the outdoor range is sometimes used by the RCMP), the Battlefords Wild Goose project (a refuge area for geese), and the Wildlife Federation.
Some other activities Tannahill still does include hobby farming, rock picking, and shoveling sidewalks. Tannahill is also featured on the Wall of Fame at the Frontier Mall.
While he’ll be 80 this year, Tannahill still stays fit. Three times a week he works out in the gym of his son Terry who also lives in Battleford. Tannahill says the gym “can knock your socks off.”
Tannahill isn’t one to slow down and has maintained his work ethic. He paid mandatory unemployment insurance for 47 years but never drew from it. When Tannahill retired from the provincial government, he left behind about 80 sick leave days.
“I never took a coffee break,” Tannahill said, laughing.
