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INTRODUCTION

If you live in town, the March Wait can be a long one. It is filled with strong winds and snow squalls from the western hills. It is waiting for the melt to begin, waiting for the roads to soften, for the land to loosen, for the coulees to flow, for the stock to move, for the fences to be repaired. It is coffee and tea spilled on laps or on kitchen table tops. It is sipping the best whisky over easy conversation and keeping neighbourliness and goodwill going. It is checking, checking the deficiencies wherever they exist. It is assessing losses and counting the coming gains, the waves of sweet growth about to arrive. The Wait is contemplating spirits and angels dancing outside with the deer, or with the shadows of buffalo, a not so distant past. Time on your hands and for some it rests on the wheels of their trucks as they gather supplies. It is early calving.

You dance on Saturday evening. You go to the cafe and have breakfast. You prepare meals, you soothe, you organize the church meals, St. Patrick's Day, and the fundraisers. You weld, you fix, you restore. You remember the past and try to predict the future. And most of all, you get ready.

I would like to point out that for me southwestern Saskatchewan is a wonderful place to live, if even for a short period; it is inspiring, tough, beautiful, demanding, graceful and filled with gracious people.

The writings of local people such as that of the women of The Clay Centre Handicraft Club, July 10, 1967 (e.g., "Filing for the Future Townships 1,2, & 3, Range 23.") show a remarkable and justifiable love of life,  land, and reality. Take Wallace Stegner too, and Sharon Butala, and Laurine (Avanzino) Milne - many others.

This site is about what might happen in March, in SW Saskatchewan, ranch and farm country. You may wonder about living in the west. Life in a landscape that carries a history of oceans, the mark of monstrous prehistoric reptiles, the wealth of resources, intriguing people who are entirely welcoming, land, cattle, grain, buffalo, uranium, oil, space, fear, caution, and sometimes peace. This set of pages tells a number of stories. Some told by people who have lived in the area, some told by visitors, some based on what happened, some based on what may have happened, and some purely imaginary. Which is which?

images and text © D. Wall (except where otherwise noted)

The landscape captivates and intoxicates. It has been cared for by farmers, ranchers and others whose families homesteaded or settled here generations ago. Many homesteaded in the early 1900s, and their families and holdings survived and grew. They built a knowledge and wisdom that takes generations. And they keep this country going.

The Southwest has seen boom and bust. It has been misused in boom times by many who desperate for easy money sought their fortunes, wreaked havoc and a bully-like pummeling on others and the land, and then they left bewildered that their lack of respect did not make them fortunes to take home. The patient and the tenacious stayed.

In constant motion, the landscape, once a sea bed,  shifts, the herds of buffalo have become only echoes, ranches and homesteads, settlers and their towns have appeared and disappeared and appeared again. Hunters' camps came and went. Stegner (1955:53) draws a vast landscape of imagery when he mentions that "Big Bear, Wandering Spirit, Poundmaker, and Piapot hunted in these hills." A wintering post of Metis grows at Chimney Coulee starting about 1868 or so; Treaty #4 was signed in 1874; this was the same year the last survey monument was erected at Waterton Lake, completing the international boundary. In the same summer a member of the US Boundary Commission looking from a height could not see the end of a buffalo herd in any direction. The US policy of slaughtering buffalo to hobble the Indians came into play. 75,000 buffalo hides were shipped from Fort Benton, just south of the boundary, in 1876 (Hildebrandt, 1994). Sitting Bull after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, waited between here and Wood Mountain, with some 5000 Sioux in the late 1870s, most of the time monitored by the NWMP post at Chimney Coulee, sometimes called Chapel Coulee. Then the ranchers came seeking part of the 100,000 acre cattle grazing and ranching leases after 1887 that started with the introduction of that federal scheme in 1881 (see Thomas, 1970:7). A number of these big ranches were wiped out in the winter of 1906/07, only a few survived, the 76 Ranch being one of them. The Cree did not make progress on their treaty claims until the first and second decade of the 1900s (Butala, 1994; Hildebrandt et at, 1994). The ancestors of the current ranchers and farmers were homesteaders in the first and the tough years of the 1900s and today residents appeal to their First Nations,  Norwegian, Swedish, Irish, Scots, English, Métis, French and American backgrounds.

With thanks for residence and research assistance from Eastend Arts Council and Stegner House