today, would be MOM’S 100th BIRTHDAY

My mother Tina would have celebrated her birthday today, June 4. She has been absent from her family since November 2007. Time passes and memories blur in spite of the best intentions to remember. It is photographic images that arouse the recall. 

What an interesting woman Mom was. Born in Saskatchewan in a farming community, living in Waldheim and Hepburn, she had a grade nine education and she began to work hard at an early age. She was industrious from the start, knowing how to sew, how to bake and to cook. She did unskilled work, clerking and switchboard operator. She married Edward Richard Unruh, but soon their lives were interrupted by WWII and my father’s enlistment into the Royal Canadian Air Force. The post war years began with them teaming to start and to run a Coffee Shop in Hepburn. Soon however, Dad felt that opportunity for employment and a future existed in Ontario and the family, Dad, me, and a pregnant Mom moved to St. Catharines ON.

They rented accommodation for many years, a condemned two room shack, then a downtown St. Paul St. third floor apartment, then a full house in Rosedale Gardens, a suburban subdivision on the outside of St. Catharines, then a large house on Clark St., then to James St., and finally when I was twelve, and Mom was 37 we moved to the first home Mom and Dad owned. It was a 3 bedroom bungalow with unfinished basement on Bunting Rd., well outside downtown St. Catharines. 

During all of those years, while her children grew, Mom did housework for other women, some occasional sewing of garments. She was hired to sew costumes for the local skating club. She worked in her church, Calvary Church, always in the kitchen. It was what she knew best to do, and what she became known for. In fact, over time, she operated her own Catering Business, and prepared grand dinners for large gatherings of corporations and families. Wealthy people hired Tina Unruh. Her happiest employment was as Day-time Food Services provider for Ontario Paper head office. She even prepared a cook book of her many recipes and those of others, and had my brother Neale and I design some art work, then self published 1000 copies and sold them all. 

Perhaps her greatest personal fulfillment was found as she worked with the local church women’s group, took on a leadership roll, and became recognized as a woman of integrity, of spirituality and was elected eventually to the presidency of the entire southern Ontario region. She had to lead meetings, give talks and presentations, and while humbled and sometimes terrified, she amazed herself that she could do this and that her leadership was valued. By this time, her three sons, were each of us in some form of Christian ministry ourselves. She would say over and over that we were a constant source of joy for her. 

She was a much loved mother and grandmother and great grandmother.
See also, an archived tribute from 2011.
See entry for November 2011 on a fourth anniversary of her death.

Remembrance Day - my father - Edward Richard Unruh

Edward Richard Unruh - I honour my father today and his love for Canada, the country of his birth to parents who emigrated from Mennonite villages in Russian owned Ukraine during the 1800's. From within the Mennonite town of Hepburn, SK, which was predominantly pacifist by conviction, Dad stepped forward to join the Royal Canadian Air Force when I was a newborn. He returned home. My brothers and I were blessed to grow up with his influence in our lives. I am proud to remember my father and his comrades on the Remembrance Day and will forever be grateful for our freedoms that they preserved.

EDWARD RICHARD UNRUH DIED MAY 1, 2008

May 1st is the anniversary of my Dad's death. I cannot own him by myself. We are three sons of Edward Richard Unruh. Our father passed away on May 1, 2008.

Murray, Neale and I will remember him with pleasure today. Such a good man, a gentle man he was. Faithful, constant, loving in a reserved manner appropriate to his generation I suppose. Through the years, even as he aged, he seemed enduring, unchanging, always there when I visited, or Neale visited or when Murray regularly took him for a coffee at Horton's. Murray and Diane know our lasting gratitude for their years of loving care. Even during the last years when Mom's dementia required her care in a nursing facility, Dad remained in his apartment, looking after most of his own needs. And then he was gone, quietly, peacefully.

Like millions of other men, Dad distinguished himself, as son, a husband, and a father. I would like you to know him. He was born the last of four children to Cornelius K. Unruh and his wife Katherine. His childhood home was the prairie town of Hepburn, Saskatchewan, where he acquired a grade eleven education. Then he began to work at numerous jobs. Edward, fell in love with Tina Martha (Doerksen) Willems, four years younger than himself. Willems was her step family surname. Doerksen was on her birth certificate from Montana where her birth father Isaac Doerksen died when she was two years of age. Their love took them happily through 66 years until Mom passed away. In his twenties he owned and operated a 'filling' station as it was called (gas station). Together, Mom And Dad set up a coffee shop on the main street. Then WWII happened and Dad enlisted in the Canadian Air Force, which was an exceptional act in a town of Mennonite pacifists. He was an airplane mechanic. When the war was over, they looked at the future for their family, measured employment options, and the many factory jobs in Ontario seemed attractive. Dad, Mom and me at age four, moved to St. Catharines. Dad worked for Thompson Products, Ontario Paper Mill and finally Anthes Imperial, where he remained for over forty years. Anthes built furnaces and dad worked in the heat of the foundry, in the cab of an aerial crane, and then for decades on the assembly line. He often came home exhausted. He would clean up and settle down with his newspaper, sometimes draped over his face as he napped on the sofa. His work ethic was a commendable model for his three boys. Well into our own manhood, one day we asked him why he stayed at such difficult work for so long. A six-word reply revealed the man. “I did it for my boys.”

He purchased a family home before he turned forty years of age. He took his family to a rented cottage for summer vacations. He took us for Sunday afternoon car rides. He sang with us. He yodeled. He was proud of us. He loved our Mother. When we married, his love for our brides gave them a strong sense of comfort in an extended family. He trusted in God, and he supported all three of us as we took on Christian service vocations.

Dad never took a leadership position at church. If he was asked to be on committees or boards he declined. He knew his strengths and limitations. He enjoyed serving but the service had to be in the areas of comfort and competence. Smart man. Private man. Honorable man.

In November 2007, our Mom passed away. The night before the memorial service as our family stood together at her coffin, Dad said, "Goodnight sweetheart, I'll see you soon." His loss was profound, we are sure of that. Yet Dad was stoic. Mom had been ill for several years and it was time for her to go. Perhaps a man knows when it is his time as well. One evening six months later, he enjoyed a dinner at Murray and Diane's home. Beth and Eric were there, as were their daughters Selah and Karis. After the meal Murray drove him home. Before bed, a nurse arrived to dispense medication but found Dad lying on the floor. With no evident bruises, it was supposed that he felt unwell and was heading for the couch, but lay down on the rug and died there.

A 2014 TRIBUTE TO MOM UNRUH for MOTHER'S DAY

on her wedding day, in pink

Mom was born Tina Martha Doerksen, the second of two children to Isaac and Marie Doerksen. Her brother Peter (Pete) was two years older. They were small children when 29-year-old Isaac died on their acreage in Montana, to which they had moved from Minnesota. For a reason unknown to descendants, Grandma Doerksen moved to Saskatchewan where she met and married Abram Willems, a recent widower with six children. My mom was now a stepchild to Mr. Willems. Marie bore five more children to Abram and her hands and her life was full of responsibility. The initial Willems six had loved their birth mom and it was difficult to acquire affection for this stand-in mom. At age 17 Pete, left the farm and travelled back to Minnesota and distant family. Losing him hurt mom deeply. This was post WW1 and Pre-WW2 Prairie life, lean, meager, subsistence living. Mom managed to stay in school until grade 9 when she had to go to work, gardening, housecleaning, anything for a tiny stipend. She was a baptized believer, a churchgoer, a choir member, a good lady, very attractive with long dark hair. There were early family incidents, secrets about which she never spoke.

Ed Unruh noticed her when she was 19 and she agreed to marry him when she was 22. He was 26, a very good man, but he also was not a Christian. In the Mennonite community of Hepburn Sk., that relationship was forbidden. She could not be married in the church, and she could not wear a white gown. Those were the graceless cultural rules. Had anyone asked Ed why he was not a child of faith, they would have learned that he didn’t understand mercy and forgiveness. His parents were god-fearing people, and he saw his mother go daily into the barn, bow on her knees in prayer, and he concluded that he did not qualify and could not live up to such devotion. He liked jazz and dance music and an occasional cigarette and a bottle of beer.

But Dad loved his country Canada, and when war broke out, he enlisted in the RCAF, another dissident act in a pacifist community. And Mom gave him up for those war years as she nursed me. I saw him occasionally. She and I travelled with him to Gananoque for one of his postings but then he was shipped to White Horse, Alaska and mom and I were back in Hepburn. In post war years, mom and dad ran their own coffee shop and gas station, made the decision to move to Ontario and dad began working in factories. Mom bore Murray, five years my junior and much later Neale, eleven years younger than I. During those early years, my mother contributed to the family income by sewing clothes for others, costumes for the Ice Skating company, some house cleaning for others, and cooking special meals when commissioned. She developed this into a remarkable home-based catering business and was in demand by wealthy families to serve up delicious custom ordered dinners for many people. Part of her Christian service was head chef at Fair Havens Conference Grounds for many summers. Eventually Mom landed a role with Ontario Paper Mill Head Office to prepare lunches and coffee break snacks. She assembled her recipes to produce a cookbook for which Neale and I provided graphics, and she printed 1000 copies, all of them gone quickly.

During her primary working years the 117 pound young women became a hefty 185 with arms like Hulk Hogan, and then in retirement and following a drastic emergency surgery, she became petite once again. For some early years she questioned herself because she had married a non-Christian, but Dad at age 37 put his trust in Christ. All three of her sons grew up to become involved in Christian work. Her supreme surprise and satisfaction came from recognition of her leadership skills by other women and their investment of confidence by electing her to President of a Christian women’s organization. For several years she wrote monthly articles and marvelled that a grade nine grad could have accomplished this.

She lived until November 2007 when she was 88 years of age, her last years being difficult until her mind could not recognize her predicament any longer. She is in paradise now, as surely as when Jesus spoke to a convicted felon impaled beside him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” If true for him, then certainly for her.

JUNE 4 IS MOM'S BIRTHDAY

On this fourth of June, I am on a return flight from Toronto to Vancouver having been away for five weeks. We have been in Wales and England honouring my wife Christine as she celebrates her seventy years.

As I fly I am remembering my mother Tina, for whom this day was a birthday. She lived to celebrate 88 of those birthdays and she has been away from her family since November 2007.

We miss her still yet time passes quickly enough that the blurring of memories occurs in spite of our desire to remember. It is photographic images that arouse the recall.

What an interesting woman Mom was. Born in Saskatchewan in a farming community, living in Waldheim and Hepburn, she had a grade nine education and she began to work hard at an early age. She was industrious from the start, knowing how to sew, how to bake and to cook. She did unskilled work, clerking and switchboard operator. She married Edward Richard Unruh, but soon their lives were interrupted by WWII and my father’s enlistment into the Royal Canadian Air Force. The post war years began with them teaming to start and to run a Coffee Shop in Hepburn. Soon however, Dad felt that opportunity for employment and a future existed in Ontario and the family, Dad, me, and a pregnant Mom moved to St. Catharines ON.

LEAVING A LEGACY - MAY THEY FIND US TO HAVE BEEN FAITHFUL

Both maternal and paternal sides of my heritage derive from a persecuted people group known as Mennonites who found refuge in Empress Catherine II's Russia and were permitted to establish themselves in colonies in Crimea. Stalin changed that. Researching my paternal ancestral tree has taught me that in every generation going back into the 1700’s, there was a missionary, a pastor, a church elder, a theologian/teacher. From a family of seven siblings living in Temir Bulat, Crimea in the late 1800’s my grandfather was one of three who emigrated to North America. Coming through the northern states to Saskatchewan where he settled with a new bride. In Hepburn, my father and I were born. I began my personal journey of faith when I was ten years of age. As I write in 2010, fifty seven and one half years have passed. I am more convinced today than I was as a boy that an exclusive trust in the Son of God is imperative. Further, the legacy of faith which I received has been nurtured far beyond a superficial institutional belief to something enduringly exceptional. I am convinced that I must leave my children and specially my grandchildren an example of faith and the prescription for making faith their own.

American recording vocalist Steve Green hit his stride during the 1980’s and one of his songs was ‘Find us Faithful.’ These lyrics speak my sentiments. I have linked two YouTube files where you can hear him singing this today, twenty-five years later, and also when he sang it as a young man. Of course the studio settings are a wee bit churchy and clichéd but appreciate this for the tune and the words.

Find Us Faithful - Steve Green
We're pilgrims on the journey
Of the narrow road
And those who've gone before us line the way
Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary
Their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who've gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

Chorus:
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift though all we've left behind
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find

Repeat Chorus

* Steve Green sings it for the Gaither Vocal Band
* Steve singing it as a younger man when the song was first introduced.
* A link to Steve Green’s Web Site and Foundation

Steve Green (born August 1, 1956 in Portland, Oregon) is a Contemporary Christian music singer notable for his vocal range (tenor) and flexible solo style. Over his twenty-five year career, Green has been honored as a four-time Grammy Award nominee, seven-time Dove Award winner, has had 13 No. 1 songs, and has sold over three million albums.

From the Prairies to Ontario

It was 1947.

The Second World War had concluded. My father was home from his service in the Canadian Air Force. Canada had the role of trainer of pilots and aircrew for the Allied war effort under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, an agreement signed in December 1939 by Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Dad was one of the aircraft maintenance personnel that prepared aircraft, so he was stationed in Ontario, Vancouver and Skagway, Alaska. He had never shipped overseas.

Following he war my father and mother worked in their home town of Hepburn Saskatchewan but opportunities to advance oneself were absent so they chose the great adventure of moving east, to the golden triangle, the Niagara Peninsula, and specifically St. Catharines, the Garden City. I was four years old.

My parents found a run down wooden shack on Geneva Street in which they could live as they looked for work and settled into this new life. My mom was pregnant. I remember this place being back from the busy road, and consisting of one room, with a curtain pulled over the section where mom’s and dad’s bed was. An out house serviced us. Sunlight shone between the wall boards so before winter, my parents moved into a home owned by my Uncle Ed Willems.

On September 7th 1947 my bother, oops Freudian slip, my brother Murray was born. He was a beautiful looking little guy. It was maddening. He got so much attention. As he grew he had the blond, curly hair and blue eyes. I recall the day of his birth because after sharing with me his good news of a second son, my father took me to Montebello Park and gave me a gift box in which I found a pair of roller skates, the kind that are fastened to shoes with a tightening key. They are also known as quad skates. He sat and watched me for a long time as I skated around the wooden pavilion. The gift was not only celebrative of Murray’s birth but in anticipation of my birthday the following week, September 13th when I turned five years of age.

Montebello Park is located on Ontario Street, in the heart of the downtown area. With an adjacent band shell that still hosts musical concerts today. Montebello Park remains a prominent memory from my childhood and young adult years. On Sunday night my parents would walk with us to sit on a blanket to hear a summer evening concert. Often Mom brought some snacks for us to munch on while we listened. It was in the rose garden of this park that Christine and I and our wedding party had our pictures taken when we began our life together as husband and wife on August 12, 1967.

Pictures
*Dad (Edward)and his first two sons, Ron and Murray
*1910 Montebello Park
*Quad Roller Skates
*Montebello Park Pavillion and Band Stand 2009
*Ron and Murray

Ronnie's Baby Years

Number one son. Well, at least I was firstborn of the three sons born to Edward and Tina Unruh. Home was the town of Hepburn, Saskatchewan. My two siblings stole the show when they finally arrived. Pictures reflect that life was simple. The homes were wood frame on the open prairies and before required insulation standards. These photos are part of the inheritance that comes to the sons when the parents are gone after eight or more decades of life. Octogenarians and ninety year olds have seen so much change during their lives and I thought my folks handled all of it well. Dad was in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the first years of my infancy and childhood. World War II waged overseas. I got a lot of attention from mom and from the extended family since I was the only little squirt around at the time. As lean as the economy may have been I had a great looking pram, a wash tub and a tricycle but not much understanding about where I should ride this three-wheeled machine. Here I am in the thick stuff which I have found a good deal of the time in my adult years when I golf. I love seeing my dark haired young mom in these early pictures. My brothers didn’t know her this way because she was prematurely grey by age 30. Yes I know what some might say, that it was me who did that to her during my first five years. The photo with the little dog was taken in Mountain Lake Minnesota during a trip my mother took to see her brother Pete. Her visit was taken during one of my father’s deployments with the RCAF. I had great natural curls didn’t I? For as long as we can remember, mom kept our pressed curls, all three of us, in separate paper envelopes in her dresser drawer.

The Milk Horse

Young people will not remember the delivery of milk to individual homes by a horse pulled wagon. I do. In fact I have another true story from my childhood that I converted to an illustrated yarn in my grandchildren’s story book.Here it is.

One day Ronnie's mother asks Ronnie to do her a favour. She needs some bread to make lunches.
Mommy gives Ronnie some money and she tells him to walk to the corner store where he can buy a loaf of bread.
Ronnie is a polite boy and inside the store he says to the storekeeper, "May I have a loaf of bread?"
The storekeeper brings him a loaf of white bread wrapped in plastic. Ronnie gives the man the money, and the man gives Ronnie some money back. Ronnie says, "Thank you," and then he puts the money in his pocket.
He slides the loaf from the counter and says, "Goodbye." He leaves the store and starts to go home.
On the way, he sees the milk wagon. The milkman is carrying milk bottles to some houses.
In front of the milk wagon is a milk horse. The milk horse pulls the milk wagon. While the milkman is gone, the milk horse stands still.
Ronnie looks at the horse. "Hi, horse," says Ronnie. "Are you hungry?" Ronnie thinks the horse looks hungry.
The only thing that Ronnie has to feed the horse is bread. Ronnie opens the loaf of bread and gives the horse a slice of bread. The horse likes it.
Ronnie gives the horse another piece, and another, and another.
Soon, there is only half a loaf of bread. The milkman comes back to the milk wagon. "Bye, bye horse," says Ronnie.
When Ronnie arrives at home, he gives his mother the loaf of bread. Where is the rest of the bread?" she asks. "Did you eat it?"
"Oh no!" Ronnie says. "I didn't eat it."
"Then who did eat it," asks mother.
"The milk horse ate it," says Ronnie.

You Will Be Bagiki

This is one of my childhood stories that I have written for children and illustrated in a small book that was a Christmas gift to my grandchildren. While it is a true story it has been embellished through the years. I recount it here as reliably as I can recall it.

When I was between three and four years of age, my parents, Ed and Tina owned a coffee shop in our home town of Hepburn, Saskatchewan. The year would have been 1945 or 46. The shop fronted on to the Main Street and it had a back door into a laneway. Behind the coffee shop was a well, probably unused and also uncovered. It would certainly hold interest to a boy like me.

As I was peering into the depth of this well a man in a pickup truck passed by in the lane and seeing me, out of concern said to me, “If you fall in that well, you will be bagiki.” Bagiki was a word with which I was unfamiliar and with both the rebuke and the mystery word I ran inside to tell my father what happened and to ask him what bagiki meant. He didn’t know but he assured me with a smile that it wouldn’t be good. My father never forgot that word and as he retold the story through the years, the word became synonymous in family parlance with anything that might be nasty or unpleasant in the extreme.

When I wrote the story, I wasn’t sure how one should spell the word, and when asking family members I received a variety of opinions. For many years I envisioned its spelling as I have recorded it here. BAGIKI. When we presented the gift book, Christine and I also gave each grandchild a T-shirt with the caption, “you will be bagiki.”

A Pink Wedding – My Mom and Dad

It was 1941. The war was on in Europe. Who knew what the future would bring. Mom was in love with Dad. He was the youngest son in a respected church going family. He played hockey and ball on local teams. He completed grade eleven before beginning work at various jobs in the community. Then he owned and operated a gas station, well the one and only gas station in Hepburn. His brother Harry owned the local hardware store. His father was the town Reeve. Dad, Edward by name and known as Eddie, was a debonair man, prematurely bald, with a manicured pencil mustache. He whistled everywhere he walked. Church was not on his priority list. For that reason, when Mom fell for him, the counsel she received was cautious.

Mom had worked ever since she was a teenager. Compelled to work for the sake of the family she had to end school after grade 9. She always regretted this and bore a sense of educational inferiority through her adult years. It was against the general will of the Christian community for her as a committed Christian to marry someone who had not yet settled eternal matters with God as far as anyone knew. Dad and Mom loved each other. He was 26 years of age and Mom was 22. So on June 12, 1941 Edward Unruh and Tina (Doerksen) Willems exchanged wedding vows. Mom couldn’t afford a traditional wedding dress, white and clearly sanctified. She wore pink and she wore a hat. They honeymooned in Saskatoon. They were very happy.

Ed and Tina wasted little time in beginning a family which began with me, firstborn, on Sunday, September 13, 1942. WWII was raging and Hepburn’s inhabitants were primarily Mennonite people with a pacifist position with regard to conflict. They would be exempt as conscientious objectors. Dad was not bound by such religious strictures. My father had already made up his mind that he was a Canadian and he bore responsibility for the nation into which he was born and into which his child was born. Against the predictable community behaviour he and a handful of young townsmen enlisted. Dad joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and Mom became a war bride who would spend much of the next years on her own. Dad was never shipped overseas. When he was sent to Gananoque, Ontario, Mom was able to accompany him. When he was sent to White Horse for an extended time, she felt his absence. They would remain in love and together for 66 years.

Photos:
• Mom in her wedding dress and hat June 12, 1941
• Mom and me in the Hepburn Central Office and residence where mom and dad operated the switchboard.

Low German Language, Grandma and Sugar Bread

I understand the unique dialect known as Plautdietsch, otherwise known as Low German. It is my lifelong regret that I cannot speak it. Here is how this came to be.

I knew her in the formative years of my childhood, my father’s mother, Katrina Loewen, my Grandma Unruh. We lived in the prairie town of Hepburn. Grandma and Grandpa lived in town having moved from their farm years earlier. They were now in their seventies. I surprise myself with the clarity of my recollection of that small house. During those years when I was three and four I was at her house a lot. My parents ran a coffee shop on the town’s main street. Inside Grandma’s back door one entered the kitchen which had a large wood burning stove. There was a small pantry on the right in which Grandma kept her jars of preserves, jams and much more. All of this was done during summer months in preparation for the long severe winters. I remember particularly the large Mason jars with white cooked chicken preserved in liquid. In the depth of winter this meat would be baked or roasted and one would never know it had spent so much time swimming in its Mason aquarium.

When I was at her home we talked together. She spoke the Low German dialect that all the townspeople spoke and she required that I speak to her in English. She wanted desperately to learn how to speak the dominant language in Canada long before mandated French/English bilingualism. While I liked anything Grandma Unruh made for me, I was a sucker for home baked bread with butter and white sugar sprinkled on top. She could keep me there for hours. As I fed my sweet tooth I heard and learned Plautdietsch but I never spoke it. Years later when I was twelve and thirteen, Grandma and Grandpa left their Hepburn home to live with us in Ontario. They were in their eighties then and Grandma still did not speak English.

What a privilege to have a second language, even one as uniquely peasant and appealing as Low German. No translation does justice to some of the nuances of this language when telling stories and sharing jokes.

Mennonite communities settled in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada using Low German in their religious services and communities. These people were largely ethnic Germans whose ancestors moved to newly acquired Russian territories in Ukraine before emigrating eventually to the Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The type of Low German spoken in these communities and in the Midwest region of the United States has diverged since emigration. The survival of the language is tenuous in many places and has died out in some places where assimilation has occurred.

If you are interested:
* A Learning to Speak Plautdietsch Site:
* A Low German Grammar is a very helpful site
* Listen to a podcast called plautcast http://www.plautcast.com/
* Historical Society Site
* Elmer Reimer has produced a Plautdietsch New Testament in both written and spoken form, and both are available on the internet and the Biblegateway site and can be used simultaneously.
* Canada’s only low German radio station

Hepburn’s Elevator #901 and Me

Hepburn was my home for the first five years of my life.

As it was in 1942 it is still a small farming and bible college town located 40 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. A rail line was constructed and was operating in 1909. After a local farmer named Rowitt Hepburn applied for a post office permit on his farm, Hepburn became a recognized village in 1919. Within ten years the town population reached 800 people. Located beside the rail line was Saskatchewan’s Grain Elevator No. 901, which was built in 1928. It served the grain farming community for decades until the great depression and the drought years of the thirties when the population dropped to less than 300. Today there are 500 residents. The rail line was shut down by the province in 1989 and subsequently most provincial elevators were torn down. Hepburn’s elevator No. 901 survived because of enthusiastic local plans to turn it into the Museum of Wheat.

At the age of three, a friend and I ventured where small children do not belong. We peddled our tricycles to the yawning open doors of the elevator, walked inside, found a large platform that moved up and down with the flip of a large brass handle fixed to the wall, and we took turns riding it until a large man confronted us. No doubt he was terrified that two children were so close to danger and he rapidly terrified us as he told us the perils of falling into a bin of grain. I have not set foot inside an elevator since that moment. I would love to visit Hepburn’s museum one day.

I have written and illustrated children’s stories based on my childhood experiences and in fact printed a simple copy as a Christmas gift for my grandchildren.The Wheat Museum Page