I remember barrelling through the black prairie night in a passenger coach hauled by a powerful 4-8-4 Northern locomotive on the Goose Lake line, once the shortest CN route between Saskatoon and Calgary. The thundering steam locomotives are gone and the Goose Lake Line has been severed, with the rails disappearing between Hanna and Oyen.
West of Oyen, Alta. Highway 9, was in view of the Goose Lake Line. Along the highway are the remains of three small communities called Scotfield, Stanmore and Richdale. My strongest memory of them was imprinted on a dreary morning in the spring of 2001 when my wife and I set off for a 50th wedding anniversary celebration in Trochu, Alta. Wintry temperatures still lingered and there was a freshening wind from the southwest. Partially obscured by billowing dust, the three small railway towns seemed insubstantial. Ghostly.
I knew these places to be remnants of the depopulation of the Prairie Dry Belt which began after the First World War. I have no links with any of the unfortunate settlers who risked their lives and savings in those unhappy years, but I think of them as my people. I know their story.
The railways, land companies and the federal government began luring settlers into the Prairie Dry Belt before 1914. There was one bountiful crop in 1915. There was so much rain in the next year that crops couldn't be harvested and hay rotted in the fields. Afterward, came years of drought and dust-laden winds. Blowing soil invaded the small settlements along the new railway branches and heaped up over their little cemeteries. Desperate farmers banded together with clubs to destroy jackrabbits that were competing with cattle for the sparse prairie grasses. Stray cattle were sometimes trapped in the cellars of shacks abandoned by homesteaders. Most of the settlers were destitute when they left. The railways, financial institutions, lumber sellers and farm implement companies made money. The settlers were the victims.
The wind was still howling when we left Trochu. We stayed overnight in Hanna. We awoke to another dark and dreary day. I noted two fine spruce trees behind the motel were deathly brown, victims of a dry fall and almost snowless winter.
We started off for home. At the Richdale cemetery, the wind dropped to a sorrowful whimper. On impulse, I pulled off the highway and walked into the cemetery. It was a rough place crowded with stubborn wild grasses and withered prairie plants. There was one tombstone with a legible inscription. A little girl had died in 1921 at the age of three months. I found remnants of three wooden crosses. Then, in a small hollow sheltered by tall grass, I saw the distinctive mauve-white blossom of a prairie crocus. I remembered the bouquets I used to make of them to take home to my mother and grandmother. I picked the small flower and carried it back to the woman I have loved for more years than I shared with the women who ruled me as a child.
Back on the highway, I became aware of my wife humming softly. She was studying the crocus blossom intently. She began to smile. My black mood ebbed away. The crocus, still existing on these carved-up prairie lands, is a treasure from my boyhood, a symbol of hope at the end of every winter. And so it was again.
