LESLIEVILLE, Alta. – A balmy winter afternoon finds Bruce Boguski standing at the grinder in his garage, sharpening hockey skates for his sons, a couple of their friends and himself.
Boguski approaches the job like an artist sculpting steel, feeling the edge of the blade after each stroke to gauge the progress of his work.
The bulging scar on the back of his left hand is a constant reminder of the day 13 years ago when Boguski’s life took a sharp turn.
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He was 39 at the time, a father of two toddlers managing a furnace and chimney cleaning business he and his wife, Nancy, later purchased from her parents, Andy and Tina Scholing.
Throughout his career in the business, Boguski has maintained a small herd of beef cattle and raised forage crops on the farm he eventually took over from his parents, Alex and Esther.
He had been out haying on July 27, 1997, when his baler started giving him some trouble.
“The hay had gone in between the belts on my baler, so I opened the back up and left it running and then I cleaned out the baler and I was going to the front. Some hay had gone off the feeder table, so I just picked it up and gave it a chuck and it grabbed my hand and pulled me in.”
Horrified, Boguski put his other arm around something and pulled back as hard as he could.
“The only thing I could think of was, ‘Dear God, let me hold my kids with both hands again.’ ”
His hand came free, minus the thumb.
The next few hours are a blur for Boguski, who was rushed to hospital in Red Deer, 30 minutes away, where his thumb was reattached to his mangled hand. He was released for two weeks and then returned for a skin graft, which involved stitching his hand into a flap cut in his belly.
Three weeks after the grafting surgery, Boguski’s hand was removed from his side, leaving a new patch of skin that covers the back of his hand.
Even during those three weeks, Boguski continued to work as much as possible. When a bearing went on the work truck, he got on a mechanic’s trolley and slipped underneath to fix it.
“My father-in-law came along and said, ‘Do you need a hand?’ I said, ‘Pull my feet, I’m already done.’ ”
Built like a linebacker, Boguski has since speculated that his size and strength played a big role in his ability to extract himself from the machine. A smaller person may have lost an arm or died.
He is willing to tell anyone who asks about his swollen hand about the time he lost, the fears he faced and the lesson he learned when the machine grabbed him.
“Turn the machine off when you’re going to work around it,” he tells people. Whether they listen or not is up to each individual, he said.
