Day 10 - Minnedosa

Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Minnedosa, Manitoba, Canada
Sue Proven runs a successful bed and breakfast outside Minnedosa, in the middle of the Manitoba cereal farms. As I arrived she was saying goodbye to a family group that had been celebrating a member's 90th birthday. When I pulled in on my bike, the group, none of them under 70, gathered for a photo and then serenaded me with a song that described their affection for each other. It was unique. The sun was setting beyond the distant horizon - the prairies flat as the eye can see. Yes, I thought -- this is the old time farming community -- wonder how the current generation comes together. Talk the next morning amongst the guests was about the disappearance of the old farming towns along the road. The one closest to our B&B had already closed down. Houses remain abandoned -- and become art objects for photographers and painters. But the farms themselves are going great guns.

Leaving Saskatoon in the morning, the farming is the same as the day before . The petroleum wells are gone now though. There are still lots of trucks on the road but they carry potash. There are a few huge potash mines in Eastern Alberta run by the Australian BHP-Billiton company. One can see the factories on the horizon as one zooms along. I don't think they affect the local communities at all, except for the trucking traffic, and employment at the mines.

The run down from Saskatoon to Minnedosa is through an area settled fairly densely by Ukranians. I visited the Ukranian museum in Saskatoon -- which gave the immigrant version of the settlement process. I also visited a government museum in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and was provided the sanitized version. The Canadian government advertised for settlers to the prairies all over Europe. They offered a parcel of 160 acres for $ 10, to the family that homesteaded it and developed it. After sending out scouts, Ukranians gradually became convinced that conditions in Canada were better that in Europe, and in 1891 the wave of immigrants began . It continued until 1914, when the Austro Hungarian Empire (which included Ukraine) declared war on Great Britain (which included Canada) . Ukranians established themselves in a broad swathe between Edmonton and Winnipeg. The settlement process was tough. The existing road or the rail never went up to the land to be settled. New arrivals had to break their way through to their plot -- then quickly build something to enable the family to survive the winter. Families kept together, to provide support and install community services like schools and health posts and churches. With the war, in 1916, Ukranians were forbidden to be schooled in their own language. Schools that had been bilingual were forced to only use English. Only in the 1950s was the use of the mother tongue permitted in schools again. Many parks and statues in Saskatoon honor successful Ukranians -- but in a uniquely Canadian manner -- one statue was to a radio announcer who ran his show for over 40 years. The men who died fighting for Britain in the First and Second War are commemorated by a statue of a young soccer player -- one of those who was killed. Every prairie town I visited had a long list of war dead prominently displayed in a park. 
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