When I was young, driving from Ontario to Manitoba to visit relatives, I always looked for my first grain elevator.When I saw it, against the horizon east of Winnpeg, I knew that I was surely in the West. Like many others over the years, I loved the sight of the prairie elevator standing like a sentinel against the horizon.
Unfortunately, it is a sight that is disappearing.
Eleven-year-old Aleshia Besplug of the Madison, Sask., area is unhappy about the demise of so many elevators. She wants to start a letter writing campaign to elevator companies and to premier Roy Romanow to save the province’s elevators.
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In a Sept. 5 letter to the premier, Aleshia says: “I’m writing because I’m wondering why are we tearing our elevators down. Did you know that we are the only country in the world down-grading our railroad?
“My family lives pretty close to the railroad. When I was little I used to hear trains all the time and what about the next generation of people, they probably will only see elevators on pictures.”
“The elevators will be gone just like the dinosaurs,” she continues, and farmers will have to truck their grain 40 miles to “those big ugly giant cement things!”
Saskatchewan’s landscape will change, she writes, with the elevators gone. “There are people chaining themselves to trees while we’re tearing down elevators.
“Think how much lumber we’re wasting,” Aleshia writes.
“I am starting a writing campainge (sic) against tearing down our elevators. Kids like me will be writing to the elevator companies and you! Please read this letter before Saskatchewan’s history is destroyed.”
Aleshia told me that she wrote her letter because she is “mad.” She has heard her mother, Laurie Besplug, who owns an on-farm art gallery, talking about the history being destroyed as the elevators go down. And, she said, coming home from Saskatoon recently, she was angry to see the elevators in a nearby small community had been torn down in her absence.
Aleshia’s mother, Laurie, echoes her daughter’s anger. “That was our landmark,” she said. “I almost missed our turn because the elevator was gone. I couldn’t believe it.” Five elevators have been torn down in the area in recent days, she said.
“They’re tearing down our history before our eyes and we aren’t doing anything about it,” she fumed.
