Monuments of My People

You find a lot of stuff on the side of the road in Saskatchewan.  Cows.  Old machinery.  Abandoned Churches. 



 

South of Cadillac, SK

Abandoned houses.  But there is more.

All civilizations seem to create monuments, something to make them stand out from those other people down the road, or those who came before them.  Egypt has its pyramids.  Paris has it's Eiffel Tower.  London has Big Ben.  Rome its Colliseum.  As you saw a few blogs back, Medicine Hat, Alberta has it's teepee.  Out here in the prairies, we lack a bit of the population of some of those cities, so our monuments may have a little less grandeur, but they exist all the same.  It is after all the thought that counts, right?  Speaking of which, that reminds me of an episode of a prairie sitcom, Corner Gas, where the local residents are coming up with ideas for a monument of their own.  Take a second to watch this, I suspect you'll like it.

So Moose Jaw, rather obviously, has a giant moose.

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Ponteix has a Plesiosaur named Mo.  This may not make sense until you pull over and read that an almost intact Plesiosaur was found on the site in the 60's by a local boy, Bobby St. Cyr.

And driving towards Swift Current one day I came across another strange monument -- a very large weather vane on a farm....it has a real full size helicopter mounted on top.  I am not sure what the motivating factor was here, I am certain it is a lot of work to put a helicopter on a pole like that.  This also led to a discussion around my house of whether Dad might enjoy fixing up another old tractor, which I suggested could be put on the corner by our road.  In a Corner Gas-like moment, the idea was quickly dismissed because didn't I know how hard it would be to mount a tractor on a pole?  I never mentioned a pole, nor would I encourage the impaling of a tractor on a pole, but I gave up after a few minutes realizing the two ideas were forever intertwined and therefore never coming to pass.  Hopefully I never get the impulse to make my own monument...whether it be a giant cat or a microbe statue, I am certain it would be an eyesore in any neighbourhood.

What really got me onto the topic on monuments though is this -- the strangest prairie monument on them all, the giant boat in the middle of a field south of Moose Jaw.

Yes, it's a boat.  A giant prairie perched boat.  I love this thing.

I tried every method known to get my parents to pull over when we drove past this boat in a field on the side of the road when I was a kid.  Begging, pleading, whining, bargaining, even good behaviour, but it never happened.  So, when I made plans to go to Moose Jaw with my sister, I forewarned her that I was finally stopping at the boat, come hell or high water.  So why is there a boat  in a field in Saskatchewan?  I asked that question when I was young and the answer is part of my fascination with the whole thing.  Turns out there was a man from Finland, and Tom Sukanen is the name he adopted in North America.  He was a shipbuilder in Finland, and came to the US in 1898 looking to find a better life.  He landed in Minnesota, where he married the daughter of a Finnish Immigrant farmer who had passed away, and had 3 children.  Wanting to gain land of their own, he heard of Canada offering land to homesteaders, and so packed up and walked the 600 MILES to Saskatchewan promising to return, casually asking if anyone knew his brother along the way, until he found him and got a homestead of his own nearby.  He worked the land for five years, earned the titles and amassed the sizable fortune of $9000 in 1916, and promptly walked the 600 miles back to Minnesota to escort his wife and three children back to Canada (presumably on foot again).  Oh yeah, and he had to do some time in WW1 in those 5 years as well.  When he got back to Minnesota, he found his home empty,  His wife perished in the influenza epidemic in 1916, and the children were scattered into foster care.  2 he never found.  1 he was deported from the US for trying to reclaim.  He was forced to return to Saskatchewan alone with his broken dream.  He was a smart man, a bit of an inventor and engineer as well, and so he hatched a plan to build a ship and sail back home.  He first built a rowboat, sailed it north in the shallow creeks and rivers of Saskatchewan all the way to the Hudson Bay, where he made his passage back to Finland....but once again returned to SK, presumably to make the journey again on his own ship, with his possessions and fortunes.  While the Depression raged on, he built a vessel, in 3 parts, which could be floated from it's prairie shipyard to deeper waters, assembled there, and sailed home in the open ocean.  And it looks like it would have worked too, had malicious neighbours not had him committed to the funny farm where he died soon after in despair, far too young by today's standards.  How can one not be fascinated by a true tale such as this one?  Not possible I say.

To the credit of my sister (and I am grateful for her willingness), she not only agreed to stop at the boat, but happily gave up the better part of the day roaming through the museum that is one prairie boat and an entire pioneer village.



A whole early prairie village is recreated with building, equipment, and genuine articles from many decades

In a room of sewing machines, my sister was fascinated by what looks like a transvestite pioneer seamstress.  Seriously.

A hand powered bicycle built by our shipbuilder Tom -- in fact he built all the tools in the boat

My sister peeking out of a tiny chapel built for a small congregation...two pews I think

Very pretty little church, grand for its size, and well preserved

American pickers would love it here...but it's a museum so they can't pick...a whole fire hall of fire stuff

suits from the first days to quite modern, including fire, chemical, and hazmat

And of course, we ended the trip off with a visit to the "mall".  My sister cannot resist a mall, even one featuring items from the 20's with nothing for sale