(And the wonderful family I didn’t really know I had)
Auntie and meThe family farm down in the Pipestone River Valley. This photo hangs in the hall by her door in the senior’s home where Aunt Florence now lives and is well-attended by three generations of descendants. I photographed that image. I’ve been there and it really is beautiful.A view from Butler Hill Farm; yep that’s the same beautiful barn. My cousin divided his parent’s farm with a daughter and her husband. What a feeling it must be to carry on a family business and a tough but fine way of life.Near the farm is the little community of Cromer and its church which is clearly dear to my aunt.“Bringing in the sheaves” Auntie calls the emergency monitor around her neck her “cowbell.”It’s worth reading.
I have decided to post this blog in honour of my dear Aunt Florence with whom I have spent the past too few days visiting. Getting to know her, her sons, her grand children and great grand children has been very uplifting. I’ve learned much and am delighted in meeting family who are outstanding and all are people to be cherished. I hold my head a little higher.
A beautiful example of a stone house in downtown Virden Manitoba.It looked like a piece of England.There was once a brickyard nearby. I am not, of course, showing the humbler clapboard homes on the same tree-lined streets. This one’s for sale, but let me tell you about the winters.What would Virden be without the railway? Just another bit of prairie?Got beaver?The way we wereLast train to WinnipegMy other cousin’s house in Kenton MB. It is over a hundred years old but is solid, and very cosy and homey. I instantly loved it. He bought it for $10,000! It needed a few renovations but… he owns it. Outright!
Sadly it was time to go far too soon. Leaving Virden was not a happy event for me. I drove as far as Yorkton and then turned due North. I decide that while miles out of the way, after all that family business, I’ll probably never be back this way again. I’d better go and try find my mother’s childhood haunts. The scenery changed to scrub bush and swamps. I began to expect moose to leap out in front but I saw none. Finally, a few miles before the town of Hudson Bay farmland reappeared as a mixture of rolling fields and and forest interspersed with plenty of waterways. The area must be a hunter’s delight. It is beautiful to my eye. In the Co-op store I ask an old man if he’s lived here long. He nods, but when I ask if he knows anything about the Eldersley area he says he’s never heard of it. I explain that it is the next town down the road but he’s stumped. Now that’s parochial! Uhuh!
Weyerhauser has an OSB plant there and now on the road, logging trucks compete with all the grain and oil heavies. Roads in swampy land roll and pitch, driving require full concentration. I discover another damned flat tire on the trailer. I change it but cannot find a tire shop and decide to just go find a place to sleep for the night. I was stung on the shoulder yesterday by a tiny wasp. It is still swollen and painful, right up my neck as well, so a good night in the rack is just the ticket. I’ve found a clearing tucked back in the woods out of sight from the road. It has been a very long time since I’ve been in a black spruce forest like this. Short with thick limbs, a whole industry has been built around this forest which sprawls across the entire Canadian Shield.
Best logged in sub-zero temperatures, when the ground is frozen, they have several months of that here each year. It is no country for this old man anymore. But the mosquitoes still like me.
A prairie bush berry. Folks may call them soap berries. They make a lovely bit of colour within thickets of spruce trees.The apex of my odyssey. The land adjacent is where the one-room school once stood. Nothing is forever but this marks where my moom and all ten of her siblings attended. no-one seemed to get beyond grade 4. Most proved to be clever people who went on to lead interesting lives. I asked a lady but she didn’t know a thing. It turns out her house is built on the ruins of the old schoolhouse.
I drive west and finally see a sign for Miners Creek. This is the site of the schoolhouse which the whole immediate family of my mother. My mother and all her brothers and sisters grew up in a homestead shack within walking distance. The nearest townsite is Eldersley. It is almost completely gone. A few miles west is Tisdale where I stopped for a new trailer tire. One geezer, when queried if he lived here long, replied that he was a newcomer. When pressed, he told mine that he’d only arrived in 1939! Another old fellow replied that he vaguely recalled the family name but nothing more. He did know about the old schoolhouse and confirmed that the site was now a farmer’s house and yard. My family mission was accomplished as far as possible. Home calls.
The Eldersley train station is long gone. I think the small elevator was there. I vaguely remember that from my last visit 69 years ago. My mother probably boarded the eastbound train to Toronto from here with a gleam in her eye. Guess I’m the result!That old building sits beside the tracks and may be from my mother’s time so long ago. It looks as if there may have been a baseball field there at one time.Westward!Miners Creek trickles on. Some day it will arrive at some ocean. The name remains a benchmark in my sense of family history.Somewhere in a near radius of where I stood to take this photo is where my grandparents, and all their chidren, tried to carve a homestead farm out of the forest, one tree at a time. They did not know it couldn’t be done but perservered. It took the next generation, and the next, to find a foothold. Life goes on. When it rains, these dusty prairie roads become muddy trails the oldtimers call “gumbo.”Tisdale. A priaire landmark. i don’t how old this water tower is but it marks what were the bright lights of town for the surrounding farmers. I’ve repeatedly heard a lot about going to Tisdale. I vaguely remember the broad main street of the old town. It wasn’t paved back then. While I waited for a new trailer tire, I ate at Tim Hortons, then headed west.
I should mention all the splendid photos I’ve had to drive by. Shoulders on prairie highways are narrow, steep and soft. It was too dangerous to stop and capture spectacular sights when dragging my trailer. Today finds me in a RV park just on the outskirts of Rosetown Saskatchewan. Morning light sifted through a heavy fog and I drifted back to sleep. I awakened to the music of snarling crop dusters taking off from the nearby airfield. I’m staying the whole day as the warm prairie wind rises now and begins to moan. It was a near-incessant sound which, apparently, drove some of the homesteaders insane. Others endured quite nicely.
A girl on a swing. Still looking good at 87. Her life as a prairie girl and farm wife (67 years) deserve a book. Wow! the things she knows! The hardships and triumphs and surrounding family leave me feeling humble and very, very proud. I love you all.
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” ―Frida Kahlo.
I got up early to catch the ferry. With the wait in the terminal it took half a day to get across to mainland Canada. I spent the actual two hour crossing in my own dark, cool, comfy bed in my trailer. I have my own bathroom so there was no need to go to the upper decks for anything. What they don’t know won’t hurt them or me. The drive eastward was hell. With clear blue sky above It was hot and smoggy. The traffic was horrific as I drove through the murk. There is random construction. The roads were clogged both ways. Nearly everyone is a road warrior and recent gruesome fatalities on this highway slowed no-one.
A clever homebuilt expedition vehicle from Nevada. I had to stop. SWB, 4×4, diesel, someone smart fitted a trailer to the flat deck to make this beauty. Don’t laugh, she’s paid for!
So, finally I made it to Hope. Now all fuelled and grocery-ed up I’m parked in the bushes beneath the Hope slide. Odds are, all those car- sized boulders perched thousands of feet above me will stay put for one more night. If not, well it is meant to be and it probably won’t hurt a bit. I am just off the highway but well hidden. The flies are bitey friendly and it’s toasty warm (31C) but once it cools down I’ll go to bed in hope of an early start. My little truck clearly does not like dragging the trailer up long steep grades on a summer afternoon. Even the front fenders were too hot to touch.
Faces in the rocks above at the Hope Slide
My early start shuffles past eight o’clock. Rain spattered sweetly on the roof through the night. Now thunder rumbles and echoes between the towering cliffs above me. The purpose of this frivolous trip is to visit a dear old aunt in Manitoba. I am doing this on the generous means of my dear wife. I have to remind myself that I am to meander, there are no deadlines and I need to restore my soul which has suffered after two dreary years of death, illness, surgery and poverty. Just be, old man, just be and remember, how you once travelled with a backpack and your thumb. Best years ever. As for Jill, getting me the hell out of her face must be a reward on its own.
Forest fire smoke has proven to be a constant all the way across the prairies.
Yesterday’s inferno has passed for the moment. There were spatters of rain through the night and at the break of day it was gloriously chilly. I ( had hoped to drone the Hope Slide but the wind was gusting and there were squalls of rain, neither are good for the drone, especially at the hands of a rookie. I headed east and groaned up one long, steep grade after another. The engine wanted to overheat on each one and I stopped more than once to cool things down. The worst was the zigzag crawl up to Anarchist Summit from Osoyoos. All the day long the temperature was as hot as yesterday and thunder rumbled overhead. Finally, nearing Greenwood the truck began to steer oddly and once in town I discovered a nearly flat rear tire. I changed it myself as thunder-rain spat down. A lady stopped, but not to offer help. Her dog was missing. Gabby the collie had run off. I hope that girl is home safe and healthy.
The grind up from Osoyoos called Anarchist Hill. “Oh Lord, your hill is sooo big, and so is this damned trailer!”
Now in Grand Forks, I am parked in a large feral field beside a fleet of logging trucks. A young boy is riding his tiny motorbike, with training wheels, round and round in a cloud of dust. A friend tries to follow on a small electric John Deere tractor. I’ve been told that I can stay here by the folks at KAL Tire. I wheeled in there with my sick tire just before closing time and wholly expected to be told I’d need a new one. They could have, I wouldn’t have known. It was simply a bad valve stem. They refused to charge me. It follows that I inspected the other three tires and they need the same treatment. I’ll go back in there asking about the problem with being nice to a pain in the ass. Of course the answer is: they come back! I have a friend here whom I’ve known for fifty years. A visit is due. I already like this town and mucho kudos to the tire shop boys.
A smokey moon over Grand forks.
The next night finds me parked in a gravel pit beyond Yahk, which is not at all romantic as it sounds. My poor little truck staggered up the numerous long steep grades. If it were a mule it would be on its knees with tongue over shoulder. It is frustrating when you cannot go over 50kph whenever and wherever you’d like just like all the folks passing you at 140 kph. I just don’t want to cook my motor. There was a car and then a motor-home burned to a crisp along the roadside. I got the warning. Haste makes waste. In days past, even at my trundling speed it might have taken two weeks instead of two hours. From the top of the passes you can see valleys and mountains stretching into apparent infinity. The smoke adds a mystic touch to the scenes. It is still hard to grasp how big our single province is. There are all those others beyond. The grand thing was being able to smell the fragrance of the sub-alpine forest at the summits, those indelible aromas of balsam and spruce and buck brush that waft out into the summer air. There must be an air freshener called ‘Alpine.’ What memories those aromas bring!
You just never know what you’ll find. This delightful fusion of odd bits is in the lovely bakery in Greenwood.This one too! A twang for your coffee.
In the morning it turns out I’ve backed into a spot on the edge of an impromptu fire-fighting depot. A helicopter comes and goes and I remember my heli-days so long ago. One whiff of jet exhaust and the clap of rotors brings so many recollections. That was me? In a single life?
Still a thrill for me. Helicopters have always amazed me and later ones are an incredible blend of technologies.
The day wears on. Leaving Cranbrook, a lovely spotted fawn suddenly appears in front and there’s no chance to stop. There is the expected sickening crunch and I bound out to have a look. The fawn has disappeared and truck in not damaged. It is not my fault but I feel sick for the rest of the day. I wonder what happening to this once great white hunter.
Finally at the Frank Slide, just into Alberta, I stop and get out the drone. This is where an entire half-mountain crumbled and buried the town of Frank. Itis horrific. I’d promised myself to make this my first good drone footage, so first a test scan. Out a hundred metres, up fifty then I press a wrong button. The drone lands instead of returning home. The last image I receive is a bleary view between rocks. I activate the “Find My Drone” and go hobbling down between the treacherous rocks with my cane. I slip and fall, loose my glasses, manage to retrieve them from a narrow crevice. By the time I clamber over to where I think my drone is, my controller has a message that says a rotor was jammed so the drone has shut off its power to prevent overheating. No more homing signal. Then came the return clamber, empty handed and feeling like a very stupid old man.
The Frank Slide. There is an entire little town, and its inhabitants, buried beneath that crumbled mountain.I don’t know the story but it looked to me like part of a building sticking out of the massive lumps of rubble. Can you see my drone?It is a place that leaves one completey humbled.The limestone rocks are house-sized and smaller. Jagged, sharp, loose and dangerous it is no place for an old man with a walking stick.
Fortunately I’ve bought some insurance for just such an event but I do not feel any better. I was not employing my own advice about caution and certainly feel the diminished rookie.
Drive on old man, drive. Eastbound was a spectacular show of wondrous clouds, rainbursts, lightening, brilliant ladders of light between the clouds onto the foothills. They were all juxtaposed over columns of massive whirling windmills. I could not photograph any of it. The rocketing traffic made stopping too dangerous. Tonight I am parked on the side of the road at the former townsite of Whiskey Gap. It was a smuggler’s town in the 1930s. Now there are only cows bellowing from the ridge at the top of the coulee. A few miles back was a signboard noting the location of Aetna. But it’s not on the map either. This will be the norm I think.
In Fort McLeod. There’s a definite flavour of the old west.In the Silver Grill. A Chinese menu with margaritas.We’ve got your back!DRAW! Downtown Fort McLeod on a Sunday evening. “Git his boots.”
And so I progress into the prairies. I will meander along the southern roads and explore the beauty of this vast and windy land. It’s a long way from the sea.
” A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
The mission, which I chose to accept, was to drive to central Alberta and inspect some boats for a potential buyer. I have never before driven through the Crowsnest Pass. It was beautiful and dramatic. The mountains capped with an entire winter’s load of glistening snow towered dramatically. Wildlife bounded all around and driving required open eyes. I emerged to turn north onto highway 22 which leads toward Calgary and all points beyond. I braced myself for the dull prairie drive ahead. I was heading for a town near Red Deer well into the belly of the province. It is a long way and I thought I’d be driving on and on, consumed with white line fever. But I did stop, repeatedly. There are winning photographs everywhere. Eventually you concede that you’ll have to leave most of them behind. This drive must be among the most beautiful in Canada, with the Rockies in the background, peaks peeking up behind the foothills and the rich ranch land in this rolling country. For me, it is the quintessential Canadian cowboy West. Perhaps all those rolling vistas remind me of being out on the open ocean. In any case I was driving in country new to me and I loved it.
Into the mystic brown prairie spring
I finally arrived just before dark at a motel near where the boat was supposed to be and settled in for a night. The long forgotten sounds of a nearby railway kept my weary head awake for a while but those rumblings and hootings are the anthem of the prairies. I drifted off with snatches of ancient cowboy songs about trains drifting through my brain.
A crow’s nestWhich way to the 7-11?
A morning rendezvous lead me up rolling dusty gravel roads to where the boat sat. Water is a far more precious commodity than the copious supplies of oil and gas in this province. I was amazed at how dry everything was for early April. But then, they’re having a drought and I’m a coastal boy. All the dry brown and sepia tones unsettled me but there is a stark beauty everywhere. At the end of a long country road there sat the boat, high and dry, looking incongruous and sad. The young man brokering this amazing find from Lake Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan had it towed to his uncle’s Alberta farm. He had apparently traded it for some Harley Davidson motorcycles and then hauled the old classic the hundreds of miles on a beautiful trailer which had no working brakes and jury rigged tail lights. I commended his temerity and he said that he reckoned folks would be “So amazed at seeing Noah’s ark rolling across the prairies that they’d never notice the trailer.” Uhuh!
The mission: 1999 Trojan 37′ mahogany-hulled former beauty queen. Her lines are still evident but rebuilding her to her former glory would be an expensive career.
The farm itself was a rambling collection of old trucks, farm machinery, a jumble of shipping containers, and a few mobile homes jammed together. The inhabitants I met were a few young men in steel-toe boots and baseball hats who were surrounded by a swirling mob of large pitbulls. Despite those boy’s angst I was easily able to befriend their four-legged pals and soon learned that their “Pig farm” raised giant razorback hogs which were then sold to various groups who liked to release them and then hunt them down. Sport? They are infamously vicious critters, (both the hunters and the hogs.) The boar was easily three hundred pounds and stood staring me down with his tiny pig eyes and clacking his six inch tusks. I asked if I could photograph them and after glances among themselves, the young fellows reluctantly agreed. I was told that they do not go inside the fence with these infamous creatures without a stout stick and someone standing by outside with a rifle. I began to remember the movie ‘Deliverance’ and remembered the part about being asked to squeal. Much to everyone’s relief, including mine, I left. I mused that maybe this could pass for a movie set of a meth lab. The place did not have a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Fat ladies with tiny feet.They called her Cuddles. I wonder if there are any pig whisperers? Razorback hogs are not known to be good house pets.A room with a view. This elevator apparently stores barley.
After a sojourn to Calgary to inspect some more boats that day I found myself in Cochrane, about thirty miles to the West. It had been a very long day. The slogan on the community’s welcome sign says “The West as it is now.” That is very sad. Endless rows of enormous shit-brindle brown houses are jammed together in a way that is reminiscent of old industrial English row housing. Eeech! Each house id large and verey comfortable but Geez Louse! There’s a whole prairie out there. There are many long beautiful hiking trails, moose are often seen in local parks, the mountain views are spectacular, but I repeat, eeech! I remember this place as a quaint little old cow town of less than five thousand folks. Now God knows how many people have swelled its borders and continue to infect it like a virus. A bedroom community for sprawling Calgary, the downtown of Cochrane has been made-over with a faux western theme now that lends a Disneyland effect to what was once a real cow town. Now everything is about impressions. Malls with all the box stores, car dealers, industrial parks and pretentious clone-box suburbs spread like cancer across rich farming country.
Big houses on the prairie. Even the lake is man-made.Yes really!The gas plant says it all. It was farm land not so long ago.This is how I remember CochraneA morning view from a dining room. A great way to sit with a morning coffee. Even this sailor found it incredible.Got it?Calgary in the distance. It is growing beyond anyone’s belief.
It was splendid to visit with some very dear friends who live in one of those boxes. They, at least, have a spectacular view from their corner lot. The light and the clouds change incessantly. That panorama is mesmerizing but they want to move. Folks in their area have an aggressively friendly manner. They peer into windows as they walk by and wave at you inside. They lean over the fence and gormlessly speculate on what my friends are doing in their own yard. Everyone means well I’m sure, but it’s hard to live with after a while especially if you treasure your privacy.
After a wonderful visit it was time to move on. My truck was reloaded, final hugs and promises were made. The starter on my truck decided to expire right there in their driveway. My finances are tight and it was certainly not what was needed but instead of being parked in a distant backwoods mud puddle, or a razorback hog farm, there I was on a dry concrete slab, among friends, in town. Their very gracious help allowed me to make repairs right there in the driveway. By that time late in the day they were stuck with me for another night. You’ve got to wonder how the god’s minds work. I’m not complaining. Thank you so much Ann and Randy.
The next morning I sallied forth with a few days to point my cameras at whatever I liked. And so I have. Eventually that day I parked on a level patch within the void between an intersection between two gravel country roads. These roads are smoother than many paved ones in BC and the locals hurtle along them at amazing speeds. They’d slow right down to ponder the spectacle that I must have presented. “Git the shotgun Doreen, there’s a stranger squattin’ down on the corner of Seemore and Didless! Dang tourist I reckon. Need to run him off afore more turn up. Goldang it anyhow.” I slept in the camper feeling as if I were in a boat, the wind buffeted and moaned all night. In The morning greeted me with a skiff of snow and dramatically changing light. It was wonderful.
A room with a view. Note the windmills in the distance.Morning!A sailor is called in Longview Alberta
I ambled along the back roads in a sort-of homeward direction contentedly taking photos and chasing windmills. This is a notoriously windy area and there are spinning windmills in all directions for many miles. Don Quixote rides on!
The purple towel hung by the front gate whenever her husband was away on another trip. A small store converted to a tiny downtown home.
Throughout the day, several snow squalls blew out of the north. In one place I hiked a kilometer from the truck to video a row of whirling windmills. I returned to the truck as another vicious squall struck and realized that I’d dropped my glasses, somewhere. I hiked back, bent into the wind and worried they’d be covered in the pelleting snow. Exactly as far back as I had first gone, I found them winking at me.
After one final stop in Pincher Creek I drove westward looking for a good place to park for the night. I’m writing this near noon of the next day parked beside the CPR mainline in Crowsnest Pass. It has snowed several inches overnight and more flurries continue. I’m in no hurry.
The tin yurt. a herd of white tail deer watched from from the distance beyond the aspens.
I’ve edited my heap of photos and videos and sit writing while wondering what to do with the remains of the day. Perhaps I should drive back up the hill to the highway before it snows more. Did I mention that it is April eleventh?
I have far too many photos for one blog so the next few will be a series of photo essays. I will be able to fill my evenings posting them while I settle into my new fate at Lake Kookanusa. Happy trails indeed.
The way we wereCLOSE THE GATE!
Instead of my usual ending with a quote here is a link to the time-worn sound of Wilf Carter singing ‘Springtime In The Rockies.’ It’s corny, but Wilf was a father of Canadian country music and his songs are the sound of a life much simpler. I, for one, miss it.
