Grassroots

"We almost lost our school," the volunteer tour guide adds, near the end of a fascinating ride on the Southern Prairie Railway at Ogema.   "We were down to 45 students.  And when you lose your school, there goes your community."

So, she continues, people  got together to brainstorm possible pathways.  They decided to lobby agribusinesses to see if one would set up near their town.  Success!  Filipino workers followed, with their families.  School enrolment is now at 145 students.  An ice-cream shop and a wellness spa have opened.  Further down main street is Solo Italia Pasta, relocated from Northern Italy, that makes wood-fired Neapolitan pizza available fresh on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, or frozen and ready to bake at home.   Great story here, combining travel, romance, and business opportunity.  Wow!  How inspiring!  All this has happened in Ogema, population 403 (2016 census)! 

"When you walk down Main St.," she concludes, bringing me back from my reverie as the train pulls into the station,  "remember to find the fire wall.  It was buit in 1915, after a fire destroyed a significant part of Main Street.  The brick came from the plant in Claybank."

The Claybank Brick Plant, as it happened, is our next day’s destination on our Southeast-Saskatchewan camping experience.     We head out from our home base at Dunnet Regional Park in Avonlea, a beautiful park nestled in a sheltered valley.  It boasts a concession booth, outdoor gathering spot, and a swimming pool in the final stages of renovation.  I notice many RV’s permanently installed on sites rented annually.  I’m surprised.  My surprise itself astonishes me.  This is a beautiful spot—peaceful, quiet, clean, friendly, restorative, a tribute to the community that works hard to maintain it.

We find the brick plant on an iconic July day, sunny, warm, the living skies living up to their name and reputation.  At the Bunkhouse Café and Gift Shop, we take advantage of the orientation video, and enjoy chats with other visitors.  The place buzzes with the chatter of a cycle group from Regina that’s just arrived.  A server brings the corn chowder and homemade Saskatoon pie to our corner table.  One hour until the tour.

Claybank brick, we learn, was a high quality product used nationally and internationally.  It faces the Gravelbourg Co-Cathedral as well as the Château Frontenac in Quebec City.   Its exceptional resistance to heat made it a wise choice for the launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The tour guide is knowledgeable and patient with our questions, as we discover the fascinating process of brick making and details about the lives of the workers who lived and worked in this isolated spot.  The plant itself has hardly changed from its opening in 1914.  In fact, each year on Heritage Day, volunteers get the machinery moving again to demonstrate how the bricks were made.   For outdoor enthusiasts, hiking trails branch out from the plant into the clay canyons.  As the site has lost provincial grant money, support is critical to maintain this jewel of Saskatchewan history.

We move on to another home base outside Maple Creek.  From there, we head north on Highway 21 toward the Great Sandhills.   I’ve never been on this highway, I realize, a set-square perpendicular that pierces fields of startling yellow canola, flax showing off a blue hue as it ripens, green pastures dotted with watering holes and cattle, and  a brilliant blue canopy.     All the way to Leader, with only a small mid-way correction, the road heads straight north and the landscape replicates.   We encounter almost no traffic.  The isolation of farm families living in this area of the province overtakes the beauty of its vast panorama.  I thought I understood isolation, growing up in a hamlet of 100 people, but this expanse moves me, and I’m grateful.

At Leader, we turn eastward toward the access to the Sandhills, Sceptre.  The museum and interpretative centre testifies to the innovation and hard work of small-town folks.  Residents have transformed a circa 1960 school into a small town, with school room, hospital room, dentist’s office, police service, general store.   Detail is painstaking, and artefacts abound.  As we head down the grid road to the hills, we appreciate the solitude, and trust that we’ve interpreted the directions correctly.  In the parking area, we read about John Both, a rancher devoted to the sandhills.  No one should judge another person until you’ve walked in his boots, he said, and, to honor him, a arch of boots greets hikers on the trail to the hills.

What an experience!  Meandering through grid roads and secondary highways in southeast Saskatchewan in a 1978 camper van without air in +30 temperatures has reminded me of the challenges of life in what some might consider the middle of nowhere.  Thanks to this grassroots holiday, I can better understand and appreciate the issues, concerns, and delights that characterize life in this corner of our great province.