<h2>Bruce Nodwell an Inventor with Drive</h2>	 		 				 			 				<p><img src="images/stories/bruce_nodwell.jpg" border="0" alt="Image" title="Image" hspace="6" width="192" height="262" align="left" /></p><p>Bruce Nodwell had an unusual birth certificate: Province of Saskatchewan, Section 22, Township 36, Range 9, West of the 3rd. Born the son of a homesteader on May 12, 1914, he died in Calgary on January 20, 2006. During the intervening 91 years, Nodwell became the world's foremost inventor of industrial tracked vehicles.</p>  <div align="left"><p>His signature offroad machine, the Nodwell 110, sold more than 1,500 units, primarily to the North American oilpatch. Half a century later, its direct successor remains in production, albeit much improved and flanked by a fleet of other models.</p></div>  <div align="left"><p>Foremost Industries, founded by Nodwell and his son Jack in Calgary, has a market capitalization above $250 million, and operates in Russia, the United States and elsewhere. Yet success definitely did not come easily. "I've worn out three or four companies along the way, and quite a few customers, too," the self-educated pioneer once remarked.</p></div>  <div align="left"><p>His father Howard, raised in North Dakota, homesteaded 25 miles west of Saskatoon (population 500 in 1903) near the village of Asquith at age 16. Then as now, farming was unpredictable. When hail destroyed a grain crop just before harvest, Bruce Nodwell said his parents used the ice to make ice cream and to his recollection made no complaint about seeing a year's work wiped out.</p></div>  <div align="left"><p>His father became a grain buyer, moving frequently from town to town. Formal education, under the circumstances, was erratic. "I never learned a thing in school," Bruce Nodwell stated flatly in a private family memoir. In 1923, the Nodwells migrated from Carmangay in southern Alberta back to Asquith, where Howard bought an interest in a hardware store. Their 1918 Dodge Touring car, towing a buggy converted into a trailer, travelled on prairie trails used earlier by Red River carts. Colored strips painted sporadically on telephone poles marked the route; the only accommodation was a tent.</p>