In his heyday he had some fast fists, and he was back through the valley this fall.
Dick “Brad” Bradshaw is now 90 years old, but that doesn’t stop him from getting around with his bride in their RV. He pulled up to the Rosedale campground to visit new and old friends.
Boxing was a pretty big sport in the early half of the 1900's in Alberta. Mrs. Toshach tells the tale of some of the greats who fought in Drumheller in the Hills of Home. Not only did Drumheller play host to some impressive fights, but also Drumheller fighters made their name around the county side.
Such was the case with Bradshaw.
Bradshaw was an East Coulee boy and his dad was a miner. His father eventually became the pit boss at the Rosedale Mine. When he was in grade school in East Coulee he became interested in the sport. He doesn’t remember the fellow’s name, but a man used to come around at recess with boxing gloves.
“That’s how I started boxing,” he said.
He made his name in the sport a few years later when he entered the Air Force at the cusp of World War 2. He was sent to Eastern Canada to train.
“I had a course there, and they had a fight card. They heard I was a bit of a boxer, but I wasn’t very much of a boxer in those days. But I won that fight,” said Bradshaw.
He returned to Alberta and was posted to Fort Macleod. Word spread that he won the bout in Ontario, and he was put on a card for the featherweight championship of Alberta, and he won.
He said he doesn’t remember much else than fighting while he was stationed in Fort MacLeod. There were fights in Calgary, Claresholm and Nanton. Bradshaw never fought in Drumheller.
Friend of Bradshaw’s Barney Popowich brought The Mail a few clippings from Bradshaw’s fighting days including an account of a victory over an opponent named Reiss. The writer was artful in his description.
“He waited to do way with his opposition and as an added inducement spotted his victim 12 pounds. Believe me, in those lighter classes, that ain’t hay. Bradshaw had caught this sameboy with a few too many dimples on his tummy last December and planked one on his bread basket before the bell stopped ringing for the commencement.”
He was also successful in an inter-force bout among military men.
According to another clipping he had never lost to anyone in his weight class before being stationed overseas. His only loss came at the hands of the RAF lightweight champion. This clipping described another victory after returning home verses the “135 pound Champ of Wales, Bob Ellis.”
Bradshaw was stationed overseas during the war and his training fell by the wayside. But when he returned home, there was still a demand for the show he could put on.
“When my coach heard I was coming home, he met me at the airport when I arrived, and he said he had a fight card on,” he said. “It wasn’t the right thing to do, I had not fought in three years, and hadn’t done anything.”
Going into the fight his coach had designs on taking him back east to fight, but after the fight, Bradshaw recalls his coach wrote him off.
That was close to the end of his career as a boxer and he came back to the valley and met his wife Sigrid Peterson. He began to follow in his father’s footsteps into the mines, and they started a family. A near miss changed all of that.
He was in a room mining, running a duckbill with one partner alone on a Saturday night. The two were able to escape just before the whole room collapsed. This was enough of the mining life for his new bride, who lost her father in a mine accident.
“I said I don’t want this anymore, we have to move,” said Sigrid.
Bradshaw doesn’t have too many mementoes from his fighting days, in fact he chuckles that his sisters were more interested than he was.
“I was a better hockey player,” he laughs.
