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Author Topic: Ghost country
Arch Stanton
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posted 25 October 2002 11:58 AM      Profile for Arch Stanton     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I made the four hour drive from Saskatoon to the land of the old homestead last week.

Driving through a countryside that is losing its people. Driving past places that used to be towns.
Coyotes, foxes deer, beaver and owls are making a comeback, filling the vacuum left by those of us who left the land.
"For Sale" is the sign of the times...but there aren't any buyers.

This land should be given back to the bison.


From: Borrioboola-Gha | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 25 October 2002 02:07 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
*heart*

About ten years ago, one of my brothers went back to the Alberta town (I have to stay fuzzy here) where our grandparents climbed off the train from Nova Scotia about 1900, found the house they built and lived in at first (they moved out to a farm over the next ten years), bought it, renovated it, and then rented it out to some local service clubs.

I don't think that that town will die, although it's now off the main highway, and I couldn't tell you offhand what is keeping people in the area. They're not growing, but they seem to be holding on.

It mattered, though, to the life of that town to have many farms in the area, which meant smaller farms than are there now, smaller farms, more families.

I dunno, Arch. I'd like to see the family farms back. Just: I don't have the foggiest how that could be done.

I saw my grandparents' house for the first time last Christmas. On the door frame at the front, the builders found a set of initials carved in in dotted form, and with serifs (very Edwardian), that just happen to be my dad's initials. Dad (born 1907) would have been maybe seven or eight when he drilled them in. The builders preserved them so that they're still readable.

*big grin*


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 25 October 2002 04:00 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
About ten years ago, I took the bus from Regina to Saskatoon for a day to see my grandmother. I suspected, rightly as it turned out, I wouldn't have another chance to see her alive.

About halfway there we pulled off the highway into a little village, maybe for the benefit of the smokers, I can't recall. I strolled into the combined general store/garage office, which was classic. Nothing apparently had changed since the early 60s. Even the Coke machine looked vintage.

The guy behind the counter ran to type -- weathered, amiable old fellow. With his permission, I took his picture, though unfortunately it didn't turn out.

I've often wondered in the last couple of years if that store, and that village, is still there.


From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
swirrlygrrl
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posted 25 October 2002 04:06 PM      Profile for swirrlygrrl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Do you happen to remember the name of the village?
From: the bushes outside your house | Registered: Feb 2002  |  IP: Logged
Timebandit
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posted 25 October 2002 06:26 PM      Profile for Timebandit     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If you can remember the name of the town, 'lance, chances are I can tell you if it's still there, and maybe even remember the store. I've gone between Regina and S'toon many, many times.

I once rented the main floor of a house, here in the neighborhood, which is where my dad grew up. I saw it, felt instantly a connection, rented it on the spot. Old houses appeal to me.

Anyway, I went to have tea with my grandfather, and was telling him about my new place, and he asked where it was. When I told him it was on Rae Street, he asked for the address. It was the first house he'd ever bought -- a huge deal to a working-class fellow like him. They'd sold it and moved to a newer house when my father was about 10, but they'd lived there for several years.

I lived there for quite a while before I bought my own place.


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'lance
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posted 25 October 2002 06:56 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry, not much chance of recovering the name of the place by now, even if I ever caught it in the first place. 'Twas in the bleak mid-winter, and all, and I was on a bus, and on something of an unhappy errand. Until I got off to stretch my legs, I was likely wrapped up in my own thoughts.
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Arch Stanton
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posted 25 October 2002 07:01 PM      Profile for Arch Stanton     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Isn't Davidson halfway between Saskatoon and Regina?
From: Borrioboola-Gha | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 25 October 2002 07:06 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
All I remember for certain is that it was, indeed, about halfway, and it was to the west of the main highway. We turned off to the left, and bumped along for a short way, perhaps a mile or two.
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Flowbee
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posted 25 October 2002 07:17 PM      Profile for Flowbee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yup, Davidson is the town the bus used to stop in b/n S'toon and Regina. Haven't been there in 2 years but the store et al. were still there last time I went through.

I used to love that store. Its one of those touchstones for me that manages to find its way back into my life.

It was where I got my first pair of sunglasses on my way from Moose Jaw to my Grandma's, and its where I puked on a U of S Rider trip, and its where I used to stop to buy beef jerkey when visiting the SO while she was in Regina on a contract.

good store, though I was always a little disconcerted by the prominence of their porn mags.


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swirrlygrrl
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posted 25 October 2002 07:49 PM      Profile for swirrlygrrl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Considering the size of Davidson, I doubt that could be the place referred to. The description brought to mind more of a Laura or possibly Tessier (I know, totally wrong area) - where there's one store, a few houses, and a lot of prairie.
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'lance
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posted 25 October 2002 08:45 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No porn mags in this "store," which, as I say, was more like the parts department of a tiny garage. What mostly struck me, apart from the ancient drink machine and even more ancient proprietor, was a preponderance of fan belts and other such things hanging around.
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Timebandit
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posted 25 October 2002 10:08 PM      Profile for Timebandit     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Davidson's about half way (although Craik is more so). The blond guy's grandparents on both sides homesteaded there, he still has lots of cousins farming in the Davidson area. That's where our semi-abandoned farmyard is.

We usually go to the co-op, I'm not familiar with a small store/garage... If there was one where the bus stopped, it's been upgraded to a just-off-the-highway restaurant, convenience store and garage. Although the one restaurant's mainstay is still hot beef sandwiches on white bread. (the other has become a very good restaurant)

In fact, the blond guy was just there on Monday, to break down the water system at the farm. Freezing up pretty good now.

Anyway, I'll ask him what he remembers about small stores. Davidson is actually bigger than the surrounding towns, it has a ginormous concrete grain elevator (even uglier than the old ones, if that's possible) it has a rink, bank, a few stores, grocery store, etc... A lot of little towns have no services at all anymore. I was in Bienfait a few weeks ago, there's nothing but a legion hall and some houses left now.


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swirrlygrrl
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posted 25 October 2002 10:54 PM      Profile for swirrlygrrl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ah, Craik, "the best town by a dam site". My mom grew up there, and I have grandparents and many aunts/uncles/cousins who still reside in and around it. Many a happy summer/winter holiday were passed there. Sure your SO and family know mine Zoot.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: swirrlygrrl ]


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Arch Stanton
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posted 26 October 2002 12:53 AM      Profile for Arch Stanton     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hmmm, I know somebody from Craik...

Is the Davidson Hotel still standing? Our midget hockey team stayed there one night after whupping Kenaston in the Provincials.

Some of the fellows had a bit much to drink afterwards and trashed the place a little.

I think that the structural damage inflicted that night may have contributed to the hotel losing its roof a few years later.


From: Borrioboola-Gha | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 26 October 2002 09:44 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A bunch of the boys were whoopin' it up
In the Davidson Hotel ...

Ah -- Davidson -- that brings back memories ...


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Timebandit
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posted 26 October 2002 12:48 PM      Profile for Timebandit     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That's possible, swirrlygrrl. They'd know his cousins for sure... Arch, having stayed in Davidson with his hockey team I am assuming he played a game there, may have met some of them, too, they're all avid hockey players (except the blond guy himself -- if there isn't a motorcycle involved, he's not into it).

My father and I used to go to Craik -- Rowan's Ravine, actually -- to go fishing. Nice area.


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flotsom
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posted 27 October 2002 05:17 PM      Profile for flotsom   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Back to the original post - In the fairly recent past I've wandered alone, sometimes for a month or more at a time, in the old canyon-country of the British Colombian interior. Here a person walking south will eventually verify that they are indeed standing in the middle of the northernmost arm of the Sonoran desert. I was seeking out the remnants of my own fractured interior there among the broken sheets of rock, the mountains, but in passing here I am always lead slowly and inevitably along toward the remainder of old sluice enterprises, ghost-towns, mineshaft openings, brave homesteads - not in the spirit of some 'Edward Abbeyian' contempt for these prideful ventures - angrily dismantling any trace of our hubris, smoothing the scars of our passage - but in search of a message that might have been left behind for me: a hint for the way forward. A piece of the map.

I have been walking on through these scattered trails, trails that once were well defined.

"This road is yet a hungry road. This road is a famished road..."

The roads themselves remain...long after the last man has passed - and remember, they still breath.

In my travels I've found the personal artifacts - the begging-letters of a lover - belonging to a sorrowful hermit who sought shelter in a cave high up on the canyon wall, hoping to hide away his pain, making his perilous home up there. Who was she, and did she finally rebuke his marital advances, or did she pass away on a cold feverish wind-bothered night long ago forgotten? The woman this man had loved, her name was Sarah. The yellow cracked and moulded print betrays a plain face, an irritable woman full of certainty...on the back there's an illegible inscription -- I can well imagine that this man followed his unfortunate destiny to the very end. I see him clinging there throughout the decades, a grey tattered man, to the warm mouth of his dark shelter, waiting out how many violent winter storms, while making his camp as if within the very ramparts of his lover's own granite resolve.

Werner Aust probably died alone. Looking out one late November afternoon, perhaps, at the ominous gathering clouds in the Similkameen river valley, maybe he was keeping an eye open for last spring's wolf-cubs due to return from the high mountains just as the cold breath of the first frost settled in invisible pools below.

When I was a boy it was the steel ribbons of the old rail-lines that lead me away toward the old weary battlements established by the men that are always cast adrift from us. They that wander, always obediently away. I read their letters also. But then I ventured away from the security of home, with a scholarly determination as I brought their fires back to life, kicked around among the broken liquor bottles, meal tickets - plastic keys inscribed with the 'Army of Salvation' shield, judicial orders, and any artifacts at all, of their camps beneath the bridges along the line. I was searching for pieces of the same maps that I still search for today. I would clench up and bite my lip until it bled whenever a monstrous freight train roared past, going from hell to ruin and back to hell again, it always seemed. One day I'd found that I had made the very fortress of my own childhood in these such places: I'd become like a character from Lagerkvist, faceless and unseen.

And now, from here, I am brother to these ghosts, living or otherwise. Memory. It guides me, invisibly...and I follow it with loyalty and a sense of obedience.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: flotsom ]


From: the flop | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged
Pat
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posted 27 October 2002 10:32 PM      Profile for Pat   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hey flotsam, have you ever checked out Wallachin- near the Thompson River? Most of the men never returned from WW1. The old flumes are still visible from the TCH.

Have you checked out the area around Lilloet? There are some amazing abandonded old farms around there.


From: lalaland | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
flotsom
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posted 27 October 2002 11:00 PM      Profile for flotsom   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, Pat, not yet.

I've driven through Ashcroft before but my 'interior' travels have been all on foot and so far limited to a sector in the Ashnola/Similkameen valleys.

Headley and Keremeos being the nearest towns.

Someday...


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Pat
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posted 27 October 2002 11:20 PM      Profile for Pat   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I imagine that a month alone in the Interior was quite the experience. Finding the letters in a cave. Did you ever try to find out more about Werner Aust?
From: lalaland | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
flotsom
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posted 27 October 2002 11:54 PM      Profile for flotsom   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, but someone else has uncovered some documents, Pat.

I am not very attached to material things. Few objects warrant my diligent protection, but these letters - a good sized bundle, by the way - are one of the few items that sit locked away in my safe.

I'm planning to do something with them in 2003. A neighbour - a skilled and fairly well-known writer - has expressed a good deal of interest in the letters.

We'll see.

Solitude can be utterly devastating after a while. I learned that everything that I've always wanted to do in the arctic was way beyond my emotional capacity.

For the time being anyhow.


From: the flop | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged
Pat
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posted 28 October 2002 02:25 AM      Profile for Pat   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Any images to go with the letters besides the weathered photo? The letters themselves could make a great little project.

The longest I've ever gone into the wilderness is about 2 weeks-and that was with several friends. We went up the Stein Valley before it was popular. We never saw another person up there the whole time. I'd find it pretty tough to go a month by myself. I've known some people who have spent many weeks by themselves in their remote cabins and they can get a good case of cabin fever-especially around February.


From: lalaland | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
Arch Stanton
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posted 28 October 2002 03:05 AM      Profile for Arch Stanton     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
skdadl's carved initials bring to mind something from my ghost country.

A couple of beams in the barn on the homestead had pencilled writing in (to me) an illegible script. Were they measurements, or notes? My grandfather's brothers and father communicating something to each other in the old-country language that is lost to me.

This land lives in my heart. From my present dwelling, in an asphalt wasteland, I look back on this place and remember where I could feel God's presence. It's now up for sale. I'd like to buy it and farm there, but such an idea today is madness.

Family farms are the enemy of "progress." Cargill, Agrevo, Monsanto and other corporations are defiling the land that was once the dream of immigrants.

My grandparents are the babies of these immigrants. Grandpa can't speak the language of his childhood any more, but Granny, with her poetic name, the letters of which I can't find on my keyboard, but yet exist in Njall's story and that of the Grene Knight, still speaks the ancient language of her parents.

Their dreams of building a new life on this land have been betrayed. By whom? By nameless forces. The best we can come up with are: "Globalization" "The bottom line." "Rationalization."

Each has done its part in wrecking the communities that grew from the hopes of masses of people eager to start life all over again in a new country.

At the start of my last season on the land I bent over to pick a stone from a field. Beside it I found an arrowhead...an artifact from someone who no longer can call that piece of land "home." That fall - my last there, while gathering firewood I had the radio on in my truck. "The Ballad of Crowfoot" was playing.

I wept.


From: Borrioboola-Gha | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 28 October 2002 11:27 AM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
"The Ballad of Crowfoot" was playing.

Ah. I've simply got to see that film again. I first saw it in about Grade 7. The teacher who screened it was, I suspect, one of those 60s radicals who'd decided on a long march through the institutions, in this case the school system, as a means of carrying on the struggle. Anyway I remember this film as one of those things that started me on a somewhat different path, intellectually and politically, to my parents.

My own ghost country is in Ontario, the back country north of Kingston ("where a man can plow his fiels until the furrows resemble the convolutions in his own brain," as E.J. Pratt said, more or less) and the Ottawa Valley. Try as I might I can't shake an emotional attachment to the place.


From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Timebandit
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posted 28 October 2002 11:39 AM      Profile for Timebandit     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Arch, you've made me weep, too...
From: Urban prairie. | Registered: Sep 2001  |  IP: Logged

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