William Robb wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "mike wilson"
Subject: RE: June PUG is up
I'm amazed by Bill Robb's picture. First of all because people lived
settled
(as opposed to nomadic) lives in such a place. I'm pretty sure that in
most
parts of the world steppes and grasslands are mainly inhabited by nomads.
They must have looked out first thing every morning and thought 'Right,
where shall we go today?', and never come up with an answer. Second, that
his family were obviously extremely successful dry land farmers - they
seem
to have produced an awful lot of it!
Seconded. Must have been a scary place in the winter, especially with no
shelter belt. Did they build the cabin,
My understanding is that Grampa's brother came over some years earlier,
prior to WWI and homesteaded in the area, and then our family came over as
soon after WWI as they could manage and lived with the brother's family
until the house was built.
It would have been built by my grandfather, his brother, and other local
farmers.
This was an era of westward expansion by both the Canadian and the American
governments, so land was practically being given away. all a person had to
do was homestead it and be Canadian in order to give Canada leverage if the
Americans decided to move the border north.
Consequently, a lot of imigrants were sold somewhat of a bill of goods
regarding what they were getting, my grandfather being one of them.
About all the Robb's sucessfully farmed was rocks. There is a salt lake
within a few miles of the farmsite that has enough dissolved mineral that a
sodium sulphite extraction mill was built at the town of Bishopric, perhaps
5 miles distant. On a hot breezy day, one can see the salt rising off the
lake and drifting over the nearby farms.
The 1930s in that area was also one of the dryest times on record, with a
drought that lasted pretty much the entire decade.
It was, apparently, a pretty brutal existence, you were either a tough SOB
or you moved to Moose Jaw and sold your daughters into whoring to survive.
I suspect that if they had the money, they would have called the entire
adventure a waste of time and moved back to Auchtermuchty.
My family farmed that area until well after WWII, although two sons were
lost in the war, and two (my father and an uncle) came back from the
European conflict, went to university and took up teaching.
The son that got the war exemption (they wouldn't take every male so as to
ensure that families weren't wiped out completely) went on to become an
engineer and ended up building a few power plants and hydro electric
facilities for the fledgling Crown Corporation called SaskPower and my
grandparents retired off the farm in the early 1950s and moved to a town
nearby, where they resided until the early 1960s when they had to be moved
into care facilities in Regina.
Thanks for showing interest, though I don't know if you were showing this
much.
For me, it's what photography is about. I have received a lot more from
your "1000 words" than from the picture, although it set the scene very
well.
Paul, I intend to get back out there and do some more work there before the
place collapses completely. The hous is sitting on a rock foundation that is
becoming very unstable, and the spine of the roof, while not broken yet, is
definitely on it's way out.
Southern Saskatchewan is dotted with these little abandoned farms and ghost
towns from the steam rail era where a town sprung up every 10 miles or so to
supply the trains.
A friend of mine has started documenting these abandoned or nearly abandoned
town sites, and I am trying to go on a few expeditions with him this year.
Thanks again
You still own it?
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