This morning we go for a little tour of the Unity area.  Back to the old farm where Stu’s grandparents lived and to Art and Dorothy’s old farm house.

Art and Dorothy’s old farm house

The road around the Gas Caverns in Unity

Wheat. We feel that this is the first wheat we have seen this trip

After this tour we pack up and head off to Calgary.  Another of Stu’s Aunts lives there and we will be visiting with Pat McLean and Peter for a couple of nights.

As we move west we see this truck with it’s trail of dust as it speeds along the gravel road next to Highway 1.

I still can’t resist taking photos of the Canola!  It is sooo beautiful.

This is what happens when you travel the gravel!!

We arrived at Pat’s partner Peter’s condo about 4:20.  We enjoyed a visit and a glass of wine with Pat and Peter before Aaron, Stu’s first cousin once removed 😉 and his wife Natasha and son Mason arrive.  Mason is 18 months old and a bit shy at first.  It isn’t long before he warms up to us all and is very comfortable and entertaining.

Aaron & Mason

Natasha & Mason

Pat & Mason

After Aaron and his family head home Pat and Peter teach us Saskatchewan Rummy.  We spend a great evening playing cards even though we were losers!!!  🙂

I have seen this little trick on Facebook, a post called “Travel Hacks”.  When the drapes don’t close properly, use the hangers to clip them closed.  It would have worked great except for the light leaking from each side and the top!  🙂

This photo isn’t the best, but it will give an idea of how beautiful the lobby of this hotel is.  Again, it was built in 1928 and closed for a 13 year renovation.

We are heading north east to Unity Saskatchewan to visit Stu’s Aunt Dorthy, Uncle Art and one of his cousins, Sandra and her husband Marvin.  It has been 15 years since we last came to Unity.  Well over due visit.  🙂

When we arrive we take a drive around the town where Stu’s Grandma McLean lived and he and his family would visit regularly.  He recognizes some streets and the street where his Grandma lived.  We arrive at Hotel Finnell and take some photos of the state of our car.

Dorothy is cooking a roast beef for dinner and Stu’s cousin Sandra and her husband arrive shortly, along with their little dog Charlie.   Along with a wonderful meal, we have a great visit with everyone. For some reason, we didn’t get any photos of these fabulous people

🙁

We have been enjoying the company of family the past few days and haven’t found the time to write. I wilk catch up in the next day or 2. 😄

Last night I discovered that my Maternal Great Grandmother is buried in Moose Jaw.  We decide to walk to the cemetery this morning before the day heated up too much.  It was a bit farther than I recalled from last night.  It was about 2.5 km from our hotel.  We walked through modest neighborhoods on the way.   When we arrived we found a very large cemetery.  Not the small village cemetery like the Little Woody Cemetery.  Certainly no way I would stumble upon her grave.  There is a sign on the door of the office with a phone number to call for grave sites.  I called and got the location of my Great Grandmothers grave.  It was close to the office and we found it quite quickly.

I first saw the stone with Hutton.  It was my Grandmother.  I am surprised because she passed away in Regina and had lived there for many years, so I assumed that she was buried there.  She was beside her mother and her first husband.

We have tickets for the other tour available at the Moose Jaw Tunnels.  This tour is called “The Passage to Fortune”.  This tour details the lives of the Chinese immigrants that came to Canada in the early 1900’s.  It is a sad legacy we have.  These poor people came to Canada to improve their lives but the reality was so much different than they were expecting.  Interesting history lesson, albeit disturbing.  The tour guide warned us that as part of his act he would berate us and yell at us.  We had one little girl about 3 years old.  Poor little thing, she didn’t understand that he was just acting, demonstrating how the Chinese people were treated.  She was glad when it was done.  🙂

We walk back as the day starts to heat up.  So are the streets.

It is a busy time in Moose Jaw.

The Al Capone Motel

View of the rooms

This is the hotel on the corner. It used to have a turret on the corner

This is the old Railway Station, now a liquour store

The inside of the store/station

Our hotel. Grant Hall Hotel

Some Side Walk Days entertainment

We started off the day by finding the car wash we noticed yesterday.  The result of our having to Travel the Gravel on our car was a dusty bug splattered mess!!  We figured out the system at the car wash with the help from a lady ahead of us.  Pretty simply really.  Because you have no loonies, you put your $20 bill into the change machine and get about a pound of loonies, then you select the option you want, like bug wash, soap, rinse etc.  We selected the bug wash first as the front of the car and front of the side view mirrors resemble a Jackson Pollock painting.  Lots of multi-coloured bug guts.  We let the bug wash work for a bit and load another loonie in once we change the selection to soap, we do a couple of loonies worth of soap before we go for a loonie of rinsing.  We leave with a cleaner car, not a perfectly clean car, but a cleaner car 🙂

We head north towards Moose Jaw.  It is only about an hour away so we get their quickly.  We find the hotel we have booked.  It is quite impressive.  It was built in 1928.  It operated as a hotel until 1990 when it was closed for renovations that lasted 13 years!!!   Ka-ching, ka-ching!!  They are still doing some renovations today.  This is the inside of the elevator.  You don’t see this style of panel very often these days.

This is a photo from their web site.  It looks exactly like our room.

We had heard before we arrived that Al Capone spent a lot of time in Moose Jaw in the 1920’s.  There was a rail line that took him from Chicago right to Moose Jaw.  There are tunnels below this city that he is purported to have used to hide from authorities.

There is a company that does tours of the Capone tunnels, with cast members that play characters from the time of Capone.  They made the tour a lot of fun and gave us a glimpse of what Moose Jaw was like in the late 1920’s.

After our tour we headed to a cute little bar called Rosies on the River.  It is on River Street which used to be the Red Light District in Moose Jaw in the 20’s.  We initially sat inside as it is very very hot here today.  We were chatting with some local residents at the next table.  They had some great insights into the Bad Lands of Saskatchewan, which Willow Bunch and Fife Lake are part of.  They left and a couple that were on our Tunnel tour invited us over to sit with them outside.  There is now a nice breeze, so it is quite pleasant out there.  These people are from New Zealand and have been travelling in North America for a couple of weeks.  They purchased a Dodge Caravan van in Quebec for $1,700 and have travelled a long way in Canada.  About 7,000 kms so far.  They sleep in the van and find parking/camping spots in lovely Canadian National Parks and other beautiful wild spots.  It was a great afternoon.

Another interesting thing about Southern Saskatchewan that we didn’t know before a few weeks ago.  No photos were allowed, so not many images today.

We arrived late in the afternoon to Fife Lake yesterday and decided to head to Assiniboia to check into our hotel and come back to visit the Willow Bunch Museum and Fife Lake again tomorrow.

It is only about 20 minutes until we see the signs touting Willow Bunch’s most famous son.

Edouard Beaupre.  He grew to be 8’3″ tall due to a pituitary gland tumor which wasn’t discovered until after his death.  He died at age 23 from complications of TB.  He earned a living as a Ringling Brothers Circus attraction.  I do remember my Mom mentioning him.

The Willow Bunch Museum has a whole room devoted to him.  In the museum there is a wall dedicated to Willow Bunch residents that served in the war.  We found Aunt Winnifred, Uncle Walter and Auntie Jean, in a group almost together.  In another document it says that my Auntie Jean joined the Air Force as a Tailor.  I did not know that.  She was an amazing seamstress, I knew, but not that she was a tailor in the Air Force.

Front Entrance to the Willow Bunch Museum

The front walkway with his giant foot prints

A life size replica of him with me beside him 🙂

Another statue outside

Side view of the museum

Sitting Bull

The circled photos are of my Aunt Winnifred, Aunt Jean and Uncle Walter

There is also a story line in Willow Bunch about Chief Sitting Bull.  He apparently fled to Canada after he and his warriors massacred Custer and his men at Little Big Horn.  I don’t recall my parents mentioning anything about Sitting Bull.  Seems like a big story, so not sure why??  Maybe they weren’t aware.

In the museum we find some books that look familiar to me.  I think we have copies at home 🙂  I guess I could have done some reading before we left.  Hahahah.  I find a couple paragraphs in one book describing how my Grandfather (Pete Seigo, Reeve of Fife Lake for 6 years) heading up the building of a dam that bore his name and a second telling of the annual Seigo Dam Sports Day.  Interesting!!

We drive up to the Willow Bunch Golf Course.  This sign may seem odd to people from BC, but here in Saskatchewan it is common to have dirt greens on golf courses.  This one is proud to have grass greens!!

Our next objective is to find the Little Woody Cemetery.  My Maternal Grandfather William Hutton is buried there.  To accomplish this next task we must “travel the gravel” a term we learned later.  We drive about 30 kms of gravel roads, miss the cemetery and double back to find it.

Travel the gravel

Little Woody Cemetry

My Grandfather Hutton’s (L) and my Great Grandfather Sinden (R)

The car is a mess!!

Mission accomplished!!  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Next up Fife Lake where my Dad was born and raised.  We turned right and see something odd in the road ahead of us.  At first we aren’t sure what it is.  I guess I still don’t know what it is called 🙂  Even google couldn’t help me put a name to this piece of farm equipment.  He must have seen us coming as he pulled over to the right to make room for us, but kept on moving.  Not something we see at home driving down the road.

We are getting closer to Fife Lake.  I was there once when I was about 13.  I remember the adults visiting in the hotel beer parlour while all of the kids hung out in the street.  In 1965 or 66 Fife Lake was a bigger town.

Boasts Dining and Beds

And the BEST Steaks in Town!!!

A fox greeted us

Welcome sign

The Main Street

The Fife Lake Hotel

More of the main street

We stop in for lunch.  The hotel says they have the “Best Steaks in Town”.  I believe them, hahaha.  The on duty bar tender says she can do a burger, but she won’t do a steak.  OK  a burger it is!!  It takes a while, so we wander around looking at the photos on the walls and laminated into the tables.  This is the Fife Lake Museum  🙂 🙂

There are photos from a reunion held in 1994.  I am certain that my parents came back for that event.  I will have to look up the photos that we must definitely have from that reunion.

The Beverage Room has a little fenced off area called the Bull Pen.  The Bull Pen houses 3 slot machines.  Not only is this the Fife Lake Museum, but it is also the Fife Lake Casino!!   No Joan, there are  no Long Horn machines in the Bull Pen!!  There are 2 ladies in the Bull Pen playing their favourite machine and chatting.  They pop out every once in a while, so we chat them up about the history of the Village and the families that are still there.  We talk about names that I recognize from my life.  The Cowans, cousins of my Mom.  The Lutz’s, cousins of my Dad.  Bollinger’s, more cousins of my Dad.  Eger’s, Fritz’s,  Strange’s and a bunch that I have already forgotten again.  They remember Seigo Dam and try to give us directions, but it is too vague for us.  We decide to head back to Assiniboia.  Happy, feeling like we saw so much today.   We leave Fife Lake passing by this.  It puts a smile on our faces 🙂

There are some very beautiful scenes along the way back.  We can’t help but photograph them.   Here are a few more scenes of the “Big Muddy” area of Saskatchewan.

More canola

Farmstead in decay

A sea of green

Round Bales of Hay

Travel the gravel 2

I forgot to add this to yesterday’s post.  We saw this guy just trotting through the fields.  We felt that he was just a youngster.  Our first moose!!

After having picked up coffee at the A&W near our motel we started off for Cadillac that is about 40 minutes south of Swift Current.  It doesn’t take long for us to be out in the middle of nowhere.

We see a sign indicating a point of interest ahead, so we pull over to check it out.  The point of interest is two small markers on the east side of the road.

The plaque describes:

Fort Walsh- Fort Qu’Appelle Trail

In the mid 19th Century the trail, which passed near here was the major route linking the Cypress Hills and Fort Qu’Appelle. Fur traders used it to transport the provisions, which they had acquired through trade or hunting, back to Fort Qu’Appelle. From there, the pemmican and dried or pounded meat were shipped to more northerly posts.

After 1875 The North West Mounted Police used it to conduct patrols from their post at Fort Walsh in The Cypress Hills, until railways and then highways were constructed. This trail was the main transportation route of the ranchers and homesteaders who came to South-Western Saskatchewan.

The road is long and straight.

It isn’t long until we arrive in Cadillac.  They have.cute Welcome sign. The wheels spin in the wind  🙂

The street signs are also interesting.  The streets, like the town are named after cars.

Southern Saskatchewan has a big french population.  We are told that Cadillac  (the town and the car) is named after an explorer.  Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was a French explorer and adventurer in New France.

We see the Cadillac Museum.

It isn’t open at the moment, but there is a sign……

So we call Luanne!!  She lives next door and tells us that she will be there in a few minutes.  She arrives and gives us the keys to enter as she has a bad hip and is slower to get up the steps.

We had enjoyed our chat with Luanne.  She was happy to talk to new people.  Cadillac has less than 100 people today.

This is the school that we assume Stu’s Dad went to.  According to Luanne it was bought by an Artist from Alberta named Robert Scott.  He has created a living space for himself and has large studio space as he creates very large murals.

We also found out that the Hotel bar opens at 11:00 and that they have good meals.  We are hungry, so we head over brunch.  Sadly it is closed.

We are hungry so we leave town in search of food.  We set Google Maps to Fife Lake, the town that my father grew up. Odd that our fathers and my mother, born the same year and  grew up 2 hours from each other in this province!!   Along the way we come to Ponteix the next town to the east.

We find a bigger town than Cadillac, with more amenities.

We have a great breakfast.  2 eggs, lots of bacon, hash brown potatoes and toast for $6.50 each.  Very satisfied we headed off to the next ancestral homestead.

Along the way we see homesteads that were obviously someones dream home at one point.  Large main house, large barn and outbuildings that most likely housed hired workers for the farm.  Today not so impressive.

We come to a town called Rockglen.  This name is very familiar to me.  I often heard my parents and other relatives speak about this town.  I must have seen it when I was here when I was about 12, but I was happy to see it again.  I found myself really wanting to be able to talk to my Mom, ask her a lot of questions……  🙁

We drive through some very interesting landscapes.  We all expect the  prairies to be flat, the roads long and straight.  In this part of Saskatchewan, there are lots of hills and valleys and winding roads.  It does eventually flatten and straighten out again by the time we reach Fife Lake.

We do drive through the town, but are feeling a bit tired and decide that tomorrow is the day we come back to Fife Lake for lunch at the Fife Lake Hotel.

We have a hotel in Assiniboia so we head for there as it is about 30 minutes north.  Back tomorrow to continue our heritage tour.  🙂

This is our 50’s style motel in Swift Current.  It was clean and very reasonably priced, and had some good reviews.  Hey, we’ve been to Peru , this is nothing 😉

We were very happy with our choice until about 5 am when I think they changed dumpsters just outside of our room.   grrrr.  Then after we settled back to sleep, a car alarm just outside our door, we thought it was our car!!  🙂

We started our day with a wonderful breakfast at our guest house.  This is the plate that was placed before us.  I initially thought it odd that we were served whole potatoes and hash browns with our eggs, but what appeared to be whole roasted potatoes were actually sausages that our hostess buys from a company in Calgary.  Very tasty chicken sausages.

We headed out of town and very quickly came to the site of the Frank Slide.  In 1903 Turtle Mountain collapsed and spread tonnes of rock and debris across highway 3, the river, the railroad tracks and parts of the town of Frank, Alberta.  The debris field is still amazing to see.  From what we read on the information boards it is suspected that mining activity caused the weakening of the north slope of Turtle Mountain causing the slide.  The mining company has disputed this claim for well over 100 years.  The geologists for that same period of time hold fast to their beliefs.

Farther east from here the landscape flattens out and we are now in farmland where we come across the amazing yellow fields of canola.   They command us to photograph them.  🙂

We are also noticing that in this part of southern Alberta a new type of farm has emerged.  Wind farms.  There are many wind turbines dotting the landscape in this part of Alberta.

We are now travelling on long straight flat highways.  We can see mirages in our path.  There is a very scientific explanation for this phenomenon, probably quite boring.  What we see is what looks like water about 100 meters ahead of us, never getting closer or farther away.  Quite interesting.

We are seeing signs of very large agricultural operations.  It seems that the small farms are long gone and huge farms have taken their place.  Here we see massive irrigation systems.

Also huge silos!

We had planned on staying in Shaunovan Saskatchewan tonight, but decided that we would like to stay in a larger city that has more dining options.  We decide to head to Swift Current.  We find a motel that reminds us of family trips when we were kids.  It has pretty great reviews and is very reasonably priced.  $70, including free wi-fi, a fridge, microwave and coffee maker.   Stu is taking a photo in the morning  🙂