The small-town bank, the tunnel and 'the abandoned shack next door'
CBC Archives | Posted: January 29, 2019 1:30 PM | Last Updated: January 28, 2022
'We don't often get too much going on, so it would be a major event'
The small round hole in the floor of the Hendon Credit Union looked like it could have been created by a cigarette.
But it was soon discovered that the hole had been cut from below the floor — presumably so somebody could gain entry to the bank and its on-site safe.
And a 10-metre tunnel had also been dug from a nearby building and former post office, which CBC reporter Jon Whitten described as "the abandoned shack next door."
Fortunately for the bank, the tunneller or tunnellers had been unable to drill through the concrete floor below the safe.
Whitten's report on the tunnel was airing on Midday at the end of January in 1987 — though the tunnel had actually been discovered weeks earlier.
Bugs, but no bites
Attempts to identify those responsible for the tunnel's creation had not been successful at that point.
"The RCMP put bugs in the tunnel, but heard nothing but silence," Whitten told viewers.
The story was big news in Hendon, a hamlet located about 200 kilometres east of Saskatoon that was then home to less than three dozen residents.
"We don't often get too much going on, so it would be a major event," said a local resident summing up the situation, while drinking beer at the town's hotel.
According to Whitten's report, the RCMP claimed to have some leads in the case, though investigators weren't sure they would "ever figure out who dug the tunnel in Hendon."