Stone head found near D’Arcy, Saskatchewan

This is an ongoing investigation, almost 90 years old… UPDATED November 25 2023.

I can’t remember exactly when I first read about the carved stone head found at D’Arcy, Saskatchewan, but I think it might have been Facebook. Before the pandemic, sometime in the twenty teens…

And the remembered image has haunted me. It would pop up now and then in my imagination: where did that stone come from, and where is it now?

This fall, I began to dig. Why? Great question. I’m so glad you asked. I don’t really know, except: as I said, it haunted me. It would pop up randomly in my mind. I always thought, someday, I’d love to see it.

This summer, I’ve been actively chasing buffalo rubbing stones, which has led to tipi rings and cairns and effigies, then to stone effigies and every kind of archaeology. So now my imagination circles here again. Whenever I heard a story of someone finding an arrowhead or spearpoint or hammer head or something even cooler, like a petroglyph stone, I would think: Remember that cool, weird stone head? I wonder where it came from? And… where is it?

Here’s where the whole thing started, and I’m pretty sure this is what was shared on Facebook, and triggered my imagination.

A Carved Stone from D’Arcy Saskatchewan –
published in American Antiquity, 1940

The three finished faces of the stone, plus the bowl at the top. I’ve never seen the back side of the stone, though it’s said there are clear plans for eyes.

When I was out with the archaeologists at the Hoppe farm in October, I asked if they remembered the stone. One said, yes, I think it’s in the museum in Kindersley.

Kindersley? Well that’s not that far. About an hour and a half drive. My practical brain said, You should check first. So I did. I sent an email: do you have that stone found at D’Arcy? The reply was swift. Yes we do! Call ahead and drop by!

So I did. Friday, November 10th.

And I’m telling you, it’s absolutely fabulous.

The museum can be found on the eastern outskirts of Kindersley, in a building that you’d mistake for an agricultural machinery dealership. But the caretaker is friendly and knowledgeable, and it’s well worth your time to stop.

The stone is not in the main part of the museum, which is a classic rural museum, chock a block with everything from Eaton’s catalogues to sad irons to roller skates.

To the left of the front door is the ‘archaeology room.’ Inside, you’ll find glass display cases filled with treasures.

Treasures in the archaeology room at Kindersley Museum

An arrowhead and spearhead collection, Kindersley Museum.

Hammerhead collection, Kindersley Museum

On the wall right when you walk in the door, pride of place, there is a half-moon case with plexiglass. Bolted to the wall, in farmer-worthy sturdiness, is the case with the D’Arcy stone head.

Front face of the D’Arcy stone head. See the tongue sticking out sideways, and the face carved in relief into the stone. The stone weighs about 18 pounds and is about the size of a real human head.

Found in a gravel pit south of the village of D’Arcy, Saskatchewan in 1934 by farmer Wesley St. John, the stone has has quite the history in Saskatchewan — and I’m just starting to uncover that story.

The stone was about five feet down , on the edge of the gravel pit. The entire region is known for its quality gravel. Even now, in 2023, the area is full of pits and piles. The gravel pit was on the edge of a coulee leading down to Bad Lake, in the Bad Hills region of the province.

North of D’Arcy lies the little village of Herschel, Saskatchewan. At Herschel are ancient petroglyphs, a turtle effigy, a bison jump site, and other even more ancient finds: plesiosaur bones.

The Bad Hills were a meeting place for the Cree and the Blackfoot. The site at Herschel contains both Cree and Blackfoot cultural artifacts, indications that the site served as somewhat neutral ground — a cultural space to which both would congregate.

It’s not beyond the realm of imagination that Herschel, and other places within the Bad Hills such as Cabri Lake south of Kindersley, and Bad Lake south of D’Arcy, were sites where many cultures could met.

Wesley St. John took his find home. It was an unusual find, but perhaps not entirely so. Saskatchewan archaeology spiked during the 1930s with the drought desiccating the land, exposing hundreds of finds across the province.

There were also numerous local civil engineering projects on the go, including roads, culverts, and bridges. Municipalities found that local farmers would offer to work as a way to pay off taxes owing, an arrangement which suited many. Improving roads became more and more important as horse and wagon gave way to cars.

There was not an archaeology department at the university at the time, and the museum at Regina didn’t seem to be involved at that point in the stone’s Saskatchewan adventure. There were few to turn to for expert advice or knowledge.

The local station agent at Eston, one Fred James, took it home to study, but the studies didn’t seem to provide any answers. He had it in his basement alongside the rest of his archaeological collection until Wes St. John took it back home.

Right size face on the D’Arcy stone head, Kindersley Museum. Not the hole where a pipe or something similar may have been inserted in the mouth.

St. John primarily kept the stone head where he would see it every day: it was the doorstop for his back door.

[Addition Nov 25: from Facebook after the story was originally posted and shared:]

Left face of the D’arcy stone head. This face is the least finished. I’ve never seen the back — though it’s said that two more eyes have been roughly started and planned.

A young teacher by the name of Ruth Smith came to teach at McCarthy school. She boarded with Haydee and Wes St. John in January, 1935.

She saw the stone and was, of course, intrigued.

Her beau, Phil Puxley, was studying Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan. One of his professors, Valdimar Vigfusson, was a specialist in petrology (studying the chemistry of stones).

Valdimar Vigfusson was a USask professor who has been almost lost to history. I found no mention of him in any of the published histories of the universities, though he [should] have his name on one of the Great War scrolls in Peter McKinnon building.

Vigfusson was born at Tantallon, Saskatchewan (near Yorkton) in April 1895. He graduated with a chemistry degree from USask in 1917 and joined the war effort, first in the army, then in 1918 switched to the air force.

After the war, he worked for both the Salt and Chemical Society of Saskatchewan, and as a chemical analyst with the Government of Saskatchewan. He defended his Masters in 1925, and achieved his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1930. He joined the Department of Chemistry at USask in 1931. In his short 10 year career, he became a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada, and a member of the Canadian Chemical Society.

But it’s Vigfusson’s side interest in Saskatchewan Indigenous artifacts and archaeology that would raise his profile across Saskatchewan. The chemistry professor would travel the province, seeking out stories and artifacts found in farmer’s fields or held by First Nations. He would also collect dinosaur bones and is rumoured to even have had a dinosaur egg in his large collection.

He shared interest in the past with well-known Saskatchewan historian A.S. Morton. Morton traveled the length and breadth of the province searching for early western Canadiana history and hunting down fur trade fort sites. Vigfusson was a regular partner in these escapades.

When workmen near Bradwell were digging in a gravel pit for road construction material in 1936, they uncovered and disturbed an ancient grave site. They called the police, who called Dr. Vigfusson. That was the power of his reputation — even though archaeology was just his vocation and not his training.

What he brought, though, was a scientist’s precision to the study of the physical past. He believed in systematically documenting finds, and became known for his methods. He enthusiastically worked to create the Saskatoon Archaeological Society, and even had an archaeological dig at Beaver Creek named after him.

When Ruth told Phil Puxley about the strange stone holding back the door in the St. John home, Phil told his chemistry professor, Dr. Vigfusson. The two made a trip in Vigfusson’s car — a rarity in the depths of the Great Depression — out to the D’Arcy area.

Vigfusson was enthralled. Everything about his research work, both petrology and avocational archaeology, was combined in this one stone. Wes St. Denis took them out to the gravel pit to have a good look around in case other artifacts were visible or there were any indications that could be useful. They were disappointed.

Nonetheless, the chemist took detailed notes of the land location, terrain, presence of alkali and drinking water nearby, and noted stones that were clearly used in tipi rings. It was, in his view, clearly a find directly related to the region, and its Indigenous past.

The carved hole in the top of the D’Arcy stone heads. It’s unknown what it was used for, but ideas have included ceremonial paint, or burning offerings (though there is no residue or discolouration). It could also have been used for water for ceremony. The stone is somewhat unfinished, so it may be that it was never used.

Undaunted, the professor knew one thing: he wanted the stone. He wanted to take it back to Saskatoon for his collection, and possibly even to run some tests in his lab. He offered Wes St. John $10 for the stone head, and the farmer thought it was a fair exchange.

So the stone went with Puxley and Vigfusson to Saskatoon.

Vigfusson documented the find and the stone in 2 pages of keen detail for the ‘Facts and Comments’ section of the leading research journal American Antiquity in April, 1940.

It’s not known if Vigfusson did chemical analysis on the stone, except to determine the kind of stone used. The stone is sandstone, striated pink and grey, ‘visible when wet,’ which showed that he wasn’t afraid to handle the artifact and put it through some analysis. It’s not similar to any known glacial drift from the nearby prairies or plains. Clearly, it is thought to have been carried here from somewhere else, and most likely, was carved elsewhere before coming to rest on the hills above Bad Lake.

Page three of Vigfusson’s published notes on the carved stone head.

It’s clear that the stone is carved, and though Vigfusson thought that a flint or quartzite chisel was used, later archaeologists believe that the stone was carved with steel tools. He measured and calculated and reported on the size and shape of the artifact and the carving techniques of grooving and cutting to create relief, then rubbing and polishing.

The carver, he said, showed both ingenuity and artistry, and reminded him of artwork from the Pacific Coast or down into Mexico or Mesoamerica, including potentially Mayan in origin, with some similarities.

To solicit opinions, Vigfusson took beautiful clear photos of the stone which were included in the article as the middle page. “The opinion of archaeologists familiar with the art of these areas would be welcomed.” It is not known if Vigfusson received any learned opinions via letters.

Nonetheless, the stone being found in Saskatchewan was a clear indication of movement and migration, for trade and commerce or to pursue climate and geographical opportunities. At the time, archaeology was pursuing the Bering Land Bridge theory, and Vigfusson wondered if this stone might be a clue.

Left face, close up.

Vigfusson remained close with Phil Puxley and Ruth Smith, even serving as a last-minute stand-in best man at their wedding. He continued his chemistry research with Dr. Thorberger Thorvaldson of the university, investigating the properties of Portland cement, and spent evenings and weekends immersed in history and archaeology.

Then tragedy struck. Coming home from a hockey game in Saskatoon in December 1942, in a car driven by his friend Lyle Johnson of Outlook, the car skidded on the ice of the 25th Street Bridge. They weren’t going fast. It wasn’t even a bad skid. But the car struck a pole on the passenger side and Vigfusson hit his head.

The accident was just forceful enough, and the way the pole hit the car, and the angle, meant that his skull cracked on impact. He died later that evening in hospital.

When a university professor dies today, there are processes in place for the department, college, and university to follow. In 1942, those processes were not well established. Vigfusson was unmarried, with no children. His father and brother still lived in Tantallon, and that’s where he was buried.

But his collection, built over many years through the depths of the 1930s and the start of the Saskatoon Archaeological Society, left his chemistry colleagues scratching their heads. What were they to do with all the stuff?

And the carving… where was it? It was thought to have been on display in a downtown Saskatoon store at the time of Vig’s death.

Mouth on the right face. Hole could have held a pipe.

Displays were a common practice. Stores would often offer their display area for local ‘oddities and interest’. In Rosetown, Valley Centre farmer Albert Kessel did a fall display of all the fruits and vegetables grown on his farm, as exotic as apricots and Manchurian walnuts. Curler and later Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Fedoruk had a huge collection of curling pins, which were put on display for a time in a downtown Saskatoon store.

After Vig’s death, the store returned the D’Arcy stone to the university, and another professor — no one is quite sure whom — kept it, either in their office or took it home. At some point, it was in a private home which was sold. The new owners didn’t like the stone and so threw it away — into a back alley somewhere in Saskatoon.

That’s when a University of Saskatchewan student, possibly taking archaeology classes, found it while out on a walk. They returned it to the university, this time to the archaeology department which was formed in the early 1960s with Zenon Pohorecky as head.

From there, the stone bounced around. It’s thought to have gone to the provincial museum in Regina during the 1960s and 1970s, when a copy of the stone was made. [Note: the above tracking of what happened to the stone is what the letters and reports held in the Kindersley Museum explained. However, read below for new and slightly different information.]

[ADDITION: Thanks to records kept at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, which they kindly scanned and shared with me, we know a bit more about what happened. In 1972, the bowl resurfaced, and a series of letters explain what happened.]

Valdimar Vigfusson’s extensive collection had been catalogued after his death by Joyce Crooks of the Saskatoon Archaeological Society. “During the cataloguing process she and others noted the absence of a particularly interesting stone bowl which Vigfusson had purchased sometime back in the thirties.” They scoured the university, checking everywhere for it, but it was to no avail.

But in 1972, the bowl had been found in a private collection in Moose Jaw. Margaret Hanna of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba would go out scouting through private collections, and saw what she thought would likely be the stone. At about the same time, Gil Watson of the Archaeology Division of the Museum of Natural History in Regina explained: “When I was in Saskatoon for the Rock Art Conference, I spoke with Mrs. Cauldwell and Ernie Hedger.” Apparently, they also knew about the stone bowl and gave Watson the address in Moose Jaw.

The private collection, which included the D’Arcy stone head, belonged to Leonard and Francis Bruvold. The Bruvolds had married in Choiceland in 1928. They left the forest fringe and resided for many years in Saskatoon before relocating to Moose Jaw. Francis Bruvold told Margaret Hanna that a friend had given Leonard the stone head, likely during their time in Saskatoon.

Joyce Crooks heard that the stone head has possibly been located, and quickly sent a letter to James F. V. Miller, head of Archaeology at USask. She suggested to Jim Miller, “possibly you could get a look at it.” She added, “I’m wondering if it’s the real one or the replica Vig’s students made up as a joke. Had you heard about that? Well Dr. Miller, I do hope we have unearthed the real thing at long last.”

Miller immediately wrote to Mr. Gil Watson in Regina. Joyce Crooks had heard that Watson had the bowl in Regina, to make a cast copy. Miller asked Watson to hold onto the bowl, and to contact the Bruvolds, to let them know that the bowl had been possibly stolen or at the very least, misplaced. The underlying suggestion in the tone was that the stone bowl didn’t necessarily belong to them.

Gil Watson wrote back immediately with news. Watson went to visit the Bruvolds and told them as much of its history as he knew. “She then loaned it to me for casting.”

Watson had suggested to Mrs. Bruvold that the university would appreciate the return of the bowl. She was more than willing, but Mr. Bruvold wished to keep it. Watson added to his letter to J.V. Miller, “I think when they bring it to the university you could explain again the scientific value and perhaps he will be more cooperative.”

At the bottom of the letter, he added: “P.S. The bowl is the one in question and is not as far as I can tell a duplicate or a fake.”

Possibly the most interesting note in the files from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum is the hand-written note from Mrs. Bruvold to Gil Watson. “Would you let me know by letter when you have finished copying the Indian lamp. We will call for it ourselves as I have to come to Regina soon.” A note from Gil Watson on the bottom of that letter reads: “Stone face returned in person March 28/72.”

Then, another coincidence. Lester Smith (brother to Ruth Smith, the teacher) ran a photography shop in Saskatoon. He’d also wondered what happened to the stone. One day, a USask archaeology student came in with glass negatives that the department wanted processed. To Les’ surprise, the pictures were Dr. Vigfusson’s originals of the D’Arcy stone. [Note: these photographic glass negatives had been found and prints made by the Archaeology department just prior to 1972. Copies were included in the letter sent to Gil Watson from J.V. Miller.]

The stone itself was returned, not to the archaeology department, but to the home of Dr. Miller, who was head of the department in the 1970s. [Yes. The Bruvolds were clearly persuaded to return the bowl, and it went not to the University but to Dr. Miller.] Lester Smith saw the stone when he was there on a different errand.

By this time, archaeological interest and investigation of the stone had waned. Those who studied the stone decided that it had been made by steel carving tools – though they admitted that does not account for it being still quite old, and why it was found at D’Arcy.

E.A. Johnson of Kindersley thought that the stone had been planed before carving, a rather modern technique, though there have been stonemasons using tremendous techniques for stone building for thousands of years. He also thought that there might have been at least four different steel carving chisels used on the stone, which again, does not preclude the stone being much older than western Canadian farming settlement.

Close up of one of the carved eyes, D’Arcy stone head.

Ian Brace, curator of archaeology in Regina, thought that the stone couldn’t be particularly old, as its edges were not abraded, but rather sharp. It’s not been exposed much to weather, either — but then again, it was found in a gravel pit and has been kept inside and dry for its life in Saskatchewan, with the exception of being thrown into an alley.

Nonetheless, the stone continued to arouse interest and thought. Ruth’s daughter, in the foreign service, saw carvings in a northern city in Siberia that reminded her of the stone head. Likewise, Beatrice Medicine, an anthropologist from South Dakota, is also recorded as suggesting that there could be some Russian influence in the carving. These observations would certainly have been welcomed by Dr. Vigfusson, who was of the opinion that the stone could prove to be a link to the Bering Land Bridge idea — or at least, of travel from far away.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Miller turned the stone head over to the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society, who retains ownership of the odd artifact. It was granted on extended loan to the Kindersley and District Plains Museum — and that’s where you can go see it.

For me, the finding of the stone and ‘what happened after’ is as much to my interest as a historian as the stone itself, though the stone head still looms large in my thoughts and imagination. I’m working with the USask archive to see what we can turn up about Vigfusson. Cheryl Avery has records that indicate that the entire collection may have been subsumed into the University’s museum collection, but that’s the next avenue of investigation. I’ll also be reaching out to the provincial museum, and to the USask Archaeology department, to see what their files might reveal. [See above for the additions from the files of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. The Archaeology Department had nothing more to add, but I’m hoping for more news from the Saskatoon Archaeological Society.]

As Ruth Puxley said, I don’t believe it’s a fake. Wes St. John, despite being a prankster, never gave any indication that this find was anything but a uniquely interesting artifact found in a gravel pit on a hillside south of D’Arcy, near the west shore of Bad Lake. And if it was a prank then, who was the prank for?

The mystery of the D’Arcy stone head remains.

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Sylvia and The Queen

Sylvia Fedoruk spent her life moving toward royalty.

In fact, she came far closer, far more often, to the British Royal Family than many other Saskatchewan citizens. And in this time of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, it’s fitting to recount the many times that Sylvia Fedoruk connected with royalty.

It started, as many stories do, with her parents. Sylvia’s mother, Annie Romaniuk Fedoruk, was an ardent royalist. She cut images from newspapers and magazines, built a scrapbook, lovingly followed the royal family, and when Elizabeth II came to the throne and gave her Christmas broadcast, Annie Fedoruk was in the living room, radio or television on, family hushed to hear the Queen’s speech. That reverence was part of the fabric of the household where Sylvia was raised.

The first royal encounter came when Sylvia was twelve. It was 1939, and the new king, George VI and his wife Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) were on a royal tour of Canada. Western Canada, especially the towns near the stations where the royal train was due to stop, were on fire with royal fever. Sylvia’s parents, Annie and Ted Fedoruk, arranged for a farm truck and scooped up the local schoolchildren — Ted was Sylvia’s one-room schoolteacher — and took them on a trip to the nearby town of Melville, where the King and Queen were to stop.

For one brief moment, Melville became the largest town in Saskatchewan as people poured out of wagons, buggies, cars, and trucks to fill the streets. Sylvia darted away from her schoolmates and parents and, sneaking and swirling, made her way through the crowd towards the rear of the train, where the royal couple — stunned at the size of the pulsing, wildly cheering crowd — were waving. She snuck as close as she dared and waved madly, shivering in excitement as the sky filled with fireworks. For a kid who managed to survive the Great Depression, it was a moment caught in Sylvia’s memory: I saw the king and queen.

Sylvia Fedoruk in 1939, thought to be dressed for the royal visit at Melville

By 1951, there was a new royal superstar in the making: Princess Elizabeth and her dashing naval officer husband, Prince Phillip. With Elizabeth’s father suffering in secret in declining ill health, Elizabeth and Phillip were starting to take on a more active role in the colonies. Their Canadian tour in 1951 brought the royals to Saskatoon, right to the University of Saskatchewan where Sylvia had just finished her stunning masters work on calibrating the depth dose for the cobalt-60 unit, for cancer treatment. Again, Sylvia, as ardent a royalist as her mother, would have been in The Bowl on campus, probably perching in the bleachers, waving and cheering as Elizabeth — not yet queen — swept past with Phillip.

Sylvia’s royal watching cooled for a time, as she threw herself into work and built an impressive science career as a medical physicist. Yes, she remained faithful and, alongside Annie, listened to the new Queen’s Christmas broadcasts and kept abreast of royal comings and goings.

In 1971, Sylvia went with a group of Canadian ladies to Scotland, to participate in a moving, multi-venue bonspiel of epic proportions. Before returning home, Sylvia crafted and sent a warm thank you note to Queen Elizabeth, to tell her about the trip and thank the Queen for the impressive British and Scottish hospitality. Sylvia was delighted when her simple note drew a warm official response from Buckingham Palace.

In 1977, the Queen was once again in Canada and this time, there was going to be a party in Ottawa: a Tribute to Young Canadians Who Have Achieved Excellence in the Arts and Sciences — and Sylvia, as the first first woman member of the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada, was invited. Apparently, no one looked at Sylvia’s birth certificate because if they had, they would have realized that ‘young’ was a bit of a misnomer: she was, in fact, just one year younger than the Queen, and both women were on the far side of fifty. Nonetheless, with Ottawa covering the costs, Sylvia flew to the capital to attend the glitzy gala and — in the Queen’s quiet, intelligent style — Elizabeth II circulated through the room and to Sylvia’s lasting honour, stopped Sylvia for a private chat about nuclear physics, cancer treatment, and nuclear power.

Just a year later, the Queen was visiting Yorkton as part of her cross-Canadian tour. Sylvia made a strategic visit home to the small city to see her aunt (Sylvia’s mom had died in 1968 and her father in 1977). Sylvia and her auntie, along with Sylvia’s dog Tinker, stood along the roadway, waving madly at the motorcade, then hopped into their own car and scooted across town to stand alongside another part of the route and wave enthusiastically when the Queen swept by again. Sylvia’s extended family lore relates that the Queen — a dog lover — took a second look when she recognized the dog! [Note: I mistakenly remembered this incident from 1967 and my original post set it there and then, but a subsequent dig through my files put the story into the right year… sorry!]

Ten years later, in 1987, Sylvia Fedoruk was the first female Chancellor of the University of Saskatchewan and invited to attend a luncheon at the Centennial Auditorium — with a mere thousand other guests — in honour of the Queen’s visit. Sylvia also filled out the crowds at the royal ribbon-cutting for the new canoeing and rowing facilities on the edge of the south Saskatchewan. Yet all of these encounters were just a foretaste: the real connection to royalty was still to come.

Sylvia Fedoruk became Saskatchewan’s first female lieutenant governor, in 1988. It was a wildly exciting time for Sylvia, not least of which because, as per custom, each new lieutenant governor was granted one trip to Britain to meet the Queen, sometime during their tenure. Sylvia was eager to go. However, that trip would have to wait. In the meantime, one of Sylvia’s first, and joyous, announcements as Lieutenant Governor was to let the public know that a slightly different royal trip was in the works: Prince Andrew and his then wife Sarah Ferguson (affectionately known as Fergie) were coming to Saskatchewan. Their Saskatchewan trip gave Sylvia multiple times to connect and act as the province’s official royal hostess, including presenting Sarah with several homemade teddy bears, one dressed like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer.

Andrew, Sarah, and Sylvia, 1989

In 1993, quietly but with great excitement, Sylvia was finally able to board a plane to London, UK, to meet the woman she had been representing as Lieutenant Governor in government and in communities across Saskatchewan. Her day timer notation said it all:

Meet with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Sylvia’s handwriting in Sylvia’s day timer.

Sylvia thought, perhaps, that visit to London, to Buckingham Palace and her private meeting with the Queen would be the end. But, in line with Sylvia’s astonishing royal luck, there was one more meeting. In 2005, for the province’s 100th birthday celebrations, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip returned to the province. And Sylvia, as a past lieutenant governor and past member of the University of Saskatchewan Board of Governors, was invited to some of the Queen’s smaller events. It’s from this last visit that Sylvia’s treasure trove of photograph albums reveals its prize: a picture of Queen Elizabeth II, walking outside at USask and greeting people. Finally, after all these meetings, far and near, personal and amongst the cheering crowds, Sylvia had a photograph of the Queen to keep, for her very own, to remind her of their long long history of connecting. Sylvia was content.

Queen Elizabeth II in Saskatoon. Photograph by Sylvia Fedoruk, 2005.

[As an aside: that 2005 trip garnered one of my favourite stories about someone I know meeting the Queen. Dr. Bill Waiser presented Queen Elizabeth II with a copy of his Saskatchewan provincial history, called “Saskatchewan: A New History.” Prince Phillip, ever the curmudgeon, asked “What’s wrong with the old history?”]

Sylvia Fedoruk would have been 95 this year, just a year younger than Elizabeth II. They saw the world change from Depression through war through scientific advancement and cancer treatment to rockets and a trip to the moon, to the internet and a world that became both larger and smaller. Through it all, Sylvia remained an ardent royalist and a woman as dedicated to service and supporting others as the Queen herself. If we can’t characterize their connection as friendship, it was certainly one of mutual admiration and respect. And Sylvia cherished each and every one of those connections, from driving wildly across Yorkton to wave twice at Her Majesty’s motorcade, to riding in style through the gates of Buckingham Palace for a private audience with Elizabeth II.

God Save our Gracious Queen. Long live the King.

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Signatures – a salute to Don Toporowski

This is a post about signatures. You know, the one you use to sign legal documents, at the bottom of old-fashioned letters (does anyone write those anymore?), the one authors use to sign their books.

A signature. It becomes one of the key defining items to showcase who you are. Like the Greatest Showman song, a signature states ‘This is Me.’

I have a pretty good memory of the first time I starting thinking about, and practicing, my signature. I grew up on a stump ranch farm north of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, halfway or so between Christopher Lake and Paddockwood. We were pupils at Paddockwood School, a K-8 feeder school for the high schools in Prince Albert.

Our principal in my later years at Paddockwood (between about grades 6-8) was Mr. Don Toporowski. He taught Grade 8 but like all teachers, would rove a bit between grades as needed. One of his sons, Kerry, was in my grade.

Now, like all school kids in the 70s and 80s, we learned to print, first, them learned cursive handwriting (‘joined up writing’ I’ve heard it called…😆). We were past the practice stage of handwriting by the time we hit Mr. Toporowski’s class ( Mrs. McCalmon and Mrs. Spoonheim had whipped my class into as good a shape as they could) and were writing our English and History essays and exams in handwriting.

[Aside: I had my first practicing in forensic handwriting interpretation, which is a key skill for a historian, at this time. We often swapped each other’s papers to mark in class. Our two class lefties, left-handers whose writing was a bit more challenging, usually came to me. Looking at you, Kerry and Lee! 😘]

But one afternoon — and I can’t remember if it was winter or spring, but it was most likely a Friday, and we were done for the week and waiting for the buses — Mr. Toporowski decided we should develop and practice our signatures.

And he put his on the board. With good heavy chalk and a swirl of dust, he put his signature up as an example. Signatures, he said, are more than just your name.

We probably looked fairly blank at this point. It said his name, Don Toporowski. We’d all seen it on our report cards, in our school newspaper The Paddockwood Pow-Wow [yeah, I know], and on anything from the town, since Don moonlighted as the town mayor, too.

So to prove his point, he got a classmate up to try to copy his signature underneath. Don Toporowski. Oh. Yeah, there’s a difference.

So we got out notebooks and started practicing, figuring out how we wanted our own signatures to look.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, he said, but it can’t just be a scribble. It has to be recognizable, more or less. And strong. A strong, confident signature is important.

Well, confidence was absolutely not my strong point, when I was in grade school. So that felt weird. And kind of faked. I wasn’t confident. I was tentative and driven to achieve excellence, when possible. Imperfection and confidence? Ha. You can imagine what my first few tries looked like. Trying NOT to strive for perfection was my first challenge.

Then there was the M problem. I have a lot of Ms in my name. All Ms, in fact. Not one, but TWO middle names, b beginning with M, as was my first and (at the time) maiden name.

[Aside 2: yes, I did think I should find a husband whose last name started with M. It would have broken my rhythm otherwise. The passport office thinks I may be the only Canadian with all Ms).

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when you only have ONE main letter to use, you need to get creative with it. But how many ways can you change up an M? First arch big, second arch small? First arch small, second arch big? So, I played with different ways to write the letter M. And looked with pure envy at everyone else, happily using MORE THAN ONE main letter. Humph.

By the time I’d covered a couple of pages with practice Ms and my whole name, I had something that I didn’t have before: my own way to write an M, and with that, the beginning of my signature.

‘You should be able to sign your signature with your eyes closed,” Mr. Toporowski said. New challenge. Merle the Obedient: ok then.

Well, less pretty, but I think that was the point. To learn to feel it, not just see it, to let it flow. With eyes closed you snipped off the awkward sharp bits and found rhythm and cadence. And, confidence.

‘Buses are here.’ Time to tuck away pens and notebooks, gather and go, flexing writing hands to ease the cramps. Take a final look at my pages. Oh. A signature. MY signature. I see.

It wasn’t quite finished — my style continued to grow and change — but the lesson that day resonated with me. Your signature is yours. No one else writes the way you do. And you’ll need it often — to get your first bank account, to sign cheques, to sign your taxes, your mortgage. And, in my case, to sign books. It’s me, distilled, so you can see at a glance.

Mr. Toporowski’s lesson was this: your signature is important. It’s important enough to require development, concerted practice, personal intention. And confidence.

So every time I sign my name — whether on a document or at a book signing — there is a little invisible dotted line that leads from me back to Don Toporowski and his signature lesson. Because your signature is who you are. And only you can decide what that should look like.

Thanks, Don. RIP our schoolteacher and principal. And thank you for pushing me to find my signature. https://grays.ca/tribute/details/2563/Donald-Toporowski/obituary.html

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A Radiant Life is Radiant at Sask Book Awards

I’m so honoured and proud to announce that my most recent book, A Radiant Life: The Honourable Sylvia Fedoruk Scientist, Sports Icon and Stateswoman (University of Regina Press) was both nominated for, and won, the 2021 Saskatchewan Book Award USask President’s Award for Non-Fiction. My biggest thanks to the Saskatchewan Book Awards and to the three judges in my awards category: Anne Budgell, Annahid Dashtgard, and Ariel Gordon.

The other nominees are luminous, with critically important and/or really fun books:

Genocidal Love: A Life After Residential School (University of Regina Press) by Bevann Fox.
Flat Out Delicious: Your Definitive Guide to Saskatchewan’s Food Artisans (Touchwood Editions), by Jenn
Sharp (photography by Richard Marjan).
Loss of Indigenous Eden: and the Fall of Spirituality (University of Regina Press) by Blair Stonechild.
In Search of Almighty Voice: Resistance and Reconciliation (Fifth House Publishers) by Bill Waiser.

If you’re so inclined, and didn’t get a chance, I recommend that you take the time to watch the two videos created by the Saskatchewan Book Awards for the event. The first is the video for the shortlist, so you can stock up the next time you’re in a bookstore:

Saskatchewan Book Awards: Shortlist 2021

The second is the video with this year’s chosen award winners and gala:

I’m absolutely gratified by the nomination, and then by the win, in part because I had such an unexpected hiccup while writing the biography. I came to the biography by way of friendship with C. Stuart Houston, a Canadian radiologist, medical historian and ornithologist. He had the idea that Sylvia’s biography should be written, and that he thought I should take the lead on that and he would help. Our partnership was not in writing (my job) but in background research, as Stuart spent a bit of time searching out some of Sylvia’s published journal articles, and spoke with several of her colleagues. It soon became clear, though, that we had quite different visions for the book. I was deeply interested in Sylvia’s sports and volunteer history, as well as her medical research after her groundbreaking cobalt-60 work and her role as the first female USask Chancellor and first female Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor. She had a huge life, well-lived, that deserved time and energy. Stuart’s focus tended to the firsts, lists of her many accolades, and would often veer into side biographies of men and women that Sylvia hadn’t necessarily worked with or even met. I pulled him back, and off he’d go again. Even so, those differences were navigable, more or less, until we hit a rather large snag.

That large snag was the story of USask student, Christopher Lefler. Lefler came to Saskatoon to pursue a masters in art, and he was a cutting edge student doing avant garde artistic installations which regularly pushed audiences to places that they hadn’t expected to be. As I went through Sylvia’s files in the archive, then pored through newspaper articles and W5 CTV segments and documentaries and spoke with people, the connection between Lefler and Fedoruk was impossible to ignore, and impossible to leave out of the biography.

In essence, the story is simple: Christopher Lefler created artistic installations that worked to ‘out’ Sylvia Fedoruk as a gay woman, while she was the head of government as the Lt Governor of Saskatchewan. The result was a university, a provincial media, and a provincial government who moved entirely in lock-step to protect her: removing and censoring the art installation, retracting Lefler’s funding and supervisor, eventually expelling him from the university; media refusal to publish her name in connection with the story and censorship of the student newspaper (The Sheaf) when they aimed to publish the story; and the provincial government rescinding a jury-awarded Saskatchewan Arts Board grant to Christopher Lefler, the only time in Saskatchewan history that an awarded grant has been rescinded.

It was a huge, huge story and Stuart did not want the book to include it. A sentence or two, a paragraph at most, he declared. It didn’t deserve more. Stuart and I were at an impasse. I knew something was a bit wrong when he tried, on a regular basis, to steer me away from speaking with certain people, people that I knew had been close with Syl. It’s only in hindsight that I managed to put it all together: Stuart thought that even including this story would give readers the indication that Syl was, indeed, a gay woman. I, on the other hand, didn’t care at all about trying to ‘prove’ one way or the other Sylvia Fedoruk’s private life and sexual identity. I saw the story instead as one of power, of how it moves and can be focused, how it is actioned and how it protects and ostracizes. It also was a story that, in the end, showcased just how much Sylvia Fedoruk meant to the province: its government, university, media and the general public. Stuart said, vehemently, that he did not want to be part of a book that included that story. So we broke the planned co-authorship and I continued writing. It was a sad time, yet I knew I couldn’t make any other choice, and neither could he.

Even so, with the chapter fully written, I worried: should I include it? Would it overpower Sylvia’s story and her many contributions? So I asked my Mom, who in 2018 was dying from metastatic lung cancer. Mom, this is the story. Should I include it? Yes, she said, with fervor. Yes. You must include it. It’s when we see the dark parts of Sylvia’s life, Mom argued, that we also see how bright she shone. The book was dedicated to my Mom, Mary Kirychuk McGowan.

When I submitted the too-large manuscript to the press and asked for some help and direction in cutting the thing down to manageable size, I started to wonder: are they reading it? Had they got to the Lefler chapter yet? I had politely enthusiastic responses and some vague directions. Then BANG: my phone started to hop with texts and emails. A ha, I laughed. They got to that chapter. My editor was retired newspaper journalist Sean Prpick, and we meshed as a team over that chapter, in long phone calls and discussions, some cajoling, and some recalcitrant stubbornness to polish that chapter and make it as smooth as we could.

When I submitted the draft manuscript to the publisher in January of 2019, I also took a copy to Stuart and Mary Houston, for their review and editing. I gave them two different coloured pens, and instructions that I wanted both of their comments, but in different pens. It’s clear that Stuart read it first, with copious comments in red in the margins, especially about the medical history contained in the book. Mary’s pen was green, and hers made me laugh uproariously. If Stuart made a comment with which she disagreed, the green pen would gently stroke out his red exhortation and calmly say, ‘no’. It was a masterclass in editing, and in marriage.

There were no pens, of either colour, on the Lefler chapter. I wasn’t expecting them.

When the book finally went to press in 2020 and the author copies came in July, I drove to Saskatoon to take one to Stuart. Mary had, to everyone’s sadness, passed away in 2019 but Stuart and I toasted the book with a drink. Then I left and he read it, again and again and again over the course of the fall of 2020 and winter of 2021. Every few weeks, there would be another phone call and either a long chat or a message on my answering machine: I’ve read the book again, and underlined so much, and I only underline what you got right, and now the whole book is full of underlines. His praise meant so much.

On one of those calls, he quietly admitted that he saw why I included the Lefler chapter, and recognized that it belonged, even if he didn’t like it. It was, for both of us, a warm ending.

When A Radiant Life was awarded the Saskatchewan Book Award for non-fiction in late June of 2021, I tried calling Stuart. No answer, and a full voice mail so I was unable to leave a message. I kept trying, for weeks, covid still keeping restrictions on visitation. I never got through. At the end of July, I learned that Stuart had suffered a stroke and seemed to be recovering, but on July 22nd, he slipped away to join Mary. We never got that chance to connect and celebrate the win — but, I think, he knew.

I am intensely proud of this book, and I hope each and every one of you takes a chance on it, and reads it. Sylvia Fedoruk was a life force; her energy still radiates. I welcome you to come and meet her — you won’t regret it.

The University of Saskatchewan hosted the online book launch for A Radiant Life in September 2020 — with Merle Massie and Dr. Vera Pezer

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Women For Saskatchewan: Viewpoint Forward

One of the most interesting projects to ever land in my lap is the new Women For Saskatchewan site.

Back in August, I was contacted by the one and only Winter Fedyk . She said, I have this idea. I want to build a website and invite Saskatchewan women to write posts. The posts can be about anything they want, but with a view to giving policy suggestions for Saskatchewan. What do you think?

Well, when an opportunity like that drops into your lap, you say yes, and fast!

I was smack dab in the middle of the release and online launch of my most recent book A Radiant Life (I have a blog post or two about that story…) so I was a bit busy to start with. Then, things really got rolling and the site launched on October 1st.

What a whirlwind! I had a post on the site right off the bat, from the launch. It’s my challenge for Saskatchewan’s new Chief Firearms Officer, and it’s not what you might think. People see the word ‘firearms’ and they think ‘gun control.’ But that’s not what I call for. It’s a really personal story. I talk about my family’s walk through gun suicide, and what I think we, as a gun community, can do to help address that issue. The post started as a Twitter thread; the blog version is tighter, tougher, and direct.

So we have a new incoming Chief Firearms officer in Saskatchewan. It seems the right time to discuss policy advocacy that this office *must* include: the relationship between firearms and suicide. A thread, and a tough one. https://t.co/LT9QxgLyP6

— Merle Massie, PhD 📚✒️🚜🇨🇦 (@merlemassie) September 19, 2020

The blog post led to a call from CBC Saskatchewan — would you please talk about this idea on the radio? So there I was with Stefani Langenegger, chatting on CBC Morning.

A week or so after the first post, I had another post drop into the site. This one also has a story, and argues that Saskatchewan has a map problem. It’s a piece that I had in my mind from the minute that Winter contacted me: Merle, what policy issues would you bring up? I thought: Saskatchewan has a map problem. And that became the title, and the argument.

Then, things somehow started to snowball. First, Loleen Berdahl, the new Executive Director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, asked me to join a lunchtime political panel hosted by the Department of Political Studies at USask. I stepped in at the last minute as one of the panelists came down with an illness, but it was nonetheless an illuminating and really fun event.

My task was to bring in a farm and rural perspective to the debate, so I did — pointing out that a few things look quite different from the farmgate versus the city. The points caused a lot of head-nodding, and a few ‘I never thought of that’ comments. The “I never thought of those points” responses were reiterated a couple of days later during a Women for Saskatchewan editorial meeting. I thought … hmmm… I seem to be onto something. So another tweet string erupted!

This was a week of interesting conversations, both public and private. In two cases, I was asked to clarify *why* rural folks think in particular ways around climate change, especially pipelines and the 'just' transition to green energy. A thread:

— Merle Massie, PhD 📚✒️🚜🇨🇦 (@merlemassie) October 10, 2020

The tweet string brought lots of comments, retweets and likes, which always indicates when I’ve hit a bit of touchstone. So the Women For Saskatchewan Editorial committee decided, hey, let’s make this into a podcast!

So we did…

https://womenforsaskatchewan.ca/podcast-episode-3-rural-urban-divide/

It’s been an absolute joy to be a part of this amazing initiative — and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go. Please, please, take your time and go through the Women for Saskatchewan site. There are so many excellent, visceral, deeply intriguing or painful or sharp or insightful articles. I promise, they are well worth your time.

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1918 Flu in Biggar

This is not the first time that Saskatchewan has been ravaged by a major pandemic.

The so-called Spanish Flu, now thought to be a derivative of H1N1, set the entire world on fire in 1918-1919. It was a killer, with a virus that linked to a bacteria, leading to influenza infection then bacterial pneumonia, then death.

The death rates were high: in Canada, about 55,000 Canadians died. In Saskatchewan, its grim death toll by the end of 1918 was nearly 4000 people, and it continued to stalk rural, remote and northern regions until about 1922. The death toll likely reached well over over 5000 people, but records are patchy and we’ll never know for sure. What is known is that the impact on Saskatchewan’s First Nations population was worse, and the disease and Saskatchewan’s efforts to combat it took over everyone’s life in the fall of 1918.

The flu came to Canada with the soldiers, those returning home from the WWI war front, but in reality, it raced ahead of them. The first recorded death from the Spanish Flu was Robert Callander, a drayman in Regina who was sick for a week before succumbing.

What made the Spanish Flu so frightening was its rapid transmission, and its targets. It killed the healthiest working people — soldiers, farmers, teachers — in the prime of their working lives. Its death rate were described as a ‘W’: those aged 0-5 were highly susceptible, ages 5-20 less so, ages 20-50 were very susceptible, then 50-65 less so and another surge in deaths for the elderly population.

Calgary Daily Herald October 7, 1918

It also came in three waves. The first wave came in the spring of 1918 and was dubbed the ‘three day fever,’ since people were very sick for just a few days, then mostly recovered. This wave was less noticeable in Canada when compared to other regular grippes, flu bugs and the regular items of a Canadian winter. It was the fall 1918 surge that was the killer, while spring 1919 saw another resurgence, but less severe.

In Biggar, Saskatchewan, we have a more limited view of the fall of 1918. While our local newspaper, the Biggar Independent was then (and remains now) in operation, we have few copies of newspapers from that killer fall — likely because people destroyed newspapers rather than risk them being contaminated with the killer virus. We have a newspaper from September 5, 1918, then nothing until November 21st 1918 (side note: they were five cents per copy!)

September 5th saw no mention of the virus or the disruption to come. A circus was coming to town on September 11th, promising local kids and adults alike some smiles and delights.

Biggar Independent, September 5, 1918

But what happened after, throughout the rest of September and October, is unclear. What we do know is that we had local disruption, much the same as we are having now in 2020 with Covid-19. Schools, the pool halls and bars, the Biggar Majestic Theatre, and all churches were closed. And, people died.

Biggar Independent November 21, 1918

The article actually lists seven deaths, including an infant and Percy Talbot from Oban region, who died in Calgary — and that’s just from the past week. In all, it could be estimated that as many as fifty people from Biggar and surrounding regions died throughout October and November of the scourge year.

One of the things that the Town of Biggar had to fund was an ’emergency hospital’. In the November 21st copy of the Biggar Independent, the town’s financial report listed over $60 put toward the emergency hospital.

Ernie Hoppe of Biggar said that his mother told him stories of the 1918 epidemic. Their home, 14 miles north and west of town, was “where the sick came for help,” and it’s probable that it became a rural triage and emergency space for those stricken with the awful virus. “Many people died in their home,” he added. I have yet to discover where the town emergency hospital was located, but if you know, reach out.

But by November 21st, things were starting to ease back. The ‘ban’ on gathering had been lifted, and the Biggar Majestic Theatre, along with churches and the pool room, could once more reopen.

“Theatre Thoroughly Disinfected” Biggar Independent November 21, 1918

By November 28th, there was a town annual meeting. One of the things discussed: “Those who were present however helped along the urgent need for a hospital one step by appointing S. H. Curran J. T. James and S. E. Shaw as a committee from the town to interview the Council of the Rural Municipality of Biggar with a view to building a Union Hospi­tal in Biggar next year and of continuing the operation of the present emergency hospital until a more permanent building can be arranged for.” [Biggar Independent, “Citizens Show Lack of Interest”, November 28, 1918].

The churches came back: the Methodist church resumed services on November 24th, with St. Paul’s Anglican — the same building we see today — resuming morning and evening services, choir practice, and Sunday School on December 1st.

It took longer to reopen the schools. School terms were more fluid at the time, and could shift according to local need, particularly those in rural areas. It was a disconcerting prospect for many, to consider not only the schools not reopening, but the absence of Christmas concerts and other timely entertainment.

Biggar Independent November 28, 1918

But even as life started to return to normal and people moved more freely in the town, the flu and its aftereffects were still to be seen.

Biggar Independent November 28, 1918

With only patchy newspaper records — we have no extant papers from December of 1918 from the Biggar Independent — the record ends there. But those interested in reading for themselves, and following the stories told through newspapers should find their way to the Saskatchewan Historical Newspapers Online and the Google Newspaper Archive.

Whether you’ll be relieved, or horrified to know that we’ve been here before, is entirely up to you.

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Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation

The new homepage of the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation https://www.saskheritagefoundation.com/ 

Well, it’s happened: I’m mentioned in the Hansard! (See page 32, under Bill 90, and keep reading).

If you’re not a historian, the Hansard is the record of what is said in the Saskatchewan legislature. It contains the debates, transcribed, as well as the record of visitors, bills being put forward, and shows the province’s political leaders going about the business of government. It’s a great resource to know what’s happening, and to track political debate over time.

So, how did I get there? I wrote an op-ed about the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation that was published in the Star Phoenix. This op-ed is all about the disparity in support for heritage projects around the province, as well as criticism of the way the current bureaucracy in the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport (where the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation is connected) has been running roughshod over the Foundation.

It’s a hard-hitting piece. I was on the Board of the SHF for three years, and I had a lot to say about heritage in Saskatchewan, and the way the SHF board has been working hard to protect, and fight for, the groups working on heritage projects across the province. In the end, I called for those currently running for the leadership of the Saskatchewan Party to look into the debacle, and get things straightened out.

I’ve since spoken about the issue to sitting MLAs and Saskatchewan Party leadership contenders, because this is an issue that transcends party politics. The SHF has been in existence, helping the people of Saskatchewan for more than 25 years. Heritage is not about politics. It’s about dedicated people fighting hard to save their heritage buildings and cultural landscapes, from north to south, and from east to west across Saskatchewan. Every political party and MLA has a heritage project in their backyard. And the current Ministry officials in the department of Heritage for the province of Saskatchewan are not doing a good job of supporting the SHF, its board, goals, and by extension the people of Saskatchewan.

I’m glad to see some traction on this issue. I understand that the pressure will continue, and I’m encouraged to know that it’s now in the Hansard as a permanent record — even if they accidentally thought that I’m a male, not a female historian.

To sitting and incoming MLAs: keep this on your radar. The people of Saskatchewan expect it: Do better.

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Damming Saskatchewan

This is a story about aborted academic work. Years ago, I proposed and workshopped a paper. The original call came from fellow environmental history academics, building a curated book on the concept Landscape, Nature and Memory: Tourism History in Canada. We wrote the papers and sent them around for everyone to read before we got together. The workshop was held in Vancouver, and I remember my first introduction to Granville Island and Macleod’s Books. It was an invigorating workshop, with discussants and good conversation. I received good feedback (Ian MacKay liked my paper!) and thought that it would, in time, lead to publication. At the time, I was still occasionally aiming hopefully for an academic position.

 

But it was not to be. When the collection of papers from the workshop went around for external review, mine was deemed not a good fit for the overarching theme. It was too different. In some ways, I think the paper’s exclusion mimicked my own ‘differentness’ and ultimate exclusion from academia. But no matter. I worked on it a little more, and sent it out to Prairie Forum, a scholarly journal based out of Regina. I’d published with them before, and thought the little paper would have a chance to at least be read.

I didn’t hear back. At all. Strange, I thought. I forgot about it for a bit, then (remembering), dusted it off, and sent it to them again. It’s the internet, I decided. It does eat things, on occasion. It gets hungry. No worries. I’ll hear back this time.

Still nothing. No reply, no acknowledgement. So, I may be slow but eventually I get there. This poor little paper doesn’t have a home.

I could go back to it, work on it again, try to figure out where and how to make it academically publishable. Send it out again. And again. But that is no longer my life. Writing for an unpaid academic publication just isn’t an appropriate use of my time. So I won’t.

But it remains there, with many hours of research, and a lot of thought, hiding in a corner of my computer files. There is an old adage that says ‘unread books do no work.’ The same is true for articles. I didn’t manage to get it published (which would have meant external reviews, more work, and no doubt a much better article) but I can share it here, with you.

The article is about building the South Saskatchewan River Project, now known as the Gardiner Dam which created Diefenbaker Lake. It’s about the policy stories we tell, and how Saskatchewan desperately needed to create a story of water and beauty through tourism to counteract the post-Great Depression story of dust, aridity, and flatness.

Gardiner Dam, South Saskatchewan River

Who might want to read it? Anyone who has visited the dam and wants to know a bit more of its history. Academics working on tourism, dam, or general prairie history might find it useful. But if you are not an academic, I warn you: this is filled with references, theory, and a bit of jargon. And a few stories. It might be worth your time.

Still, I’m ready for it to be in the world, with all of its flaws and problems. You can deal with it. I have confidence in you. Click on the PDF below and enjoy your read.

Damming Saskatchewan

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Place History

Place: A Methodology for Research

By Merle Massie, PhD.

Conference paper presented at World Congress in Environmental History. Guimaraes, Portugal, 2014. Edited for blog post August 2017.

In June of 2014, I was in my hometown of Paddockwood, Saskatchewan, Canada – population less than two hundred in the village, less than a thousand in the rural area. I was there to give a talk and show a slideshow of pictures from my most recent book, Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan. It’s a place history of the region, which I spent four years researching and writing. As the lights darkened, a hush fell – with obedient silence – over the crowd. Kids squirmed, adults settled in, and my Great Aunt Clara folded her arms and leaned back. She listened with one eye half-closed as I moved from picture to picture, from story to story. She likes to make sure that I tell the stories right, that what I say agrees with her memories.

Locals can be a tough audience when you write a local history, but the slideshow and stories were a big hit. Clara got a chance to add to one or two of the stories, providing a few details on the local cheese factory, but I scored a home run: I told her some stories that she’s never heard before. She was introduced in a new way, to the place that she knows best.

And there’s that word: place.

Place is ubiquitous; it is everywhere at once. From ecology to history, place is a word that is used often in the English language: someplace, no place, every place, any place. First place. Second place. Last place. Place that over here. You’re sitting in my place. Let’s go to my place for a drink.

Place is a popular focal point for study. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan eloquently said that space plus culture equals place (1977). There are reams of literature studying sense of place, place attachment, place dependence, place remaking, non place (or, the internet, which is everywhere and nowhere). The omnipresence of the word ‘place’, has led to controversy and discussion, multiple theoretical threads and calls in both directions: use it more broadly; and don’t use it at all.

I do use place. I use it to describe what it is that I do, which I call ‘place history’. This blog post, which was first presented at the World Congress in Environmental History in Portugal in 2014, is a rough attempt to explain place not as theory, but as methodology. Warning: I’m rather allergic to theory, and decided this post is no place for a literature review, or even much in the way of references. If you’re looking for them, sorry. I’m posting this presentation because of these tweets:

Place based inquiry tweets

So, with apologies to Kaitlin Stack-Whitney who might be looking for a lit review or recommendations, this isn’t that. I’m going to describe what I do, when I set about to do a place-based inquiry.

I use ‘place’ as a method of organizing my research, of building a different kind of story. How many of you have read Dan Flores’ suggestion that we use a bioregion as the focal point for environmental studies? (I love that article. Go read it). My work follows on Flores’ in that I’m interested in the environment as a central defining part of place history.  This post will explain three short-ish points about how I do it, and what kinds of information place history can show. The examples are drawn from two different research projects I’ve created in the last few years (with images from the powerpoint presentation).

So: what is place history? Place history is a research strategy. It is a way of organizing and focusing your research. At its core, it studies a particular place through the lens of time. You start, like we all do, with a research question. For my hometown place history, my research question was: what has my hometown region looked like in the past, and how has it changed over time? For the second research project, the question was, how has this landscape, and its people, responded to floods? As you can see, the first question was a bit larger, while the second focused specifically on a particular kind of event (flood). Both had advantages and drawbacks.

I start a place history by first defining a soft border around a research region. Sometimes, there is a natural boundary line that I can follow, but sometimes not. My hometown story is not a bioregion, in that it doesn’t have specific biophysical markers. It sits, in fact, at the transition zone between two bioregions, and that’s part of what made it interesting for me. It sits where the North American interior plains hit the northern boreal forest in my home province of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan in known as the ‘land of living skies’, a prairie space, flat and treeless.  I once heard my research summed up in three words: Saskatchewan has trees. I thought, good enough!

The second study involved a massive inland delta, a water landscape covering 10,000 square kilometers – about one-tenth the size of Portugal. The Saskatchewan River Delta is a primarily Indigenous landscape of enormous importance, ecologically, economically, and socially in the interior of Canada, straddling the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Most of my work focused specifically on the upper delta, centering on the community of Cumberland House and the delta that surrounds it. The biophysical marker makes the research region easier to identify, but studying water means studying all the places the water was before it gets to the delta, so again, ‘soft’ boundaries are important.

So, the first thing that I do is define the soft borders around my research region, as a way to contain and focus my research question. What this does: it helps me focus my archival and library and oral interview work. I specifically search for books, theses, articles, and archival documents written about my research region and seek out a variety of specialists and knowledge-holders to read, study, and interview. I also visit, usually many times. The search is a large and usually an on-going process. It’s never finished; you can never find everything, see everything, know everything. A place historian must embrace a little bit of ambiguity, of vagueness at the edge of the laser focus.

TWO: the second part of my place history research methodology involves time. Place is about landscape; history is about time. As I find information about the place I am studying, I create a landscape timeline. I won’t show you one, because they tend to be messy, but do it however you want: on a whiteboard, using post-it notes on a poster board, using Excel or another program, or in a memo book. The point is to remember and celebrate that the landscape is not just the ecological backdrop for the human story. The environment is neither static nor inert. When you write a place history, you are telling the story of the land; people’s activities are a response to that land, and the land responds back. When I work on place history, the landscape becomes a key and active player in the story, an actor whose decisions have implications across the landscape and across its human inhabitants.

Let me give you an example: in the 1870s, less than 150 years ago, the Saskatchewan River – the river which creates the Saskatchewan River Delta – experienced an avulsion. An avulsion means the river jumped its track, leaping out of its riverbed to blow out a whole new river pattern, completely changing the way the delta works and how and when and where people could move through it. Steamboat traffic changed. Trapping patterns and fishing patterns changed. Silt rose, to the point where dredging was necessary to keep the boats running and people were predicting that Cumberland Lake in the centre of the delta would, in time, silt right up and become farmland. The effects of that avulsion are still working through the delta. But the avulsion had little to no imprint on the memories of the local Indigenous population, at least until scientists recovered it and started talking about it in the community. The avulsion can be traced through the historical record and scientific investigation, but little in the local memory. The avulsion’s fingerprints remain on the land, and it became my job to find out why those fingerprints were largely missing from the oral story.

The key part of writing a place history is to remember that neither the land nor the people are static. A landscape timeline gives me recreated snapshots or descriptions of what the landscape looked like at a particular time, and how humans used the landscape, and how and when and why things changed. With a landscape timeline, I can ‘layer’ both environmental change and human change to see what affected what, and with what consequences.

In the case of the delta, I soon found that the massive changes caused by the avulsion had disappeared from the local story because they’d been superceded by even more massive change in the twentieth century, much more recent in the memories of the local population. A dam, upstream from the delta, had dammed the water to create a large lake and hydropower supply. This dam, and the way it was run, disrupted natural rhythms to such an enormous extent that the local story started to sound black and white: before the dam, after the dam. The avulsion as an integral landscape story virtually disappeared. I only learned about it because, as a place historian, I was diligently collecting information across time, building my landscape timeline.

What I’ve discovered is that, by shifting the focus from a human-centered to a place-centered timeline, I have a clear perspective on what activities are possible, probable, or practical in a certain place in a certain time. It also helps serve as a predictor: what can make this landscape seem more desirable, or less desirable, as a place of human habitation? In the work I did on my hometown region, it became clear to me that the local landscape became desirable, and as a consequence became a major destination for climate refugees, during the global environmental and economic disaster of the 1930s. Whereas the nearby landscape, the Great Plains of North America, suffered severe ecological drought, the forest edge still had water in wells and coming down from the sky, trees for shelter and fuel and building materials, hay for starving animals chewing dust, gardens where “even the turnips were edible,” wild game and berries and fish. In short, there was a comparative natural abundance to feed animals and humans. It became desirable because it didn’t have endless black blizzards. As a result, almost 50,000 people relocated from the dust bowl to the forest fringe of my home province, a massive internal migration that changed the face of land settlement, agriculture, and population.

So, the second step in place history: create a landscape timeline. This timeline will help you draw clear connections between the landscape and the human activities you record as significant aspects of your research question. It can also help you choose more clearly which human decisions – politics, policy, or development – you need to understand in order to engage with your landscape. The answers to that can be unexpected.

The downside is that as your landscape changes over time, and as human activity changes over time, you as the researcher will need to become a jack of all trades. You’re not just an expert in one event or one theme or one theory; you’ve got to learn something about everything. This puts you at a disadvantage when speaking with an expert dedicated to one group, one policy, one moment, but remember that your perspective is built with light from many sources. And that can, and does, bring forth fresh new perspectives.

This multiplicity brings us to the third and last point: place history methodology draws knowledge from across a range of knowledge holders and creators. This range is substantive: science, social science, humanities, Indigenous knowledge, and the natural world. Data (I’m sorry – I hate the word ‘data’ but I use it because people understand it) data from natural and social science is deliberately blended with professional history, oral and community history, literature, and art to provide a broadly-based comparative framework. This is natural and physical science plus social science and humanities.

Why does a place historian need so many sources? Because each has a significant contribution, and each has the potential to carry a part of the story independent of other knowledge-holders. The story of the avulsion is a good example: its story is carried in the historical record and in the research projects of delta scientists. Yet it was virtually eclipsed from the Indigenous local memory. You cannot rely on one source to the exclusion of others. In a place history, you’re building a landscape timeline of a place, deliberately blending multiple viewpoints and information so that nothing is in isolation. A place history can show how a local lumber industry melded with local agriculture, First Nations, and the environment, with influence and impact in many directions.

Another example. The Saskatchewan River delta is historically a flood landscape, with thousands of years of flood adaptation and flood memory. Using place history methodology, I focused on my research region and looked for information across time, regarding flood events. In 1781, a major spring flood blew out the newcomer European traders, drenching their valued goods and creating a quagmire out of their fortified trading post. The Indigenous inhabitants simply moved to drier ground. The flood was a seasonal event; perhaps higher than other years, but not enough to shift anything in the Indigenous daily life, yet making a mockery of the newcomers.

Turn the clock forward to 1962, when the EB Campbell Dam was built, upriver from the delta. Floods changed. High water events came at different seasons. Rushing water came suddenly, at different times of the day, blowing out traplines and fishing nets, stranding people or leaving them high and dry, with useless boats far from home. Unpredictable. Human-made, not natural. The water would come or not come as a result of policy decisions regarding electrical requirements for people far away, not local needs. No one knew when or how to predict the water, and old knowledge was rendered almost useless. The dam was a disruption that caused untold ecological and cultural change.

One result of the ecological disruption was that the people changed. What had once been a water-adapted culture became increasingly land-adapted, tied to vehicles and roads, dependent on infrastructure such as roads and bridges. In 2005, the Saskatchewan River upstream was in flood, and the community of Cumberland House evacuated itself primarily because its road, winding through the delta, was compromised. There was fear of being cut off, of medical emergencies and isolation. The evacuation caused tremendous backlash in the community, particularly among the elders, who felt the evacuation was needless – and so it was. While it was a high water event, the community did not flood. After 2005 there was a resurgence in oral stories, a renaissance of flood memory from elders that drew from a time before the dam, when the water flow wasn’t restricted, when floods were a natural event and nothing to fear. In 2011, in part because of the elders’ clear response and oral stories, the community, when once again faced with historic high water, did not evacuate.[i]

In 2013, when flood once again threatened, the community was forcibly evacuated by the provincial government who clearly did not understand either the depth of flood memory, the elders’ knowledge, nor community resilience. It was, as in 2005 and 2011, a needless evacuation. The community did not flood. The provincial safety manager told me later, in confidence, that they would never again evacuate Cumberland House. Flood measures and protections, when used well, would be enough. Finally, the provincial emergency management leadership learned what local Indigenous elders drawing on a deep-time knowledge of water and the delta knew: the delta absorbs and spreads the water over a massive landscape; it floods, but it does not flood.

So to sum up, place history, as a basic methodology, does three things: one, defines a geographical soft boundary of place as a way to focus your research question; two, builds a landscape timeline that creates snapshots of that place over time; and three; draws from across a broad range of knowledge holders, from arts to science to Indigenous knowledge to the natural world.

Why is place history important? It is a methodology that allows us to ‘see’ and compare issues across time, through the eyes of a particular place. Place methodology offers a deep time perspective that transcends dramatic events to consider the broader implications of the intimate connection between humans and the environment: the delta as a water landscape, and how we’ve moved with, against, challenged and changed that; the forest edge as a rich ecotone between the prairie and the forest, and how we’ve moved that edge back and forth through axe and fire, agriculture, and tourism. What I find doing place history is often unexpected, and sometimes challenging to the status quo, because I’m starting from a different vantage point: the landscape, rather than the people.

And that’s how I can, when I’m really lucky, surprise my Great Aunt Clara, and tell her a few stories that even she didn’t know.

[i] For a deeper investigation of flood memory, the Saskatchewan River Delta, and the flood events of 2005 and 2011, see Merle Massie and M.G. Reed, Chapter 6: “Cumberland House in the Saskatchewan River Delta: flood memory and the municipal response, 2005 and 2011” in Climate Change and Flood Risk Management: Adaptation and Extreme Events at the Local Level Edited by E. Carina H. Keskitalo. https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781781006665.xml

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An 1889 Cree Syllabic Letter

One of the most fascinating archival finds of my PhD research was a wonderful letter (in four parts) written in Cree syllabic. I came across it while researching the Adhesion to Treaty Six, which was signed by the people of the Montreal Lake and Lac La Ronge regions of Saskatchewan on a brutally cold February day in 1889.

Such files are usually read by Canadian researchers on microfilm, under the short name of ‘RG 10.’ RG stands for Record Group, and RG 10 files are primarily from Indian Affairs. These are critical files for researchers, from a time when correspondence was letters (not email or social media). While the files are mostly written by, for, and back and forth between those employed by Indian Affairs, there is the occasional fascinating jewel of a letter written by a local person. Even more rarely, there is a wonderful letter written, in Cree syllabic, by local First Nations leaders.

I took scans of these letters immediately, although I can read neither syllabic nor Cree. They languished in my digital files while I worked my way through other research, which eventually became my book, Forest Prairie Edge. The following is an excerpt that explains the Treaty Six Adhesion:

“After years of agitation and repeated requests from the boreal bands in the north Prince Albert region, the Crown finally agreed to offer treaty. The difference between an internal adhesion and an external adhesion was crucial: an internal adhesion added people to existing treaty stipulations; an external adhesion added both new people and new lands to an existing treaty. In the latter, treaty terms were at least somewhat negotiable.

“The external adhesion attempted to sort out a dual problem. On the one hand, there were bands with homes in the north Prince Albert region, within the boundaries of Treaty 6, that had not been offered treaty. Securing an external adhesion, which acted essentially as a new treaty, clarified the uncertainty of who was, and who was not, in treaty relationship with the Crown. Although there is nothing in the official records to act as confirmation, an external adhesion could negate continuing calls for arrears in treaty annuity payments.”

“The second problem came from the commercial interests of investors in Prince Albert. Surveyors, scouting and marking out timber berths, realized that the boundaries of Treaty 6 did not entirely cover the potential area of forest resources that the Prince Albert community believed was within their economic sphere. In short, the land ceded by Treaty 6 did not correspond to the boundaries of the Saskatchewan District of the North-West Territories[i] or Prince Albert’s intended commercial empire of northern boreal resources. Officials at Indian Affairs explained: “The object in getting the surrender just now is in order that the Govt might legally dispose of the lumber in that Section permits to cut which have in some cases already been issued.”[ii] It was a somewhat frantic and belated effort to legally rectify a serious error—the government was issuing timber permits on land that had possibly not yet been ceded by treaty.”

During the treaty negotiations, the Cree leaders from Montreal Lake had a somewhat different view than their Lac La Ronge counterparts in what should be included in the articles and terms of the treaty, and what should be included in the initial and subsequent treaty payments. The syllabic letters that I found were sent to Ottawa after the treaty negotiations were complete and the treaty signed, but before the first payment came in the fall of 1889. The letters came from the Montreal Lake leadership, outlining in further detail their thoughts on the treaty, and what would be most useful to them as part of their treaty payment. They had clearly had some time to think, and wanted to send a message on their expectations and needs. However, it is not known if anyone working for Indian Affairs at the time was able to translate these requests.

The letters are a mix of Cree syllabic and English handwriting, and are written by three different people: Chief William Charles, councilor Benjamin Bird (who wrote 2 of the four pages), and councilor Isaac Bird. In 2016, I met Dion Tootoosis at an event in support of Prince Albert National Park. I told him about the texts. Soon after, Andrea Custer, the Cree Language developer for the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre took the project in hand. With the help and advice of Arok Wolvengrey and Solomon Ratt, Andrea was able to translate the syllabic into today’s written Cree, and for my benefit, to English (I am so grateful for the extra translation). Andrea deserves all the credit for shepherding this important work.

Page one, from Chief William Charles, who also requested (in English) matches, and a copy of the treaty document.

Cree Syllabic One (from Chief William Charles)

Line:

1. nimithwîthihtîn, ninanâskomâw kihci-okimâskwîw
   I am happy, I give thanks to the Queen
2. mîna otatoskîthâkana ôta ê-nakaskamâhk
   and also her workers, here where we meet
3. mâka nipakosîthimonân kita-kitimâkihtahk nipîkiskwîninân
   but I hope she listens with compassion for our talk
4. ôma kâ-wî-isi-kâkîsimototawâyahkik nîci-tipahamâtwânânak
   this where we are going to pray for our fellow treaty people
5. nistam kâ-tipahamâtohk pîhonânihk sônîyâwak nîstanân
   the first treaty payment here at (Ft. Carlton or F. La Corne) for us
6. kâ-ati-otayâniyâhk êkosi nitisi-kâkîsimonân
   to have clothing, this is what we pray for

It seems clear that the translation of Fort Carlton or Fort La Corne is a bit incorrect, as this document references the treaty terms signed at Molanosa. The expected fall treaty payment for the Montreal Lake band would take place at the south end of the lake, in what would become their home reserve. But otherwise, the Chief greets the Queen and asks for compassion for his people.

Page two, from Benjamin Bird.

The second page is from Benjamin Bird, who was an outspoken councilor both at the negotiations and as shown by his two syllabic pages.

Cree Syllabic Two (Benjamin Bird)

Line:

1. hâw êkwa nîsta nititwân ninanâskomânân
   me too I say we give thanks to
2. kihci-okimâskwîw êkwa ê-wâpahtamâhk okitimâkîyihcikêwin
   the Queen and we see her compassion
3. okiskinwahamâkîw (syllabic too faded to read) isinamâkîw??
   teacher __________the one who hands out
4. sôniyâwa kitakî-wî-mîthikoyâhk
   money, to give us back (Give us back the money)
5. mostoswak ê-ohci-pî-mîkicik mistikonâpêw
   cattle, we were supposed to be given, by James Smtih
6. amêwistoyân mâka itwêw ka-ohci-pamihikawîyâhk
   the bearded one said, this is where we will be well taken care of
7. êkotê kihci-ohci-pamihihcik, tâskipocikan
   from there we were supposed to be taken care of; rip saw
8. cîkahikana, pakwâyinîkana
   axes, canvas
9. mônahihcikêkâkana athapiy-asapâp
   hoes, twines for nets
10. pîminahkwâna, pâskisikana, akahamâtowin.
    ropes, gun, ration
11. ninohtêpathihikonân kâ-pî-pipohk mîna tânithikohk
    we are short this winter and how much
12. kâ-pî-asamikawîyâhk
    we were given to be fed

Page three, from Isaac Bird. Note: in English, Isaac added: requested also for cooking stoves and trowels

Cree Syllabic Three (Isaac Bird)

Line:

1. nimithwîthihtînân kâ-isi-pihtamâhk
   we are happy that we hear
2. î-kî-kitimâkîthimikoyâhk kihci-okimâskwîw
   that the Queen shows us compassion
3. ______ ikosi nîsta î-isi-tipâhtamân
   this is what I hear also
4. anihi nitâsotamâkowininâna
   those things we were promised
5. mîna kitakî-wî-tipahamâkawiyâhk
   we were supposed to be paid out
6. sôniyâwak
   money
7. ikwa mîna kotaka nipakosîthimonân
   and also we are hoping
8. î-wî-natotamâhk
   to ask for other things

Page four, from Benjamin Bird.

Cree Syllabic Four

Line:

• âhaw êkwa nîstanân niwî-nanâskomânân

yes, and we give thanks

• kihci-okimâskwîw mîna otatoskîthâkana êkwa

to the Queen and workers and

• kâ-sâsakwîthimot ayi-misiwî-askîhk ê-pê-tamâkoyâhk

Where her roles all over the land, she brings us

• otinamâtowina ninanâskomânân mîna

her care (responsibility), we give thanks and

• nimithwîthihtînân ê-pî-tipahamâkoyâhk

we are happy she came to pay us

• nitaskînâhk êyak-ohci okitimâkîthimowinihk

our land, we are calling on her

• kâ-wî-natomâyâhk mistiko-nâpêw ninatotamânân

compassion for us. James Smith we ask

• okanawînamâkîw kistêkiwiyiniw, tâskipocikan,

the Indian Agent for: rip saw,

• kâ-wâskâwîpiniht, kinipocikanisina,

wheels (Wagon), files for saw,

• kîskimana, napaki-cîkahikana, athahikîhikana,

files, flat axes, rakes,

• nanâtohk kiscikânisa, maskihkiya,

seeds, medicine,

• ayawinisa, pîkopicikânisa, ê-kâsisiki

clothing, ploughs, sharp (nails)

• sakahikana, wâpamoni-pîskowâsînamâna

nails, window panes

I was absolutely delighted to receive these wonderful translations. They speak to me in a clear voice, across the years, of local leadership working hard to put their people to the best advantage in the negotiations of the treaty. The requests show a wonderful mix of boreal forest tools, such as rip saws for forestry and net twine for fishing, with local agricultural needs such as rakes, hoes and seeds. Window panes and nails for building strong homes fitted well with calls for medicine and clothes. Isaac Bird spoke loudest about money payments, which should have (but did not) include back payment for all the years between the original signing of Treaty Six in 1876, and the new signing in 1889.

With the help and support of Andrea Custer and the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre, these detailed syllabics and their modern translations can now be shared with you.

[i] Ray, Miller, and Tough, Bounty and Benevolence, 144.

[ii] LAC, RG 10 Vol. 3601, File 1754, Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Edgar Dewdney to Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed, 6 December 1888.

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