Ken Abernathy: Valemount’s hardest working 90-year-old

By Rachel Fraser

Chances are, you’ve heard Ken Abernathy say he works half-days now – only 12 hours. He says he’s semi-retired, though you can find him almost everyday, all day, in his shop servicing vehicles, or on an emergency service call to save a stranded truck.

I found him at the Golden Years Lodge on a Wednesday evening. He shuffled into the common room, a bit bent-backed, a bit slow-moving, contradicting the swiftness with which his fingers would soon move over the keys, through polkas, waltzes and foxtrots. The piano bench is Ken Abernathy’s seat when he shows up, as it has been every Wednesday night since 2002, according to Rich Meyer – unless Christmas falls on a Wednesday.

“When Ken plays a polka, you get your money’s worth,” said Meyer, a Golden Years resident who has also attended the Old Timers band’s Wednesday night dances for as long as they’ve been happening.

He’s been playing piano since he was eight years old. If he’s not at work, he’s playing music, he said.

Ken moved to Valemount from Gainford, Alberta in 1950 at the age of 16, to log with his family at Mount Robson. The Abernathy family opened a sawmill in Mount Robson that Ken ran until 1969. After that, he went back to logging for a time and then he opened his garage in 1976. Ken said he opened the shop because he thought it would be fun. 

In 1969, he married Sharon Watson, who had come out from High Prairie to visit her brothers in Valemount, and they had three children: Kenneth, Cheryl-Ann and Sharonrose. Today, they boast 11 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren, scattered from Edmonton to Nanaimo, to whom he is “Bunpa.”

Born in Calgary in 1935, Ken was an only child. He remembers attending school in the ‘40s in Magnolia, Alberta, near their home in Gainford, until one night in 1947 when the school burnt down. They showed up to school the next day and it was gone, he said. However, his dad had them set up for school within a couple of days at the community hall. His dad was an organizer, and a central figure in having the highway built through to Valemount from the BC border in 1968. In the 60s, he said, “the highway was open, but it wasn’t that good, and people were always in trouble.”

Ken’s father was an American, with roots in the Scottish highlands, who rode a motorcycle from the US to Barrhead, Alberta when he immigrated to Canada at only 15 years old.

He operated two large sawmills north of Barrhead that went under in the depression, but in 1937 or 38, Ken said, “he crawled back and dug out some of his old mill [equipment] and started over” in Gainford.

Once Ken had transitioned from the logging industry to service and repair, he became known for roadside rescue missions. 

“I was around when the roads were really terrible, and I used to have to spend all night out there on the road pulling tourists up the hills.”

Most locals’ memories of Ken revolve around that aspect of his work, and the stories are numerous.

Brad Martin recalls his grandfather Don Cunningham telling him that in 1962 or 1963, he drove a 1948 Minneapolis Moline tractor with 25 horsepower, pulling an estimated 8000 lb trailer from the US to McBride. The tractor’s seals had dried out, and along the journey, oil leaked over the brakes, effectively incapacitating them.

“He started down the Red Pass hill geared down as low as possible,” Martin recalls. “However, with that much weight pushing him, it ran away on him. He ended up putting it into a bank in the ditch to stop it before it was completely out of control. As he put it into the bank, he shut the ignition off and jumped. He caught his pants leg on the throttle lever, consequently he didn’t get completely clear and the tractor ran over one of his legs which he later found out was broken.”

The trailer rolled, scattering the load.

However, according to Martin, “Along came Ken Abernathy with a bigger truck.”

They reloaded the trailer’s contents onto Ken’s truck and tried to drive to McBride despite Ken realizing his truck was not licensed for the purpose. They made it to the top of the Tete Jaune hill before being pulled over.

“When the cop… walked up to Ken’s window,” Martin said, “Don started screaming like he was in dire agony and held his leg.”

Playing up the injury, though he wasn’t in that much pain, Cunningham told the police officer he’d been run over crashing his tractor. Alarmed, the officer offered him a ride to the hospital, taking off with full lights and sirens, allowing Ken to deliver Cunningham’s possessions to McBride and return to Valemount without further interference.

Granddaughter Keisha Patenaude remembers a day he tried to teach her to drive a forklift. Her brother was close by, helping to clear branches from the property.

“Bumpa was so confident that I could handle it, and stepped down to clear the way,” she said. “I was maybe 3 feet from running over my brother, but Bumpa jumped up in time to turn the machine off… or whatever he did to make it stop.”

“To some people he’s a hero,” said daughter Sharonrose. “He’s my hero.”