Things that go Bump on the Farm

You would think a farm kid would have observed the facts of life at a pretty early age, what with  being surrounded by farm animals.  My dad however, took extreme measures to ensure the daughters of the family were in no way subjected to anything he didn't want us to see.  For instance, every season a bull would be hauled by truck and trailer across the farm yard and out to the fenced area behind the barn. I would always see the creature coming and going, but never actually knew what he was doing because  I was ALWAYS shooed away.  I was to be absolutely nowhere in the vicinity of the barn while the bull was there and that was final.  I was told of the dangers of the bull and heard many stories about how viscious the animal could be.  I had a great respect for the bull and still do to this day.  My brothers could go and watch the whole operation, but NEVER me.  I know, you should never say always or never, but those were the facts.  When I asked dad why he brought the bull around, his answer was the same EVERY time, "to keep the cows company".  Then he would smile or laugh and I got so I felt like punching him, just for saying it because I knew there was more to the story.

By the time I was 12 years old, I was in the Hudson Bay Union Hospital for a two week stint because of bronchitis.  My friend and neighbour, Donnie Foster was also in for the very same thing.  Another little bit older friend in the next room was Terry Grant.  He was a town kid who was recovering from some kind of operation.  His dad was the elevator agent and a friend of my dad's.  We were all three enjoying our stay, well, sort of..or as much as you can enjoy being in the hospital. Donnie will remember how he and I would compare how much phlegm we had accumulated in our spitoons on a daily basis.  Gross, but true. 

One afternoon, I slipped through the adjoining bathroom to Terry's room and we started having a game of cards.  We played for quite awhile before the nurses found out and they were not impressed.  They made me promise to never go to his room again.  Apparently, we were in for different reasons and mixing those reasons up weren't good....Now that I'm a nurse myself, I realize it was especially not good for Terry, he had a wound and I had the germs.  When you're bored, card playing sure helped pass the time.   I still love those adjoining bathrooms with the cute little inside locks. About four years later, I became a candy striper at that same hospital and learned even more about those bathrooms and how the whole bedpan idea worked.

My favorite thing about the hospital was that if you rang the bell, somebody would come running.  That was a sweet gig for quite awhile, however, they soon got tired of it when one afternoon all hell broke loose when a lady showed up to have a baby.  I had rung for somebody to get me some more kleenex.  The nurse showed up in a huff, a little later than usual, and I was told in no uncertain terms that they were far too busy for me to be ringing for such insignificant things.  That cured me. 

My favorite treat was this fantastic toast and juice every night as an evening snack.  I almost never got juice on the farm, mostly fresh fruit, so it was such a treat and good for a cough. Visiting hours were over by 8:00 p.m., and one Sunday night, some of us got to sit in the TV room and watch Bonanza which was over at 9:00 p.m.  I think one of the nursing staff,  Agnes Lewellin probably felt sorry for us and let us stay up.  She was from the Etomami area, the same as Donnie and I. 

There was a married lady who was also a patient and watching Bonanza too.  I thought I might as well ask her the same question I always asked dad.   Why do we need to get the bull?  It seemed to have stuck in my brain like a broken record. Neither Donnie,  Terry nor the nurses seemed to know the answer...,either that or they were avoiding me. She looked at me confused for a minute and then smiled.  She asked what my parents had told me.  I said it out loud...."to keep the cows company".  She laughed and I blushed.  Imagine being 12 years old and still being left in the dark about this most important thing!   This lady did not in any way make me feel bad though.  She treated me like I was the most important person in the world and that what she was about to tell me was equally important.  She explained that the bull is brought to a farmyard to service the cows so they get pregnant and have little baby calves.  I smiled and thanked her.  I never felt more grown up in my whole life.  The next chance I had to have a conversation with my dad, I told him what I had learned from this woman and he burst out laughing.  Big joke dad!  I punched him.  I can still remember him laughing and teasing me by saying, "bad, old dad.....bad, old dad."   He was such a teaser. 

By the time I was 16, I had asked to witness the birth of one of the newborn calves.  No way.  I always got shooed away.  I was getting frustrated.  Never allowed to see when the bull comes to visit.  Never allowed to watch a calf being born.  One day, one of my brothers let it slip that one of the pigs was about to give birth to piglets that very day.  The sow was in a separate pen out in the old, low-roofed pig house.  It was made of logs, that's how old the building was.  It was broad daylight.  Dad was out in the field on the tractor.  I seized the moment and went and asked mom if she thought it was a good idea for me to go watch the piglets being born and she said, "why not?"  She obviously could have cared less.  So out I went and watched that sow's every muscle twitch.

I stood there by the hour, knowing that pig houses have rats in them.  I kept watch for anything that might move, but really there wasn't much.   Finally, as the day wore on, the air became oppressive, I was past feeling sick from the smell of the pig barn and now smelled like it myself.  I itched.  The flies were driving me crazy and I was ready to leave.  Suddenly, the sow started to give birth.  Out so utterly slowly came the first part of the first pig.  It looked so white and waxen, I couldn't believe it.  When it plopped out onto the floor, it just lay there stiff and still.  Out plopped another and another and another until there were six waxen, white piglets all laying on the straw of the wooden floor.  They didn't move.  They didn't make a sound.  I waited for many minutes, but lo and behold they were ALL born dead.  I was horrified.  I know that sows will sometimes eat their young, especially if there's something wrong.  The sow started to move around and make some noises like pigs do.  I imagined her starting to chow down on her offspring and ran out of there like I was being chased by a banshee!  There was no way in the world I wanted to see that.  I ran to mom and told her...she was incredulous as was everyone else..  To this day, I don't know what happened to those piglets.

That experience cured me from wanting to see a real live birth for quite some time.  I am happy to say that once I left home and before mom and dad sold the farm, dad let me watch one of the cows give birth to a calf.  It was only because my brothers were there to egg him on, I'm sure.  Even they felt sorry for me because I was about 18 by now.

By the time the cow's labor had progressed, I felt so much sorrier for the cow than I did for myself at not having seen a birth.  Rightly so, as I was to find out myself in a few years.  Don't let anybody tell you that animals don't experience pain, because you could see it written all over that poor cow's face and body.   Her huge brown eyes were glazed over and she was dripping in sweat.  Her body would heave and be wracked with painful contractions and she made a sad noise with each.  I prayed it would be over soon and sure enough, the first thing that poked out was one solitary light colored hoof.That's what sticks in my mind.  The body made it's way out bit by bit and then all of sudden in one last whooshing gush, the whole calf was born.  He fell to the floor and then kept trying to get up little by little, until finally, he stood up all by himself, really wobbly-like.  He wasn't even taught how, he just knew what to do instinctively.  I was amazed.  He wobbled his way over to his mother and knew enough to start suckling.  Unbelievable.  He head bunted her a couple times and she started licking him to clean him up.What a champ!  What a team!  Later, when the cow turned around and started eating her own afterbirth, I knew that was enough for me.  The dog by this time was hanging around seeing what morsels she could get and I decided to leave.

Incidentally, even after all these decades, I still have never witnessed a bull at work in the cow paddock.  I guess I lost track of that somewhere along the line.

The mid-life crisis and finding yourself single after it: a woman's perspective.

 I would not profess to know any more about this subject than the next person, but if you're interested, here is what I've found. So what and when is a mid-life crisis?  Well for me, it was right around the time when I turned 30 during the mid 1980's.  I looked around one day and asked myself, "Is this all there is?"  The realization crept up on me that here I was in exactly the place I was supposed to be, but nothing looked like I thought it would ...The glimmer of mystery and intrigue that I thought the future would hold was growing dimmer every day.  All the eager anticipation and daydreaming of things to come which I had always taken for granted were no longer on sturdy ground.   Like how I was going to change the world. How I was never going to put up with what women had put up with long before my time. All the things I thought the world held for me from opportunity to wealth and importance ..were now NOT as firmly embedded in my psyche as they once were ..I was actually questioning their existence and by extension, my expectations of them in the first place.

I realize now that the mid-life crisis is something of a rite of passage into maturity.  I doubt there are many people who don't go through it.  I could be wrong, but it makes me feel better to say that.  I think during mid-life crisis, we mourn the loss of our youth and what was, as we look towards an uncertain horizon of what will be.  A whole new era of life will soon unfold and here you will be, standing at the pinnacle between robust youth and something else.  The full and abundant social life I had enjoyed both at highschool and university was followed by an engagement period of whirlwind wedding planning and starting a new career.   The excitement of setting up housekeeping, mastering a new job, and rearing children leaves us breathless.  The span from infancy to school-age is over in the blink of an eye and suddenly they are gone...our life starts to slow down. My baby was already five and my oldest was eight by the time I was 30.   The slowing down, the routine, and the calming of life was enjoyed for awhile, but the roller coater ride I had became accustomed to over the first thirty years started to look for a way to prove itself once again.

It didn't take long to come to terms with my new reality.  Men I have seen in this crisis may not show any other  outward signs other than to maybe buy a new sports car, a pair of sunglasses that look like aviator goggles, and a leather bomber jacket.  They may or may not start cruising up and down the streets.  Never accuse one of these men of being in a mid-life crisis because in my experience, they will only deny it.  I can't even speak for the behavior of other women, but I have seen some that start wearing skirts and sweaters a little shorter and tighter.  Their hair may turn an outrageous color.  They probably go for a few counselling sessions and start examining their faces for any signs of fine lines. I knew I had to go back to school.  After all, I do love learning.  Had anyone accused me of being in a mid-life crisis, I would have been highly insulted, so a good rule of thumb is to never comment on that fact to woman or man. 

Altogether, the total number of years I spent taking classes ended up being somewhere in the neighbourhood of 17, (remember, some years I only took one or two classes), so things stretched out.  I finally finished a master's degree when I was 55. I don't want to go into my credentials, but I have a couple other degrees and a few certificates and diplomas.  I could have been a doctor a couple times over, but I didn't want to go to school for seven years..... Those fine lines I talked about earlier?  They are now lines for which I purchase and use what I fondly refer to as 'crack filler'.  Never before have I worked so hard on keeping my face cleansed and moisturized, but there's no stopping it.  If you were a smoker like I was, you can expect to have wrinkles.   Businesses capitalize on this vanity.  Just turn your TV on and hear all the ads for women and anti-wrinkle products.  Do they even help?

Because I've been associated with post secondary educational training for several decades, I keep seeing  older women going back to school. They begin to broaden their horizons at an older age...particularly their financial horizons for whatever reasons.  I have always wondered why girls are in such a big rush to get married, to settle down, and to have babies first?  So many of us compromise our education right out of highschool when that time of our lives would be so much easier to be a student.  Imagine studying without the responsibilities of looking after kids and a family.  Yet some of us wait until after the mid-life crisis to wake up to the fact that one day, we may need to support ourselves in a very real way and move up the corporate ladder.  Those types of decisions I believe are partly animal instinct. We have an innate need to procreate and there's a strong internal push to get us there, even if we don't realize it.  If you know about Erickson's Stages of Growth & Development, you will know that from the late teens to some time in the twenties is the stage of intimay vs. isolation.  It makes perfect sense to me that establishing a family is the choice people make early on if they have insecurities about their abilities to find a desirable mate once they leave the biggest pool of single people they may ever encounter again....school.  Choosing a solitary existence over a family is often not a desired choice.

 I never really thought of it much, but I have classed myself loosely as either the dumper or the dumpee, and I would know these categories, since I've experienced both... and twice each. As a dumpee first, I was about 14 years old. I was crushed after a year of dating to think my life was over.  He had cheated on me with a girl I thought was my friend.  My parents watched me cry for awhile and then one day told me snap out of it because there were plenty of fish in the sea.   I did and there were.  The next relationship went on for two years again in highschool and I'm sad to say that I was the dumper.  He was sweet and shy and handsome, but I went away to work in the summer and didn't see much of him and we just grew apart.   My third relationship would be the second time I was a dumper.  In reality, we both agreed upon the decision.  I was 40, and that was probably another mid-life crisis when I look back on it.  At least, I've discovered that is when alot of people tend to separate.  My fourth relationship was the second time I became a dumpee, at the ripe old age of 56.  

Neither dumper or dumpee feels very good when it happens.  The dumper generally has to live with the guilt of initiating the hurting of the other.  The dumper may have taken a very long time to make the decision.  Firstly, the dumper may be working through trying every other alternative possible to see if there's even a glimmer of a chance that the relationship can be salvaged.  Secondly, the dumper may have had many long, hard soul-searching heart-to-heart talks in the mirror, or sessions with a friend or relative trying to work up the courage to not only make the decision, but to find the strength to act upon it. 

Many would disagree, but from my point of view being in a relationship where there is significant unhappiness in the long run sucks the life blood out of all, and tends to do more harm than good.  You all know that divorce rates have climbed to something like one in four.  That is a sad state of affairs for the children who are always stuck somewhere in the middle.  A household of fighting or not becomes the choice.  Marriages and relationships are hard work, but sometimes there is nothing else to be done.   In past decades, women and men both would endure horrendous situations because of societal rules.  More importantly, women were often undereducated and needed the financial security of their husband.  I still know people younger than me whose fathers refused to pay for their education.  These men felt it would be a waste of money, since the girl would rely on her husband and not need to work outside the home.  The couple may have had a much larger number of children than today. If you took sociology, you will know that rural communities often have large extended families close by.  Couples tend to not divorce in these situations because of the pressures put on them by those around them.  Urban families tend to be more nuclear and somewhat isolated from their extended families, so divorce is more prevalent.  Society started loosening up, probably somewhere around the 1960's, because that truely was a decade of radical thought, sit-ins, hippies, flower children, women who burned their bras and more liberal thinking than ever before.  

Following each break-up, the time period to find a new mate changed according to my age.  At 14 and 17, I was still looking for a life mate and the opportunity to bear children.  Time was of the essence according to my internal clock which I didn't know I had.  The idea of a girl being an old maid was still very much alive and well and that prompted every girl I knew to do whatever she could to find a mate.  At 40, I was in the early stages of change of life, again not knowing it.  I had 20 years of marriage to get over.  It took a full year before I even thought about meeting someone else. This was 1994 and I had one child heading to university and another still in highschool. When I did find someone new it was by word of mouth...someone knew someone. I'm afraid for self preservation reasons, I kept that relationship at a physical distance and it didn't last.  It was over by the time I was 56.  The stage of growth and development is generativity vs self absorption. I had a hand in ensuring the next generation gained a foothold...both my kids received degrees from university. 

Meeting a mate in this decade is a force to be reckoned with, but now internet dating is the way of the world.  This is not for the faint of heart.  It's exciting, it's scary, it's fun. But, it can be dangerous, so please read the safety tips found on the sites.  There are scammers and some dating sites are 98% scammers...you might recognize them because they're English is most often not very good.  But sometimes, you can't recognize them at all. You will exchange phone numbers and meet new local people in a public place for coffee.  You will be enthralled by some and never called.. You will be shocked and turned off by some and then called and called.  You will wait and be patient and hope that some day you too will find just the right person for you.  Your friends will know someone and try to set you up on a blind date.  You might try speed dating, that could be fun.  By the age of 50, there are singles groups forming.  There is hope.  By the time you are 65, it looks like cards and dancing, potlucks and travel could be in your future.   Good luck.

By 65 or 70, we will enter a new stage of growth & development integrity vs despair. Within the next decade I will become a senior citizen.  I will retire from work  although that age is on the brink of being extended.  Statistics say that divorce rates decline in older adults because in order to live on their own, seniors often don't want to or can't live alone. They turn to their mate physically for help with household chores and for safety and security needs.  Having someone else in the house to call for help becomes important.  With emergency panic button technology this too is being overcome.  That means that the person I am looking for today at 57 is someone I want to live long term with...not someone I live apart from that I only see now and then because of a long distance relationship.  We have to be compatible, we have to be patient and have a sense of humour.

I realize today that I need not have worried about what life would hold when I hit the wall at 30 years old.   It's like I can see the view clearly now from 10,000 feet.  I feel as though I can see the big picture of what has gone on before.  I can make some sense of what happened.   I have made a difference in the world and it was for the better.  I have passed my heredity, knowledge, and love along to the next generation.  I have found out and continue to see that life holds wonder and I will always remain in awe of what is yet to come.  There is no predicting or harnessing life or what is coming in the future.  We have to hang on tight, ride it, and take it all in with dignity and grace.  We have to contribute, be thankful and realize the value of having faith, friends, love and caring because we are nothing without our relationships....they are everything.

Berry Picking

Ever go picking berries?  Picking blueberries for example, means you're out in the bush, away from civilization on a warm summer's day and there's nothing quite like the experience. You'll likely be carrying a plastic ice cream pail hung from your waist by a belt or tie.  The hotter the day, the cooler and more enjoyable is the berry patch. You'll be getting the cool shade because the tall trees will block the sunshine overhead. The extra dampness created by the umbrella effect encourages the growth of moss and mushrooms below.  They say moss grows on the north side of the trees, but that is so much hooey as far as I can tell.  You will see other low ground plants such as wild strawberries and low bush cranberries, and flowers such as the Saskatchewan provincial flower which is a rare find.  Some of us have tended to, during our lives as Saskatchewanians, mistakenly, yet fondly referred to this flower as either the Tiger Lily or  the Prairie Lily, yet it is really not called that at all.  In reality our provincial flower is officially called the Western Red Lily according to Office of the Saskatchewan Provincial Secretary web site.  It is a protected flower, so please do not pick it!

Generally you can find blueberries where there is the combination of sandy soil and Jack Pine trees.  Unless you already know where the blueberries are, expect to do some driving around to find just the right conditions and then be ready to do a little walking into the trees. Sometimes a forest fire goes through an area, and many places in that location tend to grow blueberries some time later, like the next summer or so, when things start coming back to life.  For some reason areas near rivers can mean there may be blueberries there too.

If it's a good year for blueberries you are apt to find  multiple thick patches of the short plants with lush,  ripe fruit literally hanging from the delicate branches.  The forest floor will even have a blue tinge to it. You can relax and sit down on a bed of moss in the middle of the forest and milk the berries right off the branches, or you might decide to use a piece of dead fall as your stool.  On one occasion, my usual berry-picking partner, my Mom and I, stopped to pick blueberries while visiting at Hudson Bay.  All we had to pick into were two plastic grocery bags, so when they were full we were done. The berries weren't that plentiful, so it wasn't much of a problem.  Picking berries all dressed up and in high heels is NOT the way to go, but berry pickers will mount all sorts of obstacles to feed their addiction to the art.  We had attended one of the Homecomings and were heading back across country to the cabin at our lake.  The patch we chose was in the vicinity of the regional park, near The Springs, which is located a few miles south of the Bay.

Picking blueberries that are abundant is one of the most joyous feelings, because you're accomplishing something good.  If you love that rush and the spiritual feeling of being one with nature then blueberry picking is for you.  After awhile, a feeling of renewal starts to exist within you that can become quite therapeutic.  Essentially, it is because with every breath you breathe in, you are receiving new energy.  You may not know it, but according to a book called The "Celestine Prophecy", the forest itself is a place where human beings can go to get back, absorb and build new energy stores within our own bodies.  Scientifically, I think it can be explained by the oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles being complementary when it comes to human beings and plants.  Remember what you learned as a kid in school?  Humans breathe in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide.  What is it that plants take in?  Carbon dioxide.  Must have something to do with it.

Think about it, where do we go to renew ourselves on our vacations?  We go to the forest or the lakes or the mountains and rivers...often with our energy at an all time low, or virtually stripped from us, basically because of the heavy demands we face in our daily lives.  Why does our energy get depleted?  Well, certain people, by their very personalities, can suck our energy dry by being aggressive, overly needy, or monopolizing our time by talking us to death.  Fighting high volumes of traffic, being exposed to pollutants, being around hoardes of people in school and at work has to eventually take it's toll.  For the excessive us of computers, watching TV, and being bombarded all day long, we need a prescription for more than just pills. No, I don't know if all this is true, but I am suspicious that it is pretty close.

When the berry picking is good, you may not want to leave the blueberry patch you have found, but dusk will start to roll in and soon an unmistakable chill could run up your spine.  No doubt about it, you will need to get out of the bush before dark.  Sometimes the berries are found close to the road, but often you will have had to walk several hundred yards into the woods to find the better picking.  Previous pickers will often have stripped everything the first few hundred feet in, even worse than the birds, bear and deer.   I think they do this because they are chickens.  I think they're scared of meeting up with wild life or getting lost if they lose site of their vehicle.  With dark approaching and often too fast, that is the very reason why late morning, or early afternoon when the dew dries are the best times to go berry picking from my perspective. Not that I would know, but I'm told that most forest creatures sleep during the day, and move around at night.  There are several nocturnal creatures that you likely wouldn't want to encounter after dark. Bats and owls are two that come to mind, not to mention skunks, badgers and porcupines.

When you enter the bush, you can count on at least one bird, likely a crow or raven, just going snake by making the biggest racket they know how.  Apparently it's their job to warn the other animals that an uninvited guest has arrived in their territory.  If that doesn't make you leave, count on at least one squirrel staring you down from high up in a tree or a safe distance away on some deadfall.  He or she will give you the scolding of your life over and over as long as you stay in his vicinity.  If you hang around long enough though, he might become your new friend as does occur.  Squirrels in general can be a real pain in the butt.  The outhouse at my daughter and son-in-law's cabin is virtually unusable because the neighbourhood squirrel continuously fills the hole level with his winter supply of acorns. 

One summer, Mom and I were picking blueberries on a road somewhere near the Hanson Lake Road.  It was quite late in the afternoon when we got there and it got dark way too fast for us.  The berries were huge and "just hanging" and we did not want to leave.  Luckily, there was some big equipment clearing brush in a field just over a rise, so not too far away and we rationalized the noise was likely keeping creatures away.  Picking blueberries in the dark is almost impossible anyhow unless you have a flashlight.  We wound up driving home in the dark, found our way back to Prince Albert, and didn't hit a deer, even though that's when they like to wake up and start crossing the roads.   Do you know that salting the highways in the winter is one of the main causes of accidents involving deer and moose?  They like to lick the salt.  If you see a salt lick in the forest, you'll know some kind of animal passes through there. 

Another blueberry-picking session was a little more memorable.   Mom and I were picking north of Barrier Lake one late morning, a place that is across the road from a cemetery.  We had driven into the bush along the narrow sandy trail with her car for a fairly long way because the berries were so picked over along the main road.  Again, the picking was good and we were enjoying every minute as we carefreely moved further and further away from the car.  Suddenly, the silence of the forest was broken when we heard a loud crashing coming through the bush towards us.  Not knowing what it was, we both took off running towards the car.  That woman was probably 75 at the time and out-sprinted me by a country mile!  I couldn't even catch her because I couldn't even run, I was laughing so hard at her.  The problem with having given birth to two children is you have to be hanging on to "everything" before you cough, sneeze or laugh.. Let your imagination be your guide.  We never did know what made the noise, but the whole event made for a great fish ...er... berry picking story.

Also, we threw the cardinal rule about being in the bush out the window.  Art Dalgliesh was an old neighbour, farmer, and hunter who lived in Etomami.  Hudson Bay is the Moose Capital of the World, so for years there was nothing but American hunters crawling all over the place during hunting season. White hunting suits with orange caps or all orange outfits were everywhere from walking down the main drag of the town to driving on any given side road.  Art lived alone in a log cabin south of the Ridge Road and north of Merton and Irene Drechsler's and was a hunting guide most of his lifetime.  He actually lived in a different building (possibly a granary) located right adjacent to his original home in later years, because a skunk and a badger got into a fight under his first place.  Eventually by the time he was over 70, he left it all behind and moved into town.   He always gave us good advice about how to act in the bush.  We were afraid of bears, but Art would tell us all sorts of things in defence of bears like don't run, be quiet, they will smell you before they see you and they have to be downwind of you or was it upwind...??.  (Somebody else told me how they kill their prey,.. not Art....they give you the bear hug and while they have their arms wrapped around you, they lift up one of their hind claws and  gut you)....is this true??   Geez, I hope not, but.... 

Anyhow, Art had always maintained that he was far more afraid of a bull moose in rutting season.  After all, my little brother told me that the female moose only goes into heat once a year, so the bull better be ready and by that time, he's kinda cranky.  Art told us the most afraid he ever was in the bush was when he was stalked for way too many hours by a bull moose.  God only knows why the bull decided he didn't like Art.  Apparently though, they rival a grizzly bear when it comes to getting even!  So the cardinal rule in the bush when anywhere near bears is to "not run".  Know why?   Maybe because they're something like a dog and think you want to play....I doubt it.  If you think you can outrun them, forget it...they can do something like 40 or 50 mph....think you'll climb a tree?  Forget that, they can climb trees way better...If it's a grizzly, they'll stand there and shake the trunk of the tree until you fall out of it.  Luckily, the grizzly doesn't frequent these parts that I know of.  Regardless, Mom and I ran off, well at least Mom, with me limping behind trying not to....wet myself.

Another time, Cheryl Washburn and I and our kids took the half-ton truck to pick berries along the Ruby Lake Road north of Hudson Bay.  We both lived out there and this was close for us.  We were the proverbial berry pickers stripping the berries close to the road this time.  Yes, we were the chickens now.  We had really just gotten out of the truck and unloaded all the kids out the back, when wouldn' you know it...a full grown cinnamon-colored bear came roaring out of the bush and crossed the road right in front of the truck!  I nearly had a heart attack and went into instant paralysis and slow motion.  I could barely move, but managed to scream, throw the kids into the back of the truck, yell "sit down and hang on", and get myself into the driver's seat, shut my door and floor it.   I was never so scared in all my life.  Cheryl was laughing her head off, because she was always the gutsy one, but she was rattled too.  Honestly, it was like if everybody had flown out of the back of the truck, I couldn't have stopped to save them.  You never know how strong your fight or flight response is until you have to use it.

Some years, the berries aren't plentiful because of frost for instance, so you may find yourself wandering even further afield just looking for them.  With a frost, the animals are hungry and they may have reached the patch first so nothing is left.  A trip to the dump at the lake one year shows what happens when there aren't any berries.  The bears start hanging around scavenging for food. Presto, the conservation officers show up to rig a bear trap.  A big barrel is laid on its side with a nice, juicy steak to lure them in.   I distinctly recall that whoever got out of the vehicle from our family to throw away the trash got back in and suddenly held a new, and most pungent aroma to their person.  In fact, they were carrying it around with them because it was  stuck to the bottom of her flip flop.  Bear dung....nice.  Again, we had to drive far enough away so as not to be accosted by a bear!!

While berry picking, remember to stay within yelling distance of your partners, because it's easy to get turned around in the bush.   Apparently, when lost in the bush, a person ends up circling and circling, thinking they are travelling in a straight line.  One summer, a little girl about eight wandered away from her home and was lost somewhere in the forested area around our lake.  Search parties and aircraft were brought in and a massive hunt went on for weeks and weeks.  The helicopters flew up and down the lake several times a day looking for her.  Alas, her little body was eventually found somewhere in the forest and it was the saddest day ever.  It seemed the whole world grieved with that family for the tragic loss of their little girl.

Even though the forest can be a devastating place, taking away life, it can also be a life giving entity.  Over the years I have picked blueberries off the highway north of Hudson Bay with my parents and grandparents; at a place west of there called Greenbush with my Mom and aunts Dianne Fox and Margaret Busby; off the Ridge Road at Hudson Bay with my brothers and sisters and parents and aunts and uncles and neighbours - Alex and Beatrice Grant, Emily Foster, north of Melfort in the Pines with my Mom's cousin Beryl, to name a few. 

Happiness is....berry picking - a true Saskatchewan tradition....Need a break from the city?  Want to make a great dessert of plain berries or spice things up with pie, jam, jelly or syrup....the sky is the limit because berries are always there and ripe for the picking summer after summer!

Blueberries are wonderful, but you can also pick saskatoon berries, high bush cranberries, chokecherries, and raspberries to name a few.  Saskatchewan is rife with both wild and tame fruit and many people are thankful and take full advantage of the sheer abundance available to all of us.

What are you good at and what not so good at?

What on earth do you do if you find yourself in a grocery store line-up behind some old guy that absolutely reeks of a mixture of ...I can hardly even describe it..strong roll-your-own cigarettes; old garage smells, like gasoline and diesel (not the nice gasoline smell), moldy, dirty body, and rotten teeth?

I was behind that guy today.  The cashier was backed up as far as he could get to let the old fellow  buy one more pouch of tobacco. Tough to be so desperately attached to your nicotine that you don't   realize when you're past the breaking point for radiating smoke smell already. It's not even smoke smell, because I like that new fresh smell.  It's the weeks-old build-up of a smell that happens when you only have a bath once in awhile, whether you need it or not.  None of you kids from today probably know about people from the past who only bathed once a week at best..that was pretty well everybody...My grandparents never had a bathtub that I knew of, it was all basin baths.  Most people were quite clean, even so.

I was backed up so far, I wasn't even in the line any more.  I'm not sure the lady behind me realized what was going on, because she was so concerned with talking to her little barking dog who was tied up outside the building.  At first, I thought she was talking to me, maybe something about the smell, but then I realized she's one of these people that thinks their dog is a human, and with superhuman hearing.  That little dog had his boots and winter sweater on and he was just fine, the temperature was mild.  He really was cute, but I just don't think he could hear her...He was barking loudly and nervously, because she'd left him tied up out there, but could see her through the glass door.  No, he definitely couldn't hear her, I checked with him as I walked by and he told me how bad she was to have left him there...he's a little spoiled I think.  I tried to soothe him..guess he was part human after all, because  he did calm down for a minute...

The poor cashier had to ask if the old guy wanted a bag and of course the smelly customer leaned over the counter and muttered something, so that the cashier had to lean closer to hear....  I really felt sorry for all of us at that point.  For the guy who obviously couldn't smell himself, for the cashier trying to be polite, and especially for me.  You see if there's one thing I'm stellar at it's sniffing.  I have the most powerful sense of smell of anybody I know.  People comment on it all the time.  I usually smell things before anybody else.  Sometimes that's a good thing, like when I've had three natural gas leaks in my house this Fall. I smelled them all really early and Sask Energy came out within the hour every time. Other times, though like today, I wish my sniffer wasn't quite so brilliant.  Being the first to smell when someone has passed gas in close quarters is embarrassing for both you and me.  You see, I blush very easily and the minute I smell something like that, I start to blush.   You know you did it, but it makes everybody else think I did it, because of my red face.  Sheesh..
 
I got to thinking about what other things I'm really good at and those not so much so.  For instance, the other thing I could think of that I consider myself really good at is typing.  Boy, that grade nine typing class with Miss Auramenko back in Hudson Bay really paid off.  They were manual typewriters and I remember being the person who got to do the typing once for our school newspaper.  I think that was back in 1971 or 1972, but I'd have to check my yearbook.  I have religiously saved those yearbooks and have to say if they ever do away with that practice, it'll be a sad day.  Keep publishing those accounts of your highschool years because, as you will learn as you get older, they are some of the treasures of your youth. 

At Saskatoon Business College, I was taking a legal secretarial course and we were now typing on   the IBM Selectrix model.  With all the practice, I got to typing over 90 words a minute and the rapid calculations class called "Rapid Cal" had me adding up long columns of numbers faster than I ever imagined. I learned Pitman shorthand and could watch the news on TV and write down everything that was said.  Transcription might not have always been perfect...you know, confusing words like "young" with "non" proved to be embarrassing when I got laughed at in the first law office I worked because I wrote "young commissioned office" instead of "non-commissioned officer".  That lawyer ended up marrying my aunt and he still remembers that. 

I made a good friend at business college that I run into every once in awhile, Evelyn Chudyk from Ituna, SK.  Another girl, (not Evelyn), that I had to sit beside, always wanted to race with me when we were doing a timed typing test.  I didn't even know we were racing....but the teacher noticed and  intervened one day and explained what was happening to us.  It was a phenomenon that is often seen when typists sit side by side.   Like horses at the race track I guess.....I couldn't say that I just thought the girl was being a proper b-i-t-c-__....but no, the teacher explained, we were just being competitive.  Oh, okay. Umm hmm.  That girl never was my favorite person and it was obvious after we graduated because I never missed her for a second.

I'm not so hot at driving because I have a hard time navigating curves at a high rate of speed.  I also can't hardly see at night to drive.  I'm no good really at hammering nails, basically hammer my thumbs over and over and wind up with a bent over mess of a nail.  I'm mediocre at playing the piano; not great as an artist and painting pictures, but I do love to play and paint, so guess that's what counts.  I'm good at riding a bike and playing board games.  My kids and their spouses and others play a game that my daughter-in-law often brings to our gatherings..Loaded Questions.   A question is asked and then each person writes their answer down.  One person has to guess who's answer belongs to who.  That gets to be lots of fun.  Everyone's answers tend to be extremely telling of their age.  Thanks Jen!

I'm okay at playing cards, but not any good at remembering which ones were played....nothing like some friends I know.  Take Brian Binkley...man, he's got a mind like a steel trap when it comes to remembering cards played.  Unless you're a card shark, I would not recommend getting into any kind of game where money exchanges hands with Brian.  He looks innocent, but don't be fooled.  Just teasing, Brian is a great guy.  His little brother Jerry tends to be a card himself, and a good pool player from what I knew of him over the years.  These guys are both friends and neighbours from way back and I know they won't mind being mentioned. Cindy and Brian are world travellers and I think Jerry and Bev are pretty much the same way.  My family and theirs have known each other since the 1960's.  Isobelle, their Mom, sewed me a dress one time.  It was turquoise with black lace trim and was the most elegant dress I had ever owned.  That's another grade six story.

I'm pretty good at crotcheting afghans and now after sewing eight housecoats for Christmas gifts, I guess I'm getting better at sewing.  At one time, I took a blue jean sewing class from ..I think her name was Darlene Buhler, in Hudson Bay.  I always figure if you're going to do something once, you might as well really do it, so I made four pairs of blue jeans all at the same time.  A pair for each of us in my little family.  I sewed my little kids' names on their back pockets and in those days they absolutely loved their personalized blue jeans.  Carmen was about two and Warren was about five.  I also sewed a pair for myself and my ex-husband and although I wore  mine lots, he wasn't exactly thrilled with his...they did sort of look home-made, were a darker navy than the cool faded Lees and Levis that were in style, and yeah, maybe his were a little too short.....

I'm reassessing whether I'm good at painting the outside of buildings...I used to think I was because that way if I spilled paint it wouldn't be as bad as indoors.  A few summers ago, I was involved with painting the outside of my Mom's cabin.  There's a deck all the way around and unfortunately, I'm not sure what happened, but I wound up stepping down off the step ladder into the paint tray, and spilling paint everywhere, plus I got to wear it.  So now forever, we have a big stain of light turquoise paint on the brown deck.  I might have to move painting buildings into the mediocre to poor category.

I'm a good eater, but a bad dieter.  Enough said about that and on to the next topic.  I took a golf lesson once to learn how to follow through with the swing from Pete Lukoni in P.A..  I've played golf several times, but usually feel bad if I hold up a group waiting behind me.  I know when I'm out of my depth, so I eventually learned if I belt something into the bush or the water, I need to take an extra point and suck it up and move on. That was a hard lesson to learn after standing there swinging and swinging and basically digging a hole and finally walking away defeated and with a very red face. You're not supposed to dig holes on a golf course.   (Things got better at the BBQ when I won the prize for worst player).  I felt better after that when they laughed with me and not at me, and the beer didn't hurt either.  They were more interested in the dutchman who was eating his steak raw, and of course, so was I. Yuck!

I'm good at walking and appreciating the fresh air and outdoors, so that's one of the things about golf that I like.  So, I know I'm not a great golfer, but bless you my old friend, Pat MacAuley, who tried to convince me one day on the fairway that I was a "natural" because she knocked her ball into the trees and I shot mine straight as an arrow.  You know, I really believed you for about 8 seconds.  Still...maybe with practice, someday, even I can get better.

I got to be a good lead and sweeper in curling, but haven't played now for years.  I learned alot from those games.  I remember one particular bonspiel that I curled with the Washburn sisters-in-law, Cheryl and Colleen, (Colleen was the skip) and us winning everything right up to the final draw on Sunday night at 6:00 p.m.  The place was full of spectators by then.  I prided myself in being able to lovingly throw those smooth, finessed draw rocks that would once in awhile land dead in the house....This bonspiel though, the skips were into nothing else but a hit -- hit game.  I could get the gist of why, but felt useless.  Try to sweep those rocks flying down the house so fast you couldn't possibly stand up and having everybody screaming "sweep" anyhow. I generally slid back and forth on the ice, so carefully, but this game, there was no time to slide, you had to race up and down that ice like a gazelle (sp?), you know one of those animals that moves fast.   I was scared of breaking my neck.

Colleen was a fabulous player as were all the teammates..I was on edge because some guy was sitting at the window scoring us on our curling errors....I never asked what my score was beause I was basically scared to ask.  Anyhow, at one bonspiel, I won a coat tree, and I think that might have been the one. 

One other time, my kids were sitting behind the glass while Mommy curled.  When I went to check on them, they were rhythmically and very loudly hitting their winter boots against the back of the wood bleacher in unison, chiming at the top of their lungs, "Jean Jean Made A Machine"....Anyhow, curling was alot of fun in my days in both Hudson Bay and Prince Albert..  Today, I would be surprized if I could get down into the hack.

We subconsciously know what we do good and what we don't do good, but with practice you really can become better at just about anything.  Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy, so don't close the door on anything you like, there is always hope.

Middle Years

BLAKE BEATTIE SCHOOL - 1963

I was eight years old and we had recently moved to Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan from our birthplace a hundred miles east at Melfort.  Some of the adults I lived around could swear a blue streak and of course, I loved to practice the exact intonation and lilt of every word that I heard from these adult friends, neighbours, aunts, and uncles etc.  We moved to the farm at Etomami  in 1962, grade three, but by grade four were bussed into Hudson Bay, to Blake Beattie school. The bus drivers were a father and son, Cliff and Jack Moen.

 If you can believe it, I think I might have been the only nine-year old blonde child in the class that year, or at least the new kid, and I felt the need to capitalize on that fact and show off, as children sometimes do.  I seemed to know a lot of swear words, almost as many as some of the other kids in the place.  I really enjoyed the power of how it felt to roll the words right off my tongue.  I had a dirtier mouth in those days than most garbage dumps, but boy was I ever proud of myself.  I remember standing by the chain link fence practicing some really questionable vocabulary with some of the other nine-year olds.  We would let off a blue streak of lingo that would curl your hair, then smile and walk back into the school smug, like we owned the place.  Someone had brought up the word fornication, but none of us had a clue what that was about.  I had been filled in by the bigger neighbourhood girls about sex the year before, but never put two and two together.  We were over by the fence using our adult language, so as to not corrupt the littler six and seven year olds I guess.

I didn’t make the connection, but it seemed that I was also fair game for kissing at recess and noon hour.  There were no teachers on the playgrounds back in the 60’s that I can recall.  It was so bad, one other girl and I  would go to the far corner of the playground every day at noon hour only to be mobbed regularly by what seemed like all the boys in the school.  They would actually line up and take turns kissing us.  There would be one line for her and one line for me.  It was amazing how regimented this procedure was and how she and I tried to fight them off, but in the end, how we succumbed.  This seemed to be our duty.  We would both be on the ground with all these boys and their runny noses taking turns to give us either a dry little peck or one big, fat slobbery kiss on the lips…Never on the cheek and nobody even considered trying for two.  It was a wonder we didn’t all die from hoof and mouth.  The oldest boys who were 16 and still in grade four, (with no hope of advancing any further in grades) didn’t ever partake.  When I think of it now, I realize that they probably egged everybody on and then stood back and watched.  Somebody had to create some recreation on the school grounds in those days and I guess they were the self-appointed rec techs.  Playing dodgeball and softball were about the only other things we did.  So, for the rest of the six to nine year old kids, they could really have used some other form of diversion.  You can see then, one of the reasons why teachers had to start taking turns doing noon hour supervision on playgrounds. 

Mrs. Martin was our grade four teacher and she let us play more games inside the classroom than any other grade I was in before or after.  “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar” was a rounding game that was great fun.  Mrs. Martin hinted to the whole class about something I'd never heard of before, having your mouth washed out with soap.  The mere mention of it was enough to  end the swearing extravaganzas because none of us could even fathom it.  Furthermore, we had no idea any adults had been within earshot.  We knew we were being bad.

 

The sixteen year olds were either really nice or mean and bullies.  The girls were much worse than the boys.  I remember being terrorized by one of them when she approached me sitting waiting in the car while my Mom ran into the police station.  (Mom had backed out from the angle parking downtown and gotten into a fender bender)  This girl approached the car and was bullying me through the car window.  After that day, she thought she owned me. I was scared stiff of her and was really happy to graduate to grade five and Stewart Hawke school, because I knew she wouldn’t be going.  That "hold them back rule" they still employed in those days proved to be good for something.  Not like today where everybody keeps getting moved to the next grade because of all the supports available.

STEWART HAWKE SCHOOL 1965-1967

 I started at Stewart Hawke school when I was in Grade 5.  My teacher was Mrs. Saughmyhr from Clemenceau.  The drive in to school every day itself, was enough to do this poor woman in.  Clemenceau is at least an hour south of Hudson Bay.  In those days they were building the road into Hudson Bay and it did nothing but rain.  Anybody trying to get through had to be dragged behind a huge road building machine called a Euclid – at least that’s what was written on the side of it.  I digress.  I expect Mrs. Saughmyhr had a place in Hudson Bay, but she left part way through the year, apparently ill.  No one really told us why, but we got a substitute teacher, Mr. Kondra.  He was a no nonsense type of guy as we were soon to find out.  Those were the days of the cordwood bonspiel.  For some reason there wasn’t enough room in the big school, so smaller cottage schools were placed on the east side of the playground for the two grade five classes.  On the south end of the playground between the buildings, the teachers flooded several curling sheets of ice.  This was where we would practice curling to get ready for the cordwood bonspiel.  The rocks were made of round pieces of cord wood with a nail for a handle.  The spiel itself was great fun and everybody was a winner. 

Right off the bat, Mr. Kondra told us to stay off the ice at noon hour.  We did this religiously for quite some time.  One day however, when it was particularly boring hanging around, there were several kids out enjoying themselves sliding on the ice.  After awhile, some of the kids from our class went out and joined them.  Pretty soon, just about everybody I knew including me, were out sliding on the ice and just about everybody in our grade five class.  Surely, if we were all doing it, it must be OK, right?  Wrong.  Mr. Kondra walked right by us and smiled.  We all thought, hey, he’s changed his mind and it’s okay after all! When the bell rang, he quietly asked whichever ones of us were sliding on the ice to line up at the front of the classroom.  Be darned if he didn’t break out a huge leather strap and strapped each of us twice on each hand, one after the other.  Not one of us cried or made a noise.  One boy, not because he was a smart alec, but because he seemed to have a severe dry eye problem that caused him to blink excessively, kept pulling his hands away, so that was kind of humorous, but you didn’t dare laugh, because we could tell our substitute teacher was in no mood to be tampered with.  

Of course, my older brother found out I got the strap and went marching right to Mom and Dad with his gleeful news.  I was able to worm my way out of another strap at home, because I guess I did some fancy talking and they got played out listening.   After awhile, I found out that Mr. Kondra owned a local motel and then I felt bad that as a substitute he had been relegated to dealing with rotten, fat, ugly kids like us.  Mr. Kondra has passed away, may God rest his soul.

 Some things you can forgive your parents for, but some are rather questionable.  If you can imagine, the next year, grade six, when I was about 11, it was time for me to get fitted for a bra. After all, I was just getting over the year when I gained so much weight in grade five.  For some reason, my hair started turning red that year too, so with my pale skin it was ghastly. My older brother taunted me that if I didn't lose weight, no boy was ever going to look at me.  There were no such thing as lingerie stores then, all we had was MacLeods dry goods that also sold tools and other household items.  Believe it or not, that was the only place to buy a bra in the entire town of Hudson Bay.  The one bra available was the smallest bra there and was at least two sizes too big and had no padding.   So Mom very discreetly bought it while I hung out two aisles away trying to look inconspicuous….Mom had a habit of hollering your name if she couldn’t see you though.  She was used to herding around four kids, so could be at the front of the store and you could be at the back, and she would holler your name to say we were leaving or ask you a question.  There was no pretending you weren’t there.  That’s just how things happened in those days with mothers and kids...the stores weren't that big. 

I remember the clerk helping her was a lady who years later when I was a teenager, asked me why I wasn’t in school one afternoon when I had a spare.  Guess she thought I was playing hookey.  I found out the reason her face was so wrinkled was because she was a smoker, but that did nothing to deter my habit.  Anyhow, the point I am trying to make is that when we got home, I tried it on and both cups crushed in instantly under my sweater and looked unbelievably bad.  I was horrified.  What was worse, was the neighbour lady was there giving her recommendations as well. She and Mom suggested I try a blouse instead, see-through white was the only color I had, but at least it was looser. They both suggested I fill the cups with Kleenex.  Had it only been Mom, I may not have done it, but the neighbor lady (and I can’t think of who…either Ann Maluta, Shirley Hardy, Shirley Anderson, Emily Foster or hmmm...??) insisted that women do that type of thing all the time.  I was hooked and unfortunately duped.

            So the next day, and secretly feeling proud as punch and oh-so-grown up, I wore my new bra with at least three Kleenexes stuffed into each cup and trotted off to school.  My best friend, Penny Densen, cocked her eyebrow and bluntly questioned the wisdom of the Kleenex, but I thought what on earth would she know about bras when she didn’t wear one herself and  I had been assured by my own Mother and the neighbour lady that this was absolutely the way to go.  After all, I would have killed in those days to have boobs that big.  Since there was only one other girl in the entire grade six class who wore a bra, my arrival at class in a bra, raised quite a sensation.  Even Mrs.Watkins, the teacher who was generally exceptionally professional, seemed to notice.  She was the mother of one of my brother's friends to boot. 

The snickers started first thing in the morning and were mainly from girls.  The boys I guess were somewhat dumbstruck, because by grade six, most of them didn’t have a whole lot of interest left in girls…They had little idea of what dumb girls were all about anyhow and were mostly plain nasty.  Those were the days when bra snapping by boys and girls alike was not considered sexual harassment…no one had even heard of that word yet….imagine, this was the year 1965.  At noon hour, Penny and I would eat our lunch, then walk round and round the school until the bell rang. A group of more seasoned girls led by a ring leader, started walking the opposite way round the school, linked arm in arm with each other.  We had no choice but to meet them face to face for the next few hundred rounds.  Each and every time, they chanted off their little song about “Falsies”……I had never heard the word before, but certainly figured out what it meant by  about the second round.   

            Unfortunately, once you start wearing a bra, it’s too late to turn back, because there was a reason you had to start in the first place and it ain’t going away any time soon.  I endured with that one bra for quite a long time, checking every chance I could to see if any small bras were in stock at MacLeod's.  One day, I got lucky and my collection of one was added to with my babysitting money.  Nobody seemed to notice or care at that point.   By then, several other grade six girls had starting wearing bras too and everybody was having a snap happy whale of a time..  

            On the contrary, some things you can forgive yourself for, but others are rather questionable..

The principal of that school was the scariest looking man I’ve ever seen from a kid’s point of view.  His name was Mr. Raczkewicz.  I believe he gave Doug the strap once, but I don’t remember what it was all about.  By Grade 7, I had Mr. Raczkewicz as a home room teacher for part of the year and found out he really wasn’t all that bad after all.  He actually laughed and smiled quite a bit.  I heard through the grapevine from someone who knew him that he was a really likable fellow.  When I was in grade one or two at Thatch Creek country school near Melfort, we had a student teacher named Mr. Palko.  When I got to Stewart Hawke, there he was as their new phys ed teacher.  I was so happy to see him and he seemed happy to see me too.    Years later, his daughter babysat my kids!

That same year, they started to renovate the school and we had to use the gym for a classroom.  We did a lot of singing and art work and phys ed in those days.  One day we were practicing a song, I think it was “Canada” for the 1967 Centennial Year and our upcoming performance.., you know, "one little, two little, three Canadians...we love thee....now we are twenty million"...either that, or we were doing work on the matts like somersaults or vaults or something.  Suddenly, a mouthy little kid came flying up to me yelling that a boy was stealing my stuff.  I flew down off that stage to find the boy bending down at my bag of belongings under my desk.  (I had my contraband cigarettes in there, so there was no way they could be found!) I am embarrassed to say that I hauled off and lambasted him a good one in the ribs with my right foot.  I actually knocked him right over, knocked the wind out of him and made him cry.   In reality, all the poor kid had been doing was picking up garbage like he was told to do by Mr. Palko.   I suddenly realized what a total idiot I had been.  I am not a violent person as a rule.  I could have maimed him for life!  All because of needing to hide my cigarettes. I have regretted my actions from that day forward and always wanted to apologize or make it up to him, but somehow I never got the chance.  

If this kind of life existed in the middle years back in the 1960’s imagine what is going on today?

                                                                                   

Touristy Things

Ever heard of the grotto?  It's a place north east of Duck Lake, Saskatchewan and makes for a great Sunday drive, or a treat for someone on their birthday. There used to be a statue called "Our Lady of Lourdes" a few miles north of the town on the highway.  When you came to the statue you would turn east just a little north of the shrine, and that would put you  on a road that looked to be almost pure sand.  The next left would take you into a yard with a couple of historical buildings and a trail leading to the back of the property to a most fascinating place.  The grotto is a place of prayer built into the side of what looks like a hill.  It is outdoors with some sort of  roof (metal I expect), that protects a chapel of sorts with benches, tables and often still  burning candles below.  Outside and around the chapel area are small confessional buildings, each big enough to house two people at least,  a little bigger than an outhouse.  I understand that every year there are two pilgrimages that occur to the grotto.  Since the whole combination is called the St. Laurent Shrine, I think people all around the area participate.  Amazing!  Imagine hundreds of people walking together with a common goal to put the power of prayer into motion from a glorious place, close to the Heavens...the grotto.   The last time I drove past that neck of the woods, the highway had been upgraded and I could no longer see the statue. I'm sure that will be righted soon enough once the highway is completed. So nowadays, I would have no idea where to turn.

The Town of Duck Lake website, has plenty more information about all the tourism that happens in that area, and below are the excerpts about the grotto and Batoche:

"St. Laurent Shrine
The St. Laurent Shrine is located a few kilometres North of Duck Lake. The Shrine started as an Order of the Oblate Mission in 1874 and was devoted to Our Lady of Lourdes. The St. Laurent Shrine is the destination of the Pilgrimage that is held twice every year. There is also a picnic area and a grotto for those people who wish to visit this spectacular place."

My note - When you leave the grotto, if you turn left (south east) at the sandy road and drive a little ways, you will come to the river.  A ferry will take you across, if it is operating and shortly after you will come to Batoche.  

"Batoche
Batoche National Historical Park - Relates the history of the Metis and the events of the Battle of Batoche of 1885 through an audio-visual presentation, displays of artifacts, and exhibits. Tours are also available of the old church, the rectory, the rifle pits and the cemetery. Batoche is located twenty-nine kilometres northeast of Duck Lake on Highway #312.
Fish Creek Battle Site - Shows the first battle between Gabriel Dumont and General Middleton's forces. Fish Creek is located thirty-two kilometres southeast on Highway #312e." 

I lived in P.A. for 14 years and always heard people talk about  "The Forks".  This natural attraction is east of the city and I believe is where the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers meet.  People go there to fish, but apparently the mercury pollution has made eating the fish a little dicey and really not recommended.  My daughter, Carmen, and I decided to go fishing there one summer day, even amidst all the warnings from others to forget about eating the fish. 

You park at the top of a hill and start your descent down a fairly narrow, forested trail which seems to go forever, but is actually about a 15 minute walk if memory serves me correctly .  (Takes a little longer going back up).  The trail is built into the side of a sloping hill of trees and underbrush, going up on the one side, and straight down, cliff-like on the other side.  We made our way down without incident and spent a few hours fishing...Of course we had no luck, and eventually left empty-handed.  It was just as well, because neither of us really knows how to clean a fish properly anyhow...Believe me, I've tried, but there's not much left when I'm done...sorry fish. 

It was on the way back up to the car that we had all the excitement. First of all, going downhill was easy, but uphill had us puffing and slowed right down.  That was okay, we weren't in a big rush.  As we got to the last third of the trail where it gets quite steep, it took a moment to register, that we were hearing the sound of faint, then louder and louder, pounding hooves coming our way.  We had about a split second to look into each other's widened eyes, only to see and realize it was a full-grown white-tailed deer coming straight at us at a full gallop on the narrow trail.  We scrambled up the side of the trail into the trees and hung on for dear life.  At roughly the same instant, the 'jumper' saw us, and veered off in blind panic, physically crashing all the way down the cliff into every tree he met.  He had experieced instant terror and so had we.   The noise that had lasted only a microcosm of time  went from deafening to total silence..just like nothing had ever happened.  Really, "if a tree falls in the forest, will anybody hear?" 

We stood there holding our breath, waiting and watching....We listened, on guard. lest his partner come rushing down the path next...but nothing happened.  We knew he had to have broken something, nobody and nothing could survive a fall like that.  We were at a loss of what to do.  Should we try to save him?  But how on earth could we?  We had to wait for our pounding hearts to slow, then finally we hesitantly dared to step back onto the trail.  God only knew what happened to that poor majestic deer!  If he didn't break his neck, it would be a miracle. We realized there was no way we could think of navigating down that cliff to look for him.  We felt so helpless, and still full of shock, awe and dismay, reluctantly continued our climb back up the hill.  It was one of the most surreal moments I have experienced with nature.  We left that world with more than we'd bargained for, shaken and stirred! 

When I think back on that day, I realize we should have probably reported it to the local conservation officers, but unfortunately, I am only thinking of this now.  The life of animals in the wild astounds me.  How they manage in weather like we've had this week is hard to imagine.  Minus 59 degrees celsius with the wind chill, and yet they do.

Historically Speaking

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a session given by the Prince Albert Historical Society (fondly referred to as the hysterical society by some).  I was very impressed to learn that there was once a sawmill located in P.A. on the south bank of the Saskatchewan River, somewhere near the currently existing bridge....roughly between 2nd and Central Avenues.  We saw the pictures and close by is a huge, old, black train bridge.  Regularly, the middle section of the train bridge would be swung aside to open the way for steam ships to pass through.  I guess the stacks were too tall otherwise. A common occurence in those days was for a passenger/freight steam ship to travel regularly to Saskatoon and back. Wouldn't that be fabulous today?  Imagine the scenery, the birds, the wild life...and perhaps the fishing along the way..but not sure that was allowed because the fishing lines would be nothing if not tangled.  I would love to find out more about those trips.  Were they served  meals?  Were they entertained?  Did they play cards or listen to someone play an instrument such as harmonica, accordion or fiddle?  Was there room to dance?  I'm quite sure the trip would take all day and the patrons might have been allowed to stay overnight in Saskatoon...maybe at the Bessborough Hotel or with friends or relatives.  Imagine the romance?  If anybody knows more, it would be great to hear about it.  Unfortunately, the trips had to stop eventually  because the water levels dropped too low given the need for more water and water control via damming in southern Saskatchewan. 

Being on the river puts you at one with nature like you can't even imagine.  My brother Lanny took my family and I for a boat ride up the river and under the bridge at Gronlid one summer.  It was nothing less than amazing.  First off, the underside of the bridge was absolutely covered with mudded bird's nests and somebody had hung large, fake owls in their midst to try to keep them away.  It didn't really work from what I could gather.  Next were hoards of pelicans on a little island.  I had never seen such a thing up close, but they were something to see...huge, all white, and with such big bills.  They weren't a bit afraid of us either.  The thing that sticks in my mind was a surprizing experience when we entered a little inlet just to take a look.  In the utterly, sheer quiet, a beaver suddently slapped his tail on the water and scared about a hundred blackbirds into flight.  They flew right at us and made a horrible racket.  We were ALL startled and I for one screamed, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one.. my kids and neice were just little kids and were more likely on the verge of crying. We didn't waste any time getting out of there, because the whole experience was so ethereal, it was almost creepy.

I loved learning about the history of Prince Albert when I lived there.  I believe it was the Horticultural Society that did walking tours in some of the old stately neighbourhoods. They talked of the history of the homes as we walked along streets of the West Hill area.  I was interested to hear about the different kinds of brick.  There's the red kind and there's the kind that looks more salmon-coloured.  Some of the brick was manufactured in P.A., (I think the salmon one), but some (I think the red stuff) was shipped all the way from eastern Canada.  Given that transportation was so much slower and different than it is today, that in itself was amazing to me.  The homes of my maternal great grandparents were places that were empty by the time I can remember.  The Scott home was three stories and red brick, built on their farm north of Melfort, SK.   The Gunderson home was wood.  Since my great grandfather, Christian Gunderson owned a sawmill at Crooked River, SK., he built the house with the wood from the sawmill.  He rode back and forth by horse and that to me is astounding in itself because that trip one way by car today is about 3/4 of an hour.  In this day and age, we have no idea how fast things would appear to those pioneers, if they were to be here to look around. 

One historical old house in P.A. had become a tea house and a friend and I went there for high tea one afternoon. Can't remember now if it was Marlene, Marina, Bonnie or somebody else...This will happen to you too ya know! The room we sat in was all windows and the owner told us how back in the day that horses from the house next door with the barn, would come to that window and put their noses up against it!  They would fog up the window with their snorts and lick the glass.  Guess they wanted some social life too., but the window cleaning became a full-time job.  We were enjoying tea, scones, berries and clotted cream that day, a British tradition that I understand the Queen herself might have engaged in.  At least I imagine she did.  Delicious!  I was always a fan of the Royals since I was a little girl.  Indeed, in my home as a little girl, we used to clean house and tidy up, just in case the Queen were to drop by.  I really believed she might.  After all, I was told that John Diefenbaker would frequent my great grandmother's home for a meal in their day.  Carrie Gunderson was a hotel cook in her younger years and he really did stop there, out on the farm north of Melfort, for a meal during his travels.  In fact, he gave my grandpa, Cliff Gunderson, a ride into P.A. one time in his car, some kind of  Model T or whatever. 

One big old apartment building burned to the ground when I lived in P.A.  People mourned not only the loss of the old building, but the beautiful dance floor that had once existed on the top floor.  It was the first time I had ever heard of a horse hair dance floor.  They put horse hair under the floor to cushion it.  How ingenious!  There aren't very many of them left today, but I heard a rumour that one still exists at the big dance hall out at Watrous.  They still have dances there every Saturday night.  I know somebody who used to play for their dances, (Cheryl).  We were taught in school that all parts of a horse was used when it passed away...in fact, the glue we used in our glue bottles was actually made from horses.  I tried not to think of that when we had to glue something...
When I lived in P.A., there was, and I believe still is, a shop on River Street that held all sorts of aboriginal paraphernelia.  I bought my first pair of beaded moccasins there and really have not wanted any other kind of slippers since.  They are plain, not the fur-lined kind and are cool if you are hot and warm if you are cold.  For anybody who has never tried them, they are the absolute best.  That shop always reminded me of a shop in Hudson Bay when we first moved there in the 1960's called Cree Crafts. It was located at the north end of the main drag, right next to the local newspaper, The Post Review. I think I bought the one and only pair of mukluks I have ever owned from them, but maybe my memory is failing and maybe I actually bought them from D'Aoust's or Prokop's -- both dry good stores.  You're missing out if you've never owned a pair of mukluks. High topped, fur-lined, beautiful beading and everybody was envious!

The court house in P.A. was not far from where I lived and consequently, I would often go by it if I was out for a stroll with my dog, or walking downtown.  I lived in the East Hill in those days and that neighbourhood has truly some spectacular historical old places too.  After reading some the "Ghost Stories of Saskatchewan" books, I came to realize that the court house is likely haunted.  Indeed, I came to learn that yikes - hangings had really occurred there at one time.  Whippings too apparently..yeeh.  Yes, they used to whip the bad guys.  That makes me cringe.  I am told the whip cut the skin on the back, so to be merciful? (well maybe), they applied salt to the wounds to help stop the infection.  Wouldn't that be nothing less than excruciating?  Geez!  Inhumane, but what of the numbers of criminals back then?  Did it deter them enough so they weren't repeat offenders?  Many of today's criminals are addicts and/or suffering from mental illness, so somehow I am skeptical that whipping would really help.  Wouldn't it be interesting to compare the stats from those days with those of today's?
In the early 1970's I was studying at university.  I think it was right around the time that Canada was abolishing capital punishment, but please don't quote me on that.  I just remember this being one of the topics of conversation at university and of course, I had to have these discussions at home with my family.  I remember the talk about whether people should die if they killed someone and I felt horrific empathy for the executioner.  I can remember saying, "how would you like to be the guy who has to perform the execution...electrocute somebody...flick the switch?"   I learned this week that indeed a man from my home town had been the "whipper" ...the one to "man the whip" for a time at the P.A. courthouse.  He donned a black hood to keep his identity hidden and did his much hated deed.  The story goes that he couldn't stand it and eventually left to start a small business of his own where he was able to be a success.   For those of you who hate your job, remember, it could always be worse...and I'm not kidding.

I took a history class at university and it was my very favorite one....for example, did you know that Hitler was a messenger in World War I?  But that's another story.  :-)