Snow Ballet

Engagement Session and Party

Abandonment

As I surveyed one abandoned town after another I could feel the overwhelming sense of loss. What it felt like to live there. To a live a life which could be called sheltered but perhaps isolated is a better word as sheltered doesn’t seem to accurately describe the life of people who literally lived of the land. You can feel what Saskatchewan was essentially built upon.  Its not meant to be a place of cities. It’s meant to be a place of towns. Small village where people’s lives were based upon the weather, the land, their family, and religion.  There was no questioning of life allowed.  You accepted life and that was it.

 

 

People say that sometimes you should go back to your roots and try to remember where you came from. So you don’t forget who you are. It seems most people I meet have come from another country or their parents have or at least their grandparents. Not me. Except for one of my grandpa’s who came to Canada at the age of 12 , the rest of them were born and raised on farms in Saskatchewan  In fact they all lived almost their entire lives in rural communities in Saskatchewan never traveling or living elsewhere until their 70’s.  My parents both born into small communities both left them after high school as many people of the baby boomer generation did. This was the time when many towns and farming communities gradually deteriorated until only a shell of what they were remained. One room country school houses and teacherages shut down. Numerous houses and barns were abandoned. Entire towns and villages left behind to remain for many years to come. It seems that with each generation we move father from our parent’s view of the world.  Maybe each of us can only go so far..  Maybe our brains and our minds will only let us stretch to a certain point. And each generation we have more opportunity to go further and further. But sometimes looking back it seems like maybe our grandparents did have it all as if simplicity maybe really truly could be rewarding in its own way. Perhaps marrying into a town and being with family all the time and truly understanding the elements which make up your surroundings could almost be incredibly freeing despite it being very constricting. That is what I really find fascinating about older eras and ways of life.  However the reality of this life is very difficult. Their lives based upon prairie weather. Long long winters. Some not bad; others brutally cold.  And when summer does finally arrive its not without the battle of mosquitoes, grasshoppers, horseflies, wind, and hot prairie sun with no water in site. But at the same time I can almost sense how town life could be charming. I can imagine the people. Friendly, helpful, and hard working.  I can see their days filled with chores, having a family, and going to church.  Everyone more or less in the same social class with similar problems as well as similar hopes and beliefs. I can sense the simplicity of their lives and in a way I can be envious. I can get a sense of what it was like to not be given choices which in some ways would relive us of a lot of the things that we stress about.  But as each generation is given more we cannot truly imagine what it would be like to live your entire life in a community without any opportunity for more. Perhaps the fact that they didn’t expect more gave them peace of mind, as it seems many of us struggle to match our actual lives with our expectations. 

 

The more I thought about it the more I began to get a sense of why religion was so important. It was almost needed in order to focus your life on something. To build yourself a community and to give yourself some control. Some ability to put your life in a certain direction.  When I saw all of the remaining town and country churches, some of them still very quaint I could imagine the beauty of them in their prime as people gather together to be a part of something important. I can imagine them packed, person to person as everyone greets one another in their best Sunday wear.  To see the churches as they are now; many of them rundown, abandoned, left behind I know its more than a loss of a quaint building. It’s the loss of a feeling; an experience that cannot be recreated.  And it’s a change of value as each generation seems to let go of religion a little more than the one before it.

 

Essentially what this collection is about is not historical or beautiful buildings or old fallen down delapitated buildings although both are present.  Its really about the loss of a way of life. A way of life foreign to most people. A way of life that can never be recreated despite the remains which hold on which have marked their place for 50 or 60 years and continue to.  And whats really amazing is how untouched some of these places are. The pure isolation of them makes them almost impossible access to most people expect locals and those who scout them out. Neither of which would destroy them. 

 

As each generation is given more and pushes further away its gets harder to remember this way of life.  The longer I’m away from Saskatoon the harder it is for me to relive my life there, although the memories remain clear. And this must be what other who come from towns feel as they return.  Perhaps to see these places for them is sad or even depressing.  But to me its just fascinating, Its make believe. Its so far away from reality that its special. It’s a little window into the remains of other people’s lives. Their secrets and their memories.  Their world view so limited but yet so rich with human experience.  They worked hard as tasks and chores must be accomplished. As the same jobs repeat themselves year after year.  But you can still imagine them enjoying life. Going to dances, playing cards, visiting with friends.   There is something to be said about not having a lot.  It helps to build your imagination.  There is something to be said about kids inventing games in the middle of nowhere that is so much better than any video game or ipod. Land and space can change the way you think about things.   And to those who remain it’s their perspective that keeps them there.  Something they see and enjoy in that life. Something to hold onto.