Rosetown Hospital
In 1974 the Rosetown SK hospital, in conjunction with their local Kinsmen Club, determined they needed a new ambulance service for their community. They intended to either contract to an established ambulance service, or buy a new ambulance and operate it themselves. We gave them a proposal for each. We proposed that if they paid us a monthly subsidy, our Crescent Ambulance Service from Saskatoon would partner with Al's Ambulance Service from Swift Current to operate the Rosetown contract. Our second proposal was to manufacture a new ambulance for them, complete with all equipment and training, so they could operate the service themselves, and this is what they chose.
Larry's Ambulance had been providing service to the town of Rosetown with a station wagon ambulance. Rosetown hospital staff had long been frustrated because during patient transfers to Saskatoon the IV would not flow properly due to the low ceiling in the station wagon. (At the time intravenous solutions were supplied in glass bottles so a pressure infuser could not be used). So now they were determined to have adequate IV height in their new ambulance, but yet didn't want to pay for the extra cost of a raised roof. We improvised by fabricating a metal box on top of the ambulance roof, into which an IV could be suspended from inside the ambulance!
In this photo Ken Sawatsky and I are standing in front of the Rosetown ambulance which is sporting a Kinsmen logo and purple Kinsmen Club paint stripes.
