A little bit of history....

We woke yesterday and prepared for church. I had already written to Reverend Kenneth Schragg and his wife Eleanor to tell them we were coming to Eastend, and that I had information that my great-grandmother had donated the original pulpit to the old church in 1918 (same building, built in 1916, but it was a Presbyterian Church then) and my Uncle Peter had carved in wood a design of grapes for that pulpit. They searched in the basement where the old pulpit was stored, but they could not find any sign of grapes. I was a bit disappointed but nonetheless very happy to attending the same church the family had attended over 90 years ago. We sat in our pew waiting for the service to begin, and Rick gazed around. His eyes fell on two carvings hanging on the wall. One was the last supper, and the other was a freize carved in wood of three panels and the elements inside those panels were grapes!  After the service I brought it to the attention of the church members and they were astonished. There it was, hiding in plain sight!! I was so grateful I could give them the full background for this bit of their church's history. My uncle Peter was an architect who specialized in designing and building churches, and before coming to Eastend he had spent a year in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, designing ecclesiastical fixtures and fittings for the Church Outfitting Co. He was the perfect person to contribute the freize and pulpit to the new church.

After church we went out to visit where the two ranches were. My Uncle Peter's ranch overlooking the town still had some outbuildings standing.

My Uncle Drew's ranch was a few hundred yards down the road and was a pre-emption section and a homestead section.

This wheat field was the pre-emption section. A homesteader was allowed a homestead section which he had to develop for a house and barns, and he was also allowed to file for one more "pre-emption section" which cost $10.

The two sections together would have measured half a mile deep and a mile wide. The homestead section is now empty and looks like this.

The ranch house is still standing, but it resides in town. It was a common practice for ranchers to move them there when they retire. I think it was moved into Eastend in the 1940s. But it still looks pretty good.

Well this about does it for Eastend. We spent two wonderful days here and were treated like royalty by the congregation of the Eastend United Church and the Eastend Historical Society.  Add to that, all the folks who chatted with us on the street and in Jack's Cafe and we felt so much like we belonged to this community. We have been warmly invited to return next summer for Eastends' 100th anniversary and we have committed ourselves to being here. Good bye now to Eastend, but soon to return!!

Eastend Sask

We're here folks, we made it here to Eastend Sask from Cranbrook BC yesterday just as the sun was setting over the Canadian prairie. Eastend population 527, was first established in 1903. That was the year of the first house. The town wasn't officially established until 1914 and by then my great-uncle Andrew (Drew) Lindsay had already filed for two 1/4 sections of homestead and pre-emption land just outside town.

Driving in tired and sore after a very long day, the town had a rosy glow to welcome us.

Gosh, this was a very different world from the one where we had started, back in Cranbrook BC. That one started in pre-morning greyness. When we drove out of town we passed a number of Canadian icons. First the arena. Every Canadian town of any decent size (ie. bigger than Eastend) has one. I mean an ice rink. But we don't call them ice rinks. We call them arenas. There was one of those in Cranbrook and then another Canadian iconic moment happened when we passed a Tim's just in time for a breakfast bagel. Tim's is also a Canadian icon but there were in short supply coming across the southern route of BC.

The day was looming very cold and grey. The mountains surrounding Cranbrook did not look the least bit friendly, in fact after we turned the corner.....

we ran into a very impressive wall of mountains.

Thankfully, at the very last moment a cleft between them appeared and the road whizzed
us onward and upwards to the Alberta border and Crow's Nest Pass.

The  last photo above is of the Frank Slide, an event in 1903 in which tons of mountain side toppled
down on top of the town swallowing up and killing 90 souls out of a population of 660. You can read more about this momentous event here:  http://www.history.alberta.ca/frankslide/slidefacts/slidefacts.aspx

As soon as we left the pass area, we droppd immediately down to Alberta prairie. I send you the following photos as an example of the dramatic change. First we saw fields of wheat and wind turbines...

It's amazing to think that this flat farmland extends for another 800 to 1,000 miles across the heartland of Canada. Driving an RV on it is a snap compared to the  heights of the mountains. We cruised along as if we were at walking speed, and the speedometer said 110kph. "This is great!"we both exclaim. I think we both were weary of the heights and the twists and turns of the mountain roads, particularly with the fifth wheel attached to the back of us.

The next few hours brought us a prairie filled with new crops from the wheat fields of old. We saw huge mounds of sugar beets and acres and acres of potatoes.

There still are miles of wheat fields, in fact, after witnessing the sad dismantling of so many of the beautiful grain elevators in the past 20 years, it was heart-warming to see a very lovely one actually being renovated and brought back to life...

At last, as the day was waning rapidly and ourselves with it, we found the turn-off for Eastend and proceeded south through a very different landscape from the rest of the prairie. One might wonder, indeed exactly why a small town in the southWEST corner of Saskatchewan would call itself EASTend. Well, as usual there is a very logical reason. In the late 1880s the North West Mounted Police (now known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) established a post at Fort Walsh on the east end of the Cypress Hills. These hills are the highest point of land between the Lakehead district of Ontario and the Rocky Mountains. They are the remnants of the old continent, before the plate from the west rammed into it and crumpled everything up to make the Rocky Mountains. They are very old and worn remnants of these mighty ancient mountains. And because the outpost of the Mounties was on the east end of these hills, the settle that grew up there was known as Eastend.

The Cypress Hills are a welcome break. They are gentle and rolling, with stands of lodgepole pine (mistakenly taken by the pioneers as cypress), and aspen, and they are frequently crossed by coulees or valleys. We saw a farmhouse, snuggled nicely into one of these hills of the way to Eastend.

On this note, I will stop my tale. Today we visited with folks in Eastend itself, and re-connected to my family's past history and life here. But that is tomorrow's story, and we all must wait.

Crossing BC

Yesterday we followed highway 3 across southern BC from Keremeos to Cranbrook. It was a much more gentle route through the mountains than following highway 1, which lowered the risk for snow, and it was also a new one for us. Generally speaking, highway 3 is only 2 lane all the way, which means a slower more intimate travel experience. Most of the mountain ranges run north south, and so do all the valleys and rivers. These all needed to be crossed, so the day was spent chugging with effort up and over many mountain passes, down again into deep and narrow river valleys, over ancient bridges and through the old towns of BC's mining and ranching past. Little has changed on this route. The dry sunny Okanagan still grows most of the province's tree fruit and wine grapes. The river bottoms still grow alfalfa and hay. The cattle still graze on the dry open grasslands, and the cariboo and long horn sheep still own the higher elevations. This is BC as it would have been 50 or even 75 years ago. The photos were taken as we were driving.


Okanagan fruit:

Valley towns like Osoyoos:

Greenwood:

(Log cabin is for Sheila!!)

Grand Forks:

Creston:

In between, it's just a steady stream of mountain and valley vistas...

Today we start off from Cranbrook, cross the Continental Divide at Crow's Nest Pass and leave the
mountains and valleys behind us as we reach the Canadian prairies, the vast land of eternal sky. Tonight we will be camping at Eastend Saskatchewan, on the Frenchman River, in the place where
my first Scottish relative settled in Canada, on a homestead in 1909. We will be exploring the area, visiting the location of my family's ranch, and the place in town where they moved the ranch house when my uncle retired. Outside of Eastend proper, we will be exploring the ghost settlement of Ravenscrag on the Frenchman River valley, and Chimney Coulee, the place where there used to be an old NW Mounted Police Post, a Hudson's Bay Post and a Metis settlement who used to hunt the wild bison roaming the area. It is also the location of the original ranch for Corky Jones, one of the most famous and colourful of Eastend's inhabitants and a great family friend. More about Corky and the ranch and the dinosaurs tomorrow. Today we have that last mountain pass to climb.

Day One

Yesterday was another world. This morning dawned wet, dark, cold and foggy. In other words, we were back to normal.  Rick was obsessed with being on the 8:50AM ferry. As you can see, we made it easily.

When we got off the ferry at Vancouver, it was clear again and stayed dry all through the day. We passed through the suburban area of Vancouver and finally the suburbs gave way to more open countryside about Chilliwack where we saw our first snow on Chilliwack Mountain.

By about 3PM, we stopped for gas on the route into the mountains and I saw a Huskie
truck stop with cafe.

Since we were feeling a bit peckish, we went inside for a cuppa. The lady
was determined that we were going to have something with our coffee, and she dangled a butter tart
in front of Rick, and then warmed the darn thing up and he succumbed. He has a serious weakness for butter tarts, especially when home made. This one was different. The lady must have been Scottish because they were filled with currants and not raisins. Rick said it tasted like a cross between a mince meat tart and a butter tart. Now if you are not Canadian and do not have a serious obsession with butter tarts, and in fact of you are not Canadian, then you probably don't even KNOW what a butter tarts is. It is sort of like a pecan tart without the pecans. And raisins instead. And it is very good in the
afternoon about 3PM when one feels a little peckish. We were so peckish that when I got around to taking a photo of Rick's butter tart and my lemon cake with blueberries, they looked like this:

From there, we took 2 1/2 hours to pass over the mountains.

We went up and over Alison Pass at 4480 feet and there we saw our first snow on the ground.

On the eastern slope as we dropped down into the Okanagan, the land changed again, from wet and green to dry and yellow-brown, firs changed to pines and then open grassland.

Right on target, we arrived at our camp ground at Keremeos, a historic gold mining
area. What a delight this place is, positioned at the foot of a very interesting mountain, it has grassy parking areas, all the amenities and is one of the few campgrounds open past October 1st.

Tomorrow we pass through the Okanagan, which is fruit and wine country, and then over
the next mountain range. This route actually has three mountain ranges to cross before we
finish with the Rocky Mountains and land on the Alberta plains. Stay tuned, and for now, good night!

Leaving Home

Here it is, the day of no return. Every year when we go south for the winter we have this moment of angst about leaving home. It is especially difficult this year because we are having gorgeous fall weather and there is SO MUCH STILL TO DO.  Funny how, when faced with a dead-line, like leaving for a few months, one can see with absolute clarity every single thing they didn't get done. So this morning I am having mixed feelings about the whole thing. Take a look at yesterday and you might understand...am I crazy for leaving this place??

This was yesterday. It doesn't inspire me to be somewhere else. But I think once we are on the road I will get into the mood. Stay tuned. We are catching the 10:45 AM ferry to Vancouver and should be
well on our way through the Fraser Valley and into the mountains by tonight.

On the road again. The first leg, Nanaimo, BC to Eastend, Saskatchewan.

Here are we are, getting ready for our trip to Mexico. Again this year, we are traveling via St. Joseph Missouri where we will visit with my family and celebrate my Aunt Betty's 91st birthday. We are adding a twist this year as we are taking our fifth wheel trailer along behind us for the entire trip. We will be traveling the first 3 days through the mountains of southern British Columbia as we journey to Eastend, Saskatchewan where we will spend a couple of days touring the area where two of Barbara's great uncles homesteaded in the early 1900's.

Here is a map of the first leg:

After traveling from Gabriola via our local island ferry, we will drive 15 minutes south to the Duke Point ferry terminal to catch the large ferry to the mainland. After 2 hours we will arrive at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal and have a short 228m/358km drive into the mountains for our first night. From Hope BC, we turn onto highway 3, the Crowsnest Highway. This highway crosses the the Rocky mountains via Crowsnest Pass at 4454 ft. which is the lowest pass in southern BC.

From Eastend our route will be determined equally by the current weather and what we want to see. We will decide that on the day before we leave Eastend.

Rick