Got a grain elevator in your backyard?
If so, the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation wants to hear from you.
The foundation is updating its inventory of grain elevators and wants those that were bought and moved to farms to be on the list, said foundation chair Bill Brennan.
The first inventory was done in 1999-2000 when about 900 elevators were listed. The foundation has a file for each facility, containing information obtained mainly from elevator companies, including the date the elevator was built, who built it, subsequent ownership and current condition.
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From that list, a short list of between 50 and 60 elevators was created to identify the ones the foundation thought were important or worthy of designation as a municipal or provincial heritage property.
Brennan said he expects the status of many of the 900 elevators to have changed even in the short time since the first inventory was done.
“One of the biggest challenges in the second phase is tracking the elevators that were decommissioned and moved off site,” he said.
The foundation also wants to update its short list and create a preliminary inventory of the large concrete terminals built since the mid-1970s, beginning with Weyburn Inland Terminal.
“The day will come when we will regard the concrete terminal as an important part of the Saskatchewan landscape,” Brennan said. “Can one look ahead 100 years and imagine Weyburn Inland Terminal being designated (as heritage property) as the first of its kind?”
Brennan said an inventory will help groups and communities that want to restore and improve local elevators.
The “great find” of the first inventory was the Lake of the Woods Milling Co. elevator built in 1895 in Fleming, near the Manitoba border on the Trans-Canada Highway.
It is the oldest elevator still standing and has received municipal designation as a heritage property. Restoration is under way and Brennan said he hopes someone has a photograph that shows the elevator’s original colour. The only photo he’s seen, from 1913, is in black and white.
“It wasn’t white,” he said.
The grain elevator was an American invention that, along with other inventions of the late 19th century, transformed farming in Canada. The elevators replaced flat-topped warehouses that Brennan said were “unbelievably inefficient.”
Ogilvie Flour Mills built the first wooden country elevator in Gretna, Man., in 1881. By 1884 elevators had appeared in Saskatchewan in Whitewood and Moosomin, indicating the close relationship the grain and flour companies had with the establishment of rail lines.
About seven Saskatchewan elevators have already been designated as municipal heritage properties and Brennan said some – Fleming, in particular, since it pre-dates the province – could receive provincial designation.
Designation is based on age and unique features. Individual companies had their own styles of elevators and some, like the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Co., had their own construction departments.
Hundreds of elevators have already been demolished and many of those still standing face a grim future as rural Saskatchewan’s population declines and rail lines are abandoned.
Those with information for the foundation can contact researcher Ray Ambrosi at 306-522-9793 or saskelevators@cyr.gov.sk.ca.
