Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest: Canada’s Home Children in the West by Sean Arthur Joyce Published by Hagios Press Review by Keith Foster $18.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-27-3 Even the best intentions can be paving stones to hell. In most cases, well-intentioned people like Thomas Barnardo thought they were helping homeless British children by sending them across the “golden bridge” to new homes in Canada. Their lives, however, were anything but golden. In Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest, Sean Arthur Joyce serves up some startling statistics. From the 1860s to 1967, “some 130,000 children were scooped up from the mean streets” of Britain “to be used as slave labour.” About 100,000 of them ended up in Canada, mostly on farms. Joyce, himself a grandson of a home child, points out that today there could be as many as four million descendants of these children – about one in eight Canadians! Conditions for homeless children in Britain were barely tolerable. In the East End of London, four out of five infants would die before their fifth year. Barnardo and Annie Macpherson started “ragged schools” – so named because the children were literally in rags – that provided them with at least…

Legacy of Worship: Sacred Places in Rural Saskatchewan by Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker Photography by Larry Easton Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $39.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-597-9 It was the happiest of times; it was the saddest of times. It was a time for weddings, and a time for funerals. Whether celebrating the best days of their lives, or enduring the worst, people in rural Saskatchewan gathered at their churches to share their joy or to find solace from their sorrows. With these thoughts in mind, Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker bring flesh and blood to their stories in Legacy of Worship: Sacred Places in Rural Saskatchewan, a book they co-researched and co-authored. With limited space in this 251-page book, churches selected were restricted to rural areas, not cities or towns. Even at that, many worthy structures had to be left out. The churches chosen were those of historical and/or architectural importance, with many recorded as national historic sites. Church structures come in all shapes, sizes, and denominations. Some are not buildings at all. Indigenous sacred places, for instance, consisted of medicine wheels, effigies, rock carvings, and pictographs. This book features some of Saskatchewan’s most prominent and well…

Bread to Share . . . Stories about Saskatchewan’s early Lutheran pastors and their wives by Lois Knudson Munholland Published by Three West Two South Books Review by Keith Foster $30 ISBN 0-9735234-1-7 A sequel and companion volume to Pulpits of the Past, Bread to Share is a compilation of stories of Saskatchewan’s early Lutheran pastors and their wives. What sets this book apart is the prominence of the pastors’ wives and their families who are often relegated to secondary roles or neglected entirely in many church histories. The pastors are listed alphabetically by surname. After relating the experiences of the ministers, Knudson Munholland devotes space to their wives, lists the names of their family members, and provides references. Sources include interviews as well as history books. Although Knudson Munholland focuses on Saskatchewan, she also touches on other parts of Canada and the United States as pastors often transferred to various locations. Indeed, one pastor virtually toured Saskatchewan as he constantly relocated throughout the province. One of the strengths of Bread to Share is Knudson Munholland’s descriptions of the hardships pastors and their wives had to endure. During the Dirty Thirties, spouse Christine Stollee would routinely place dishes upside down…

Frontier Farewell: The 1870s and the End of the Old West by Garrett Wilson Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $34.95 ISBN 978-0-88977-361-5 You can gauge the importance of a book when it is released as a new edition. There’s a reason some books go into a second printing – the demand for more copies is just too great. Back by popular demand, a second edition of Garrett Wilson’s Frontier Farewell: The 1870s and the End of the Old West, with a new foreword by Candace Savage, has been released. As the subtitle suggests, Frontier Farewell focuses on the 1870s. In a single generation, the face of the West was transformed forever. Rupert’s Land was transferred from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the new Dominion of Canada, leading to the First Riel Rebellion at Fort Garry, treaties with the Aboriginal inhabitants in the West, surveys along the International Boundary, the formation of the North-West Mounted Police, and side effects from the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Wilson covers it all. Frontier Farewell is rife with political intrigue. American activists in Minnesota and Dakota Territory coveted the vast territory to their north and wanted to add…

The Cypress Hills Massacre edited by Robert Clipperton Published by The Saskatchewan Archaeological Society Review by Keith Foster $35.00 ISBN 978-0-9691420-9-6 Everyone loves a good mystery. Even more, everyone loves finding the solution to a mystery. This is what archaeologist Donalee Deck strives to achieve as she digs for answers by literally digging up the past. Her report forms the bulk of material in The Cypress Hills Massacre, edited by Robert Clipperton. By using ground-penetrating radar, Deck was able to document previously unknown structures and other archaeological features at Abel Farwell’s trading post, originally known as Fort Farwell, in the Cypress Hills region of what is now southwestern Saskatchewan. Her digs helped determine when the fort was constructed, what it looked like, and what daily life was like. The outline of the massacre is generally known. On June 1, 1873, American wolf hunters slaughtered several Assiniboine families camped near the fort. The details leading up to this event, and its aftermath, are not so well known. The unprovoked assault on Canadian soil caused an international incident, resulting in an extradition trial for the accused. Thomas R. Cox, secretary of the American Board of Indian Commissioners, wrote from Bozeman, Montana in…

Bread to Share . . . Stories about Saskatchewan’s early Lutheran pastors and their wives”, Volume 2 by Lois Knudson Munholland Published by Three West Two South Books Review by Keith Foster $30.00 ISBN 978-0-9735234-2-3 In volume 2 of Bread to Share, Lois Knudson Munholland shares more experiences and hardships endured by Lutheran pastors and their wives, primarily across Saskatchewan, but also in other parts of Canada and the United States. A Lutheran pastor herself, Knudson Munholland spent decades compiling the material for her books. The pastors are listed alphabetically by surname. After relating the experiences of the ministers, Knudson Munholland devotes space to their wives, lists the names of their family members, and provides references. Her sources include personal interviews as well as local history books, supplemented by more than ninety-five black and white photos. Knudson Munholland explores the rigours of ministering to the needs of rural communities. Pastors would travel by wagon, sleigh, or on horseback as the need arose. One minister travelled by bicycle, with his wife riding on the crossbar. Those lucky enough to own a vehicle often had to travel on roads that were neither paved nor gravelled, and the gumbo soil brought its own…

Looking for Aiktow: Stories Behind the History of the Elbow of the South Saskatchewan River by Joan Soggie Published by Joan Soggie Review by Keith Foster $20.00 ISBN 978-1-890692-26-1 Aiktow was a notoriously dangerous place. In 1866 a clash between Cree and Blackfoot warriors left hundreds dead, their bleached bones littering a valley. Joan Soggie describes this battle and her search for the site in Looking for Aiktow: Stories Behind the History of the Elbow of the South Saskatchewan River. Aiktow, Cree for elbow, referred to an abrupt bend or elbow in the South Saskatchewan River, located near the current village of Elbow, SK. Both Cree and early explorers avoided camping in this area where the river turned; to do so was an open invitation for the Blackfoot to attack. According to Soggie, “Cree became the official language of the fur trade” on the prairies. For a while the Cree profited by their relationship with the Hudson’s Bay Company, supplying traders with tonnes of fresh meat and pemmican “But those golden days were as elusive and short-lived as the mirages that haunt distant prairie horizons,” Soggie says. She maintains a sympathetic view of Aboriginals, devoting a chapter to Cree Chief…

Cream Money: Stories of Prairie People Compiled and edited by Deana J. Driver Published by DriverWorks Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $19.95 ISBN 978-192757019-7 I didn’t expect this. While reading Cream Money: Stories of Prairie People, I stopped several times and thought: we have no idea. “We” being anyone who did not live in rural SK in the early to mid-1900s, when even children worked hard to ensure that life ran smoothly on the farm. It was the era of large families and tight budgets, of rolling up one’s sleeves before the school bus even arrived, and of smothering foods of all kind in rich, delicious, straight-from-the-cow cream. Editor Deana J. Driver has collected 29 short and interesting anecdotes (plus several black and white photographs) from residents of the prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan who well recall how hard they worked and how different life was in earlier times, when cream was regularly sold to creameries. It was not uncommon for farmers of that time to own at least one dairy cow, and the much-needed funds earned selling cream kept many families financially afloat during lean times. Within these pages we learn about specific animals, milking techniques, the…

Women’s History Edited by Wendee Kubik and Gregory P. Marchildon Published by University of Regina Press Review by Keith Foster $34.95 ISBN 9780889773127 The history of women in the Prairies is a story of accomplishment and ongoing struggle – clearly depicted in Women’s History, edited by Wendee Kubik and Gregory P. Marchildon, This is the fifth volume in the History of the Prairie West Series, designed to appeal to a wide audience, from general readers to professional historians. Although Women’s History focuses on the three Prairie Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, it also extends to the American West. The book includes an array of subjects, including prohibition, vagrancy, suffrage, political activism, and union organizing. Women’s History is divided into six sections – Politics, Law, Agriculture, Labour, Journalism, and Ethnicity – covering the period from the 1870s to 2005. The seventeen analytical essays by fifteen authors were previously published in various issues of Prairie Forum; they are now conveniently located in this one volume. Each section contains essays appropriate to that area, often with intriguing titles such as “Spinsters Need Not Apply: Six Single Women Who Attempted to Homestead in Saskatchewan between 1872 and 1914,” and “25¢ an Hour; 48…

The Literary History of Saskatchewan. Volume 2 – Progressions edited by David Carpenter Published by Coteau Books Review by Keith Foster $24.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-567-2 (v. 2) The Literary History of Saskatchewan continues its analysis of the province’s literary pioneers in this second volume – Progressions. This collection of essays brings insights into Saskatchewan writers and their writing styles from the 1980s to the end of the twentieth century. This period brought the Saskatchewan Book Awards and the Saskatchewan Festival of Words into being, and strengthened the literary presses like Coteau Books. With the demise of the Saskatchewan School of the Arts came the closing of Fort San, which Ken Mitchell describes as “a prairie legend, a Woodstock on the Qu’Appelle River.” But rising like a phoenix on the prairie, the Sage Hill Writing Experience took its place. In an ironic twist, Mitchell had been turned down by W.O. Mitchell for a workshop because he “wasn’t good enough.” The younger Mitchell was determined to prove him wrong, and did, becoming an instructor at Fort San and a professor at the University of Regina. This 290-page book contains four tributes and eleven essays, each referenced, including one devoted entirely to Saskatchewan’s new…