What remains of Dorothy and Cecil are two child-sized graves sitting on the forlorn Saskatchewan prairie.  Cecil was born first, coming into the world in June of 1943.  He would only live for three shorts days before leaving this world forever.  One can only imagine that in those days, in this place, he didn’t get to see much of the world he was leaving behind.  Before his loving parents would have even had a chance to really know him, Cecil was gone.

Dorothy wouldn’t come along until a couple of years later, just a couple of weeks after Japan had surrendered in World War II.  Just as the world was entering a period of cautious optimism, I can image so were Dorothy’s parents.  Undoubtedly the death of Cecil would have planted seeds of doubt in their mind but they would have welcomed their new daughter with all the love a baby could want.

Sadly, it was not to be.  Just three weeks later Dorothy was gone as well.  Two babies in a little more than two years.

As I sit on the ground near these markers to take my photo, it isn’t hard to imagine the family gathering around this spot to put little Dorothy to rest,  The memories of Cecil would flood back to their minds as they clustered near his grave, just steps away. 

Cecil, who would have been the protective older brother in life is instead tasked with the responsibility of shepherding his little sister into the afterlife.  Their markers have stood beside each other for nearly seventy years.  They never knew met, they never knew the other existed, yet here they remain – linked together forever.

I don’t know the full story of Dorothy and Cecil.  As the years pass, the living memory of them grows ever more dim.  Are any of those who stood on this spot all those years ago still around to tell us?  Sitting here under the vast Saskatchewan sky, it’s almost as if the Shaw babies are able to tell their tale for themselves.

As we zipped along I made a passing remark about a series of trees planted along the south side of the road.  “There must have been a homestead there at one time; check out that windbreak.”

Then, I saw it.  Sitting at the back of the property through the trees I noticed a swing set.  Your standard A-frame swing set.  Rusty and alone. 

With a quick glance in the rearview mirror I slammed on the brakes and made a three point turn right in the middle of the highway.  As I turned down the grid road running beside the plot of land I saw the sign – a sign I had never noticed before.  “Former Site of Tongue Creek United Church 1916 – 1994.”

Grabbing the camera bag from the trunk I scanned the fence for the gate.  Before long I was tromping through the yellow prairie grass, still waiting for the warmth of Spring to come and turn it green.  Sure, I was looking for signs of a cemetery or a foundation or something tangible besides the sign to show me a church once stood here but my real goal was that swing set. 

I knelt down in the mud and clicked the shutter.  I repositioned and clicked again.  Then one more time.  Capturing the landscape but also connecting with the history.  Visions of children, dressed in their Sunday best, came to mind.  Children laughing and playing on that old swing set while nearby their parents stood visiting with their friends, casting the occasional glance to make sure the kids weren’t dirtying or tearing their clothes as kids are know to do.

Countless stories took place at this spot.  Secret crushes were revealed to friends, veiled under the vague promise of “Don’t you dare tell her!”  Teenagers hid back here to sneak a quick puff of a cigarette while comparing who had the fastest car.  Weddings.  Funerals.  Stories that are lost to the passage of time – except for that one brief moment when I was able to connect with them once again. 

Walking back to the car I couldn’t help but feeling pleased with this discovery.  That plain old backroad revealed something new to me after I thought I had seen it all.  Those are the moments that make this exploration worthwhile.

Dubbed by Mike Stobbs as “The Town That Leans”, Laura was home to a church with a noticeable tilt, along with a pretty badly broken spine.  It was one of those places I had driven past many times and I had even taken note of the interesting church since it was quite visible from the highway.  It wasn’t until the second Ghost Town Convention stopped by Laura that I actually had a chance to really check out the ole girl.  I’m glad I did too, for the church has since collapsed, presumably under its own weight.  The last time I drove by the only thing still intact was the steeple.

Laura wasn’t on my mind when I caught a glimpse of an old church sitting in the town of Aldersyde last Friday.  I made a note that I would have to investigate that church the next time I was passing by.

The Laura Lean, Saskatchewan Style

Well, “the next time” ended up being today.  I was northbound on Highway 2A and I decided I shouldn’t waste the opportunity.  A quick detour off the highway and soon I was parked across the road from your typical old prairie church.

The first three things I noted were the stained glass was intact on the west side, completely missing on the east.  Then I noticed all the rabbits.  It would appear the Aldersyde church is home to a ton of the furry creatures.  The third thing was the  property was marked with multiple signs warning people to stay away as the building had been deemed unsafe.  Unsafe?  Sure, every abandoned building is unsafe at some basic level. 

 The Laura Lean, Alberta Style

The I noticed the lean.  A distinct lean to the east, as it were.  It is as if the church is finally giving up after fighting the chinook winds which have hammered it from the west since it was erected.  Slowly but surely she is surrendering to the ravages of time, the inevitable increase in entropy which is the ultimate fate of anything which is left abandoned. 

As I drove away I wondered how many more times I will be able to drive along the highway and see her standing there.  I drove away thinking of Laura.

I wanted to to get down in the ditch and shoot the first photo from closer to the ground but there was a lot of water and mud there and I didn’t want to end up getting dirty – after all, I was on the way to work, right? 

This pattern continued for the next couple of miles.  Drive.  Pull over.  Shoot.  By the time I reached the highway the morning sun was illuminating the mountains in the west with a brilliant hue.

After snapping off a series of bracketed shots I returned to the trunk to put the camera back in its back.  In that instant it was gone.

The sky had returned to a normal colour.  No more pink.  No more drama.  Just your typical sunrise.

It’s all about timing.  Life is nothing more than a series of fleeting moments and if you don’t take the time to stop and appreciate them they can pass without ever being noticed, let alone appreciated.

Don’t let it pass you by – keep chasing the light.

The Road You Leave Behind	Springtime in Alberta
The Ghost of the White Horse	Morning Sky Over the Priddis Valley

Traveling to these places allows me to figuratively open a portal to the past. 

Something magical happened in Kirkcaldy today.  It was purely accidental but I think it is one of the most memorable moments I have ever had in my years of hunting down these places.

I was peering in the windows of the old general store.  The window to the right of the door has rust-coloured curtains hanging in it but I was able to get a limited view between the gaps in the fabric.  I moved over to the window to the left of the door.  The bottom two panes were covered but the top two panes were unobstructed.  I raised my camera up to the glass and pressed the lens hood tight to the glass.  With a click of the shutter I rapidly fired off three bracketed shots.

When I got home and stacked the images together I was stunned at the image I was presented with.

I shot the photo with my 10-24mm ultra-wide lens.  While the lens hood shielded some area from the ambient light and the reflections on the glass, the lens also managed to capture some of the glass outside the protective envelope of the hood. 

The image is haunting.  Most of the image is the reflections from the glass – the gravel road running in front of the store, the branches of a tree, the cloudy sky and the prairie stretching out to the horizon.  But, there, right in the middle is a clover-shaped portal with a clear view into the store – at least as clear as it could be given the decades of dirt on the window.

Two TVs, books, a board game, a chair straight out of the 1960s. The shelves are still neatly stacked with merchandise – bowls, a kettle, a cheese grater, beverage bottles, and a box of Thrift soap flakes.  Automotive belts neatly hang along the back wall, racks for Orange Crush and Canada Dry are sitting there waiting for the next delivery of inventory which is never coming.  An orange broom handle leaning against the shelves in the middle of the room as if waiting for Mr. Mallory himself to show up at any minute to start sweeping the hardwood floors.

A calendar hangs on the wall but the angle of it makes it impossible to make out the year.  A quick search of the internet revealed that Grant Carlyle Mallory died in 1971.  It isn’t hard to believe that these things have been sitting there for forty years.  My camera opened a portal to the past.

“That’s kind of weird.”  That’s the response I got from a co-worker this morning when I arrived in the office.  He had read about my 700km road trip on the weekend on my quest to explore the ghost town of Retlaw and the other communities along the now-abandoned railway line.

Yes, I suspect if you don’t “get it” then it certainly must appear to be an odd way to escape the grind of the work week.  Why would someone subject themselves to an early wakeup call?  Why would someone put all that wear and tear on a vehicle?  Why would someone drive countless miles in an era of expensive gasoline?  “Weird” is probably one of the nicer ways to describe it.  It is “ghost towning” and, believe it or not, I am not the only person who does it and I’m not even the most crazy hardcore ghost towner out there. 

5am on a Saturday morning.  While the other acreages around us are still bathed in darkness I am waking up to the vibration of my iPhone on the bed beside me.  “Don’t think about it, just do it.”  With those muttered words of encouragement to myself I roll out of bed and head straight to the shower.  We were out late the night before.  Every ounce of my being is telling me to go back to bed, to sleep in later, to put off this trip for another week.  I know if I stop to think about it I’ll never get out the door.

I emerge from the shower, dressed in the crappiest blue jeans and t-shirt I can find.  Ghost towning can be dirty work and this is no place for nice clothes.  Once I sense some movement from Shirley’s side of the bed I am confident she will be ready to join me.  She may not enjoy it, but she secretly knows she’ll sleep in the car when I am not looking.

While she makes her way to the shower I begin loading the car.  Two cameras, the tripod, my tackle box of flashlights and cords, my lenses, a cooler with drinks and sandwiches, my iPod, my cell phone, the dog.  Along with a couple of GPS devices, these are the essential tools of survival out on the road.  Where we are going you better be prepared because you don’t know when you’ll find help if you need it. 

Before 6:30 rolls around I am backing the car out of the garage.  Excellent, right on “schedule”.  I have a plan of where I want to go and what I want to do.  In the back of my mind I know I won’t accomplish it – it’s too ambitious, too regimented, too much.  My official stated goal is to be in Medicine Hat around 2pm to attend a Geocaching event.  That’s seven and a half hours to do what a “non weird” person could do in around three.  For me, I know after exploring the Retlaw area I want to shoot the elevator at Scandia, cut across country through to Alderson and then carry on to Medicine Hat.

Less than an hour after leaving home I am in the midst of finding my fourth Geocache of the day, this time a small container hanging in a tree outside the women’s outhouse behind a church in Gladys, Alberta.  Never heard of Gladys?  You likely won’t.  There isn’t much there now, a couple of churches perhaps?  With a little more exploration I might be able to uncover a cemetery or perhaps a community hall.  No time for that now.  As we cruise down Highway 547 I see a small church.  “If we had more time I might stop and try and get a photo of the church with the sun rising behind it.”  I make a mental note to plan for a return visit some other day.  It’s only an hour’s drive – that’s practically in my backyard!

Not much later Highway 547 meets up with Highway 24, just west of Mossleigh, AB.  I know I am not far from the town of Farrow – well, more accurately, where the town of Farrow once was.  The landowner burned down the last remaining building back in December.  With the death of that grain elevator the last tangible proof that a town once stood there is now gone.  It’s just a dot on the map. 

The sun is just starting to make its appearance and the sky has turned a pleasing shade of red.  I curse myself because one of my goals was to photograph a sunrise at Farrow.  Too late.  With the elevator gone there is no point.  It is a stark reminder to never put off until tomorrow a photograph you want to get today because you just never know when these relics will be gone forever.

I do stop and shoot the sunrise against an old granary near the highway.  It is a great start to the day and we’re making good time. 

Highway 24 turns south.  I contemplate continuing to the east towards Arrowwood.  Having spent hours looking at the map I know I could pick up the Retlaw rail line at Arrowwood and follow the backroads through Anastasia, Shouldice and Queenstown.  Looking at the clock I decide to save that area for another day and continue to focus on Retlaw.  The story behind the naming of Retlaw has been covered in this post so I won’t bother you with it again.  The important thing to understand is that my first goal is to reach Pageant, which is located almost exactly where one would expect the ‘W’ town to be.

Pageant:  I didn’t expect to find much at Pageant and I wasn’t disappointed.  At a bend in the road I reach the spot where my topo map shows the town should be.  While that often means the townsite was in the general area, I find nothing.  I was hoping to find an old road sign or something but my cursory exploration revealed nothing.  Perhaps some of my ghost towning friends have come across something?

Armada:  Again, not much.  There is a sign that reads “Armada” but it appears to be newer and not an original.  Likely something that one of the landowners in the area placed in his yard.  Again, with my packed agenda my search is cursory at best.  South of town I spot a great abandoned house, the sort of spot where I would love to do night photography.  Unfortunately, like many great spots in Alberta, it is behind a barbed-wire fence and not legally accessible.  I settle for shooting it from the road and dream of what might have been…

Lomond:  Lomond still clings to life.  We pull into the UFA cardlock and top up the tank.  We didn’t use much fuel to get here but when you’re out exploring you don’t pass up a service station because you just never know.  The mural of Bobby Badger has a bunch of locals standing in front of it so I opt to not get a photo but instead carry on.

Travers:  The dot on my map is marked a bit northeast of where the town actually was.  Fortunately the street grid is still marked on the map.  In fact I get a chuckle when the voice on my Nuvi tells me to make a left on Centre Street.  So optimistic were the people of Travers!  Considering the street grid on the map shows it was only four blocks total the urge to specify which one was Centre seems laughable now.  The town isn’t very photogenic and, in fact, it gives me the sense of “the locals probably don’t like to be disturbed.”  We move on and locate the Travers cemetery and also photograph an old homestead complete with windmill and barn before reaching Enchant.

Enchant:  My summer of working for the Alberta Wheat Pool in Enchant has been pretty well documented.  I see the name of the restaurant in town has changed, although for the life of me I can’t remember what it was originally called.  Both the Alberta Wheat Pool elevator and the original fertilizer plant are long gone – again, I feel a twinge of regret for not documenting them photographically when I was working in them.  After failing to locate a Geocache in the town’s historical park I take some photos of the train station and we move on.

Retlaw:  Ah, Retlaw.  I may comment how Dorothy was one of my first ghost towns but that’s only the partial truth.  Retlaw was my real “first”.  I remember the day I was heading home to Vauxhall from Lethbridge when I decided to detour up Highway 864 from Taber rather than taking the standard route up Highway 36.  The pavement ended and turned to gravel and, as I was cruising along kicking up dust, I saw a church off to my left.  With my curiosity piqued I turned off and made my way over to the townsite of Retlaw.  I was immediately fascinated with what I saw.  The abandoned church was standing guard over a number of decaying buildings and foundations.  I simply had to learn more about this town I had never known of.  Up until then my image of a ghost town was like what you see in western movies – a series of abandoned false-fronted buildings along a street with swinging saloon doors and a ghostly player piano inside.  I had never realized how many real ghost towns were around in various states of decline.  It wasn’t until several years later when I first met writer Johnnie Bachusky via email that I even learned there were others who shared this same passion. 

Retlaw has changed a lot since I first was there.  A number of signs have been erected at various sites around town highlighting what used to be located there and talking about some of the history of the town.  The church still stands, having undergone a significant renovation not long after I “discovered” it.  I spent a lot of time in the town on this trip and took a fair number of photos.  I explored the empty prairie where the CPR line once ran.  I poked around the inside of one of the buildings.  I took the time to really listen to the wind rush across the prairie and into the voids in the walls where windows once protected the inhabitants from the elements. 

Whether it is fire, vandals, or just the endless march of nature reclaiming what was once hers I really stopped to appreciate Retlaw as it stands today knowing it will not be here forever.  Entropy always increases and cannot be stopped.

A visit to the Retlaw cemetery followed, a place I had never even seen before, let alone visited.  I love pioneer cemeteries and the stories they have to share with us.  From the baby who only lived for ten days back in 1913 to the young man who died on his 22nd birthday, these are the places where our ancestors can still speak to us. 

A quick stop in Vauxhall to look for another Geocache (another one we failed to find) and then up to Scandia.  Scandia has a pretty interesting historical park with lots of pieces of machinery.  There also appeared to be some restoration work taking place on the train station there.  On a different day, with more time, I could have taken a lot more pictures there, I think.

Onwards to Alderson.  My Nuvi wanted to route me all the way up Highway 36 to Brooks and then back down the TransCanada Highway to Alderson.  I’m sure that’s how most normal people would do it.  But, for me, those are roads I have travelled hundreds of times.  While I am not egotistical enough to say I’ve seen it all along those roads, I know my odds of finding some hidden gem are much better on the roads less travelled. 

So, using my handheld unit (loaded with the topo maps) I begin navigating across country.  Things went fine until we hit Rollling Hills.  From there both units didn’t seem to like my approach.  Looking at the map now on a larger screen I think a large part of the issue is Twelve Mile Coulee and the associated reservoir.  The one “road” my handheld tried to take me down quickly turned into little more than a dirt track across a field.  Given that I have only a low-clearance car (and that the GPS told me I was still 24km from Alderson!) I elected to detour north through Tilley and then to the TransCanada.  I might have saved time in sticking to the highway in the first place, but where is the fun in that?

I didn’t spend much time at the Alderson townsite, instead focusing on the cemetery just southeast of there.  I was working on fulfilling a promise I made to a stranger a couple years ago.  During my first visit in 2010 I captured a long distance shot of a tombstone and someone contacted me saying it belonged to her great-grandfather and no one in the family had ever seen it before.  Through an exchange of emails I learned her name was Dayna and she lived in Chicago.  I emailed her the high-res version of the photo and promised her the next time I went back I would get a better photo of it.  So, Dayna, the image on the left is for you!

By the time we left Alderson it was already too late to make the Geocaching event in Medicine Hat.  I also admit I was starting to get tired and I knew we had several hours to drive to get home.  We made it to the town of Suffield where I found (yet another) Geocache but didn’t see anything worth taking pictures of. 

The trip home was along main roads until we neared Calgary and I decided to detour off to visit Dalemead.

We were just outside of the gates of the cemetery when we met up with a local.  Rather than re-type the whole thing I think my log on Geocaching.com tells the story quite well.  That’s likely the best place to end this story. 

“It's after 5pm and we've been on the road since for 10.5 hours. We're just looking forward to getting home when I saw this cache on the GPSr. Hey, we've already checked out pioneer cemeteries in Travers, Retlaw and Alderson so let's do one more!

I logged onto Flickr to check out the activity and photos posted by my friends and contacts.  I noticed Cody Kapcsos had posted a photo of what appeared to be an old kit house. 

In the comments he linked to an article that discussed the history of the Travers area and the community itself.  The article mentioned how the railway named the communities along that stretch of track so the first letters would spell out R-E-T-L-A-W.  Retlaw was expected to be the major centre in that part of the province so naming the towns in this manner was a tribute of sorts.  This is pretty common knowledge amoungst the ghost-towing crowd, with one exception...

R - Retlaw

E - Enchant

T - Travers

L - Lomond

A - Armada

W - ???

Ah, the W. 

Now, having lived in the area for a few years in the early 90s I was fairly familiar with the area.  Retlaw was my first ghost town and I actually worked for the Alberta Wheat Pool in Enchant one summer.  I had no idea where the 'W' town had gone. 

The article Cody linked to mentioned the 'W' was "Wheat Centre".  I had never heard of such a place.  I've spent more than my share of hours looking over maps and had never seen it show up.  As I mentioned to Cody in my reply to his photo, I was sure it was possible to deduce the location based upon the path of the railway and the pretty standard distance between whistle stops.  I figured I would save myself some effort and ask Cody if he knew where Wheat Centre was.

Cody figured Wheat Centre was right about where the townsite of Pageant showed up on the map.  Made perfect sense to me.  I returned to my topo map and followed the railway and, sure enough, there is Pageant marked right where one woud expect Wheat Centre to be.

Since I was planning on going to Medicine Hat this weekend anyway I decided to plot a detour down through Pageant, Armada, Lomond, Travers, Enchant and Retlaw.  Hey, for a ghost towner that's practically "right on the way" and hardly counts as a side trip.

Under normal circumstances this would be the end of the story.  Mystery solved, right?  Not so fast...

I follow RETROactive, which is a Government of Alberta blog which focuses on Alberta's Historical Places.  The very next day after having this discussion with Cody about Wheat Centre / Pageant a blog post appeared in which Ronald Kelland introduced himself as "the names guy".

Not just any names, but THE names guy -- Coordinator of the Geographical Names Program which means not only does he evaluate proposed new names for Alberta's geographical features, but he also researches the origin and meaning of Alberta's place names.  This is just the guy I want to talk to!

I responded to his blog post and asked about the history behind the renaming of Wheat Centre to Pageant.  I thought it might make an interesting footnote as I made the drive through the area.

Ron's response was both quick and informative.  Turns out Wheat Center (the government records have it spelled this way) was not the 'W' station along the Retlaw line.  The 'W' was actually supposed to be either Walter or Waldeck but the station was never built.

He also corrected a misconception I had held for years that Retlaw was named for an early postmaster in the area.  While I was correct that "Retlaw" came from "Walter" spelled backwards, Walter Reginald Baker was not a postmaster but rather the Secretary of the CPR.

So, what about Wheat Center?  Ron's records show Wheat Center was established as a post office in 1910 and was about 17km ESE of Lomond.  Sure enough, when I look at my topo map I see a location marked "Wheat Center" at the intersection of Township Rd 160 and Range Rd 183.  It doesn't show as a community but just a geographic name.  What happened to the community?  Ron's records show the post office closed in 1947 and the name was rescinded in 1951.  Good-bye Wheat Centre...

And, Pageant, the town that seems to fit perfectly on the map where we expected Wheat Center to be?  Not much is known about it -- neither the date of its establishment nor the origin of the name are recorded. 

You can read all of Ron's reply to me at this link.  What a great resource!

This weekend I plan on doing a photography trip following the Retlaw line as I take a "minor" detour on the way to Medicine Hat.  I don't expect to find much, but if nothing else it will be a good excuse to visit Retlaw again.  As my first ever ghost town it holds a special place in my heart. 

Keep on exploring, friends!

I drove home as fast as I could and swept into the house with all the gentle grace of a hurricane.  I grabbed the camera and shouted a “See you in a few minutes, got to go get a picture” to Shirley before I was back in the car and heading to that bridge which is just a kilometer from home.

I was pleased to see the light hadn’t changed much and with a quick couple of adjustments to the camera I quickly fired off three bracketed shots.  I know I promised not to get addicted to HDR but…

Chinook Arch Over Priddis Creek

Sometimes in our quest to discover new places we overlook the things right in our own backyard.