The Souris Valley in southeastern Saskatchewan offers great road trips. The most convenient starting point is Estevan, known as the Sunshine Capital of Canada, said to have more hours of sunshine than any city in the country. It’s also considered the Energy Capital of Saskatchewan because of the importance of oil and gas production and […] Read more
Tag Archives history
Artist about town: retelling history in murals
This Alberta painter has worked in a variety of mediums, but it’s the larger-than-life murals that keep him the most busy
RED DEER —John Ellenberger of Little John’s Custom Painting is a sign painter by trade, a mural artist by request and a teacher by default. Many of his murals portray history in larger-than-life colour — a lesson in from where and how far we’ve come. “Everyone wants to show the history of their town,” says […] Read more
Farmers restore Canadian war bomber
‘We didn’t know it was impossible, so we did it,’ say Fairview farmers who restored Canso PBY-5A airplane
FAIRVIEW, Alta. — Dreams took flight June 18 for six farmers from Fairview and for a community of volunteers who shared in their vision. The Canso PBY-5A soared that day for the first time in 16 years, the last nine of them spent in restoration. As one of only 13 Canso aircraft still listed as […] Read more
History book closes on lost sports star
PILOT MOUND, Man. — An international hunt has ended with proof that once-famous Scottish and Liverpool Football Club player John Walker is buried in this Manitoba community on the edge of a rural cemetery, marked only by his name and the dates he lived on a plain gravestone. It helps fill in missing details of the […] Read more
Former farm worker keeps university’s ag history alive
EDMONTON — The big cream-coloured hip roofed barn on the University of Alberta’s south campus has housed pigs, dairy cattle, elk, rabbit, moose and yak. Now it holds the history of agriculture. Along the walls are pictures of winning show cattle and horses, an old X-ray machine for sheep research, horse harness, grain sorters, tack […] Read more
Where once were racoons, a museum shall rise
Fundraising is underway to move the Wrentham elevator, still in working order after 90 years
WRENTHAM, Alta. — Ogilvie elevator No. 156 has a kind of settled dignity as it squats along this hamlet’s once proud elevator row. The 90-year-old dowager is showing its age, but if efforts by the Ogilvie Wooden Grain Elevator Society are successful, it may find new life and refurbishment at the Galt Historic Railway Park […] Read more
Learning about past through food
It’s not Christmas unless there’s food on the table, and Amy Jo Ehman’s new book has some interesting dishes to include. Out of Old Saskatchewan Kitchens, Ehman’s second book, pieces together Saskatchewan’s history from the 1870s to 1920s with food from Metis, First Nations and European homesteaders. “To me, it’s a story of Saskatchewan’s early […] Read more
Historic agricultural fair building refurbished
Dominion Exhibition Display Building No. II | It is one of the few remaining buildings from the Dominion fair era in Canada
Visitors almost needed welding helmets to look directly at the four silver domes and gleaming white walls of Dominion Exhibition Display Building No. II on a brilliant but chilly day in early April. The roof, walls and windows look fully refurbished after years of renovations on the building, which was built in Brandon in 1913 […] Read more
Aboriginal rock art offers look into past
Ancient images carved on weathered rock gaze over the meandering river, its green banks lined with a fairytale landscape of eroded cliffs and whimsically sculpted hoodoos. Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park has two claims to fame: the largest collection of aboriginal rock art on the North American Great Plains and an unusual and delightful prairie landscape. The […] Read more
Stelmach home represents pioneer life
ELK ISLAND, Alta. — Former Alberta premier and agriculture minister Ed Stelmach said it was a “good feeling of remembrance” as he watched his grandparents’ home move from his Andrew farm to its new location at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. Stelmach’s grandparents came to Canada with 12 other families from the same village in […] Read more
