KREW KUTS: Music of the Rails
By Bernie Krewski
“Watershed year” is a term that highlights change in what people do or the way they perceive and think about something. In this district, 1912 was such a year.
First, it offers interesting dynamics in grass roots governance. This headline of a featured article was published in The Edmonton Bulletin, August 27: “Municipal Organization in Alberta; Progress in Self Government Follows Progress in Development – People Decide for Themselves Whether They Will Assume Municipal Responsibility or Not.”
An example is the application of S.E. Huntley of Alsask to establish the Canmer (“Can” for Canada, “mer” from America) municipal district #301, located between Esther and the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. It was approved by Alberta’s Minister of Municipalities. Similar applications from Berry Creek and a district near Stettler were “defeated.” Officials overseeing this process also acknowledged receiving petitions from Cereal, #242; Sounding Creek, #272; and Richdale, #274.
Six months later, in February 1913, Cereal’s application was approved. It was initiated by J.H. Alexander of Oyen who four years later became the mayor of Oyen.
Secondly, new settlements, towns, and villages on the Goose Lake Line acquired identities, profiles, and reputations. Kindersley, like Hanna, became a divisional point on the CN Railway, enhancing their early importance. Both were named after railway officials. Sir Robert Kindersley was a major shareholder and David B. Hanna was an executive and vice-president. About 140 CN employees were residents of Kindersley in the 1950s. In Hanna CNR sponsored a hockey team.
Kindersley’s first year was the focus of another article in the Edmonton Bulletin on January 25. With a population of more than 800 people, it had established “several new industrial ventures.” Its “future is assured,” the Bulletin reported, with the “completion of the gap in the railway between Alsask and Red Deer” (interestingly!) and eventual connections with Calgary and Edmonton.
A full-page story in the Saskatoon Daily Star (May 14) begins with this headline and inscription: “Alsask the Mecca in Big Landseekers’ Rush - Present Terminal of C.N.R. Line is Centre of Much Activity – The Land Hungry Seeking Out Few Remaining Homesteads.”
A short poem follows: “From the Athabasca basin to the southern border plains/Where the prairie flowers and grasses bloom with countless suns and rains;/From the silent mountain passes to the lone Keewatin trails,/They are breading Nature’s slumbers with the music of the rails.”
The Star portrays Alsask as the largest district on the Goose Lake Line: “There is no single stretch of country so vast…and at the same time [being so] prolific from the agriculturalist’s point of view” in the three prairie provinces. Six hundred boxcars of settlers’ effects arrived during the month of April. Ninety more bringing merchandise appeared in the last three days. There have been 1500 homestead filings in the last three months, mostly on the Alberta side of the border.
Businesses in Alsask, now two years old, are thriving – depicted by seventeen advertisements on this page. One belonged to Ira H. Ross. A brief account of his life in Captured Memories modestly declares he and Alex McKay “built Alsask’s first livery barn.” It seems to have been much more than that!
The Star goes on to introduce its readers to Oyen – “a new town starting up 35 miles west.” It is so new that advice is offered on how to pronounce its name – “like an Irishman’s drawn out ‘Oi.’”
On May 1st the post office in Oyen opened (Many Trails Crossed Here, 1, 283-284). Two Alsask businesses were entrenched in Oyen already. Bert Scott and J.L. Acheson, according to the Star, were the first settlers to take up land near the Alsask townsite. Scott opened a general store in Alsask, April 1910. Acheson, soon joined by C.W. Hoskins, established a hardware store two weeks later. Now they have stores operating in Oyen (p. 224).
A contrasting perception. The word “watershed” originates from the German wasser-scheide. It meant a dividing point. That too was clearly exhibited in 1912 - life versus death.
A devastating tornado struck the city of Regina on June 30, killing 28 people and injuring about 300 others (Sandra Bingaman, Storm of the Century). Storm conditions that day reached as far as this district. Macy Oszust, the ancestor of the Oszust family, was killed northeast of the new townsite of Oyen. My father told me about his death when I was a child. He found Mr. Oszust’s body!