Purple Gas

In a previous post, I referred to “purple gas.” Prairie people are very familiar with the term; people elsewhere, not so much.

Beginning in the 1940s, the Government of Saskatchewan (among others) exempted bulk fuel purchases intended for farm use from provincial tax. This could amount to a savings of 10 cents a gallon, not an insignificant amount back then. Since this fuel was to be used only in farm trucks and machinery, it was dyed purple in order to distinguish it from domestic-purpose fuel (colloquially known as “bronze”) used in cars and other non-farm vehicles.

We used purple in the farm truck which was easily distinguished from non-farm vehicles not only by mud and manure permanently adhered to its body but also by the “F” on the licence plate. Purple (and diesel) also fueled our tractors and combine, and they were not exactly “fuel efficient.” Consequently, we had two 500 gallon fuel tanks, one for diesel and one for purple. Every so often, Dad called the bulk station and soon Mr. Conlan, and later Mr. Lalonde, arrived with his big tanker truck and filled our tanks. The reek of gas and diesel hung in the air, and on Dad’s clothes, for hours after these visits and Mom refused to let Dad in the house.

It was not at all unusual for the RCMP to stop non-farm vehicles and inspect for illegal purple gas. Woe betide the person driving a car who was caught using it. Fines ensued. Vehicles could even be impounded.

But there was a work-around, according to my anonymous but totally reliable source (not that my anonymous but totally reliable source would ever do anything of the kind). A solution that only a farm kid could dream up, a farm kid who wanted to take his newest “squeeze” out for a spin but couldn’t afford to buy legit gas. Pour purple into clear glass jugs, set in the sun for a few days, and voila! The sun had bleached out the purple dye so, go ahead, Mr. RCMP, check all you want.

In the 1990s, the Saskatchewan government abandoned the tax exemption. Now farmers pay the tax up front and receive a rebate. Purple gas has become a thing of the past although some jurisdictions still use it.

Our family has a purple gas incident that involves our 1958 Ford, a neighbour couple, a ram, and an unsuspecting RCMP officer.

From about 1968 to 1975, my parents and their good friends, George and Muriel Morrison, jointly owned a flock of sheep. For the first couple of years, Dad and George “borrowed” a ram to, well, you know what rams do. They decided they needed their own ram, so off they went to Regina to the livestock auction to buy one.

During this time, my parents were living in Moose Jaw so that my brother could attend school. George also lived in Moose Jaw. Neither had a truck to bring back the ram, so a truck-owning friend agreed to meet them at the auction mart and ferry said ram back to the sheep yard.

All four drove into Regina (about 75 km away) in our 1958 Ford. Dad and George bought the ram. The friend with the truck did not show up. Now what to do?

Dad took the back seat out of the car and stowed it in the trunk (remember cars with giant trunks?). They covered the floor with plastic, and between Dad and George, with the help of a bucket of oats, they managed to wrestle the ram into the back where they crouched, uncomfortably, holding the ram in place. Ram was not amused. Neither were Dad and George but what else could they do?

Mom and Muriel got in the front seat, Mom driving. Half-way between Regina and Moose Jaw, she saw the flashing lights of an RCMP cruiser behind her. Being a good law-abiding driver, she pulled over and got out her licence and car registration.

“I’m checking for purple gas,” the RCMP officer said, and walked back to the gas cap. Just as he walked past the rear door, the ram stuck his head out of the window, gave an ear-splitting B-A-A-A-A in the officer’s face, and further expressed his displeasure with the situation by taking a big dump of you-know-what.

What Dad and George said cannot be repeated in public. The RCMP officer decided he didn’t need to test for purple gas. Mom drove home, windows rolled all the way down. The ram was delivered to the sheep yard. The car received a thorough cleaning.

We still laugh about it.

#PurpleGas #FarmFuelTax #HannaFamilyHistory #ChildhoodMemories #PrairieHistory #SaskatchewanHistory #MargaretGHanna

Disappeared Giants

In the Beginning:

When my grandfather homesteaded in 1909 in what was to become the Meyronne district, there were no roads, there was no railroad. Everything – mail, groceries, supplies, harness, wagon repairs, even machinery – had to be freighted from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) mainline to the north, three days one way northeast to Moose Jaw or two days one way northwest to Morse. And yes, the grain the farmers grew also had to be freighted by horse and wagon over those same routes to either Moose Jaw or Morse.

That changed when the CPR, in 1912, started building the line from Weyburn clear across the province to Shaunavon. The “steel” arrived at Meyronne on September 3, 1913. Everyone was ecstatic. No more long-distance freighting. Now everything, including passengers, came and went by train.

Right behind the railroads came the grain companies building elevators to buy and ship wheat. Names like Patterson, Federal, UGG (United Grain Growers), Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator, Parrish and Heimbecker, Pioneer, Olgivie’s, Blanchard’s, Province, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool – these and others were familiar to every town, to every farmer.

Traffic Jam at Harvest Time, ca. 1925

Grain elevators stood out on the prairie, visible for miles, hence the nicknames “Prairie Sentinel” and “Prairie Giants.” They were massive structures, standing 150 feet tall; the later ones, even taller. They were built of old-growth fir 2″x4″s, laid on the flat and nailed together with 6″ spikes. Within that giant structure was a belt with scoops that lifted the grain from the receiving hopper up to an assemblage of distributing spouts that poured the grain into vertical bins. The “annex,” a secondary storage bin, was built likewise, and reinforced round-about with 2″x6″s to withstand the tremendous pressure of the hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain stored within them.

Meyronne elevators, as seen from our farm, ca. 1965

Photo courtesy of Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society

Grain elevators were symbols of hard work, of perseverance in the face of adversity, of wealth and prosperity. They defined the prairie economy and skyline. Saskatchewan billed itself as the “Breadbasket of the World,” and a line of elevators every six or seven miles gave credence to that motto. Towns took great pride in their “Elevator Row.” Every town had at least three elevators, some as many as a dozen. The greater the number of elevators, the more the townspeople boasted.

Every child growing up in a prairie town has memories of those grain elevators. Here are two.

I remember:

A trip to the elevator always began with Dad coming into the house and announcing, “Quota’s open.” A one-bushel quote meant he could sell one bushel of wheat for every acre of wheat he had planted. He hauled the auger to the granary and loaded the old blue International 3/4 ton truck full to the brim. I got to go with him, a special treat when you are ten or so. We drove the 1/4 mile into town, clunk-clunked across the railroad track and along the dirt trail paralleling the railroad, past the Co-op Bulk Station where farmers bought diesel and oil and “purple” gas (therein lies another tale) and up the gangway into the elevator and onto the grate and scale.

To my ten-year-old mind, the elevator was a place of wonder and mystery encompassed by ritual. We got out of the truck. Dad and Mr. McCaslin, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Elevator operator, chatted about anything and everything – they were probably solving the problems of the world – while Mr. McCaslin weighed the truck and jotted the result into a book. That done, he said, “Okay, you can dump now.” Dad opened the hatch on the back of the box – if I was really lucky, I would be given that honour – and then activated the truck hoist. As the box rose up, the grain poured out through the grate into, into where? I stared down into the grate, trying to see where the grain was going. All I knew was that it was pouring into some dark mysterious place and somehow it was lifted up into the bins above. But which bin? How did Mr. McCaslin know where it was going? Meanwhile, he held his scoop under the golden stream until it was full and then dumped it into another scale. A bushel of wheat at optimum dryness weighs 60 pounds (forgive me using old-fashioned imperial measures but in the mid-1950s we knew nothing of metric). If that bushel weighs less, it is because it is contaminated with weed seeds. The weight of that measure determined how much the load was worth. That bit of information also was jotted down.

Once the last of the wheat was scraped out of the box, Mr. McCaslin weighed the truck again, the final figure needed to determine the value of the wheat we had just delivered. Truck full – truck empty = weight of grain / weight of one bushel (as measured above) = total number of bushels x price per bushel = a grain cheque and money in the bank! Who knew an elevator agent had to be a math whiz?

Mr. McCaslin’s son, David, remembers:

“Back then, grain was shipped in wooden box cars with sliding doors on the side. The doors had to be “coopered”, i.e., sealed so no grain could leak out. I have a lot of great memories about “coopering”! It was my first job as a teenager. My Dad (the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool) paid me $1.00 per car to “cooper.” A dollar’s pay for 45 minutes of work was big bucks for a thirteen-year old, way back in the day.

Dad would sometimes get five to ten boxcars at time. Having to stop and “cooper” the next car greatly slowed the process. I got quite skilled at it. Although it was pretty straight forward, it had to be done 100% correctly.

The CPR provided prebuilt slabs the width of the doors. Each slab weighed about 25-30 pounds and each door required about six to eight slabs. The process of loading slabs into the car and then nailing them in place took about 45 minutes. After the slabs were securely in place, the whole section was covered in sheets of industrial paper to ensure there was no leakage.

The last step was to get out of the boxcar after you had boarded up the doors. There was a two foot space at the top. You had to pull yourself up to the top (well over your head) and then slide sideways in order to get out.

Although it by no means qualified as a craft, I took great pride in it., The experience had a profound impact on my personal development. Among many things, it taught me about personal accountability, attention to detail and the importance of meeting deadlines. In hindsight, most significantly, it sparked the beginning of what became an adult relationship with my Dad.”

Today:

Grain elevators, like gambrel-roofed barns and church steeples, were such a part of the prairie landscape that we almost didn’t see them any more. Until they disappeared.

The 1950s and 1960s accelerated a decline that had begun during the Dirty Thirties. Highways were improved and now became the lifeline of prairie towns, replacing railways. Railway stations closed. Old people passed away and no young people took their place – they had fled to cities in search of education and work. Houses were shuttered. Businesses closed.

Many of the smaller grain companies had disappeared or been bought out by the big ones – Pioneer, Cargill and the Wheat Pool (now Agrium). By the 1990s, grain companies were building centralized monster concrete high-capacity inland grain terminals; they were more efficient and cost-effective. Farmers traded in their three-ton trucks and invested in semi-trailers to haul grain the 20, 30 or 40 miles to the terminal.

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Now you see them, now you don’t. Left: Meyronne’s Elevator Row, 1917; Right: Same place, 2019.

Some elevators are still in use. Some were purchased by farmers and moved to their farms where they continue to serve. A few others have been converted into museums. Some crumble in place, abandoned, rotting, falling apart, home to pigeons and rodents. Most were tipped over and burned, a raging conflagration so intense that the outsides of houses a quarter-mile away were hot to the touch. The few remaining townsfolk cried as they watched what had once been a source of pride reduced to a pile of ashes. It was the end of an era.

As the grain elevators disappeared, so did the villages, visually if not in fact. Now, as you drive through southern Saskatchewan, you can’t tell if that cluster of trees and houses a half-mile or so off the highway is what was once a town or is merely a very large farmstead.

To those of us who remember, that vacant space pains.

#GrainElevators #PrairieGiants #PrairieSentinels #ChildhoodMemories #SaskatchewanHistory #PrairieHistory #MeyronneHistory #HannaFamilyHistory #McCaslinFamilyHistory #MargaretGHanna

Hail Season

“Insured 290 acres crop at $4.50 per acre.”
Abraham Hanna diary, June 24, 1922

Farmers call it “the great white combine.” They fear it. They plan for it.

From early June to the end of August, they scan the sky, hoping they will not see what they are looking for.

The crop is up and growing well. By July, the wind sends waves billowing across the grain field. The heads are emerging. The farmer dreams of a bumper crop. Of full granaries. Bills paid. Money in the bank. Dreams hedged with caution – the crop is not yet in the bin.

The day begins normally. It is hot, humid. Cumulus clouds gather in the west, grow larger, higher. Farmers check the weather report: “Severe weather advisory. Thunderstorms with heavy rain and possibility of hail.” They hope it will pass them by.

From a distance the storm is beautiful – huge, shimmering, pearlescent, anvil-shaped clouds reaching high into the sky. They loom closer, growing in size, becoming darker, blacker, more threatening. The sky darkens, the air chills. The wind picks up. Distant thunder rolls closer and closer. The first rain drops fall.

“Severe electric storm with heavy rain & hail at 1 am.”
Abraham Hanna diary, June 17, 1929

Rain pelts down, harder and harder. The terror arrives.

The advance guard is pea-sized, rattling down against roofs and windows. Everything that can move scurries to shelter. Huddles. Shivers. Hopes for the best. Fears the worst.

No longer pea-size. They grow, the size of golf balls, tennis balls, even larger. The wind howls, blowing rain and hail sideways in great gusts. The rattling becomes a deafening pounding, a hammering accompanied by the sound of shattering glass, shredding siding. The ground whitens. Drifts form in corners. It lasts an eternity.

“Hot with showers and heavy rain in eve with some hail & very high wind. A large area in 9-7 [the township north of the farm] was hailed out by a storm which swept from Leader to south of Willow Bunch.”
Abraham Hanna diary, July 19, 1927

It is over. The rainbow in the sky belies the devastation below. Leaves and branches ripped from trees. Dead birds. A kitten that didn’t make it to the barn in time. Shattered windows. Dented vehicles.

Worst of all, garden and crop destroyed. Hopes and dreams destroyed. Hail insurance will pay some of the bills but it is no substitute for a full grain bin.

The farmer walks through the jagged stubble, fingers some of the shattered stalks and heads. He mourns his lost crop but already he is thinking of next year.

(I started writing this before the hail storm of June 13 that hit northeast Calgary and caused a preliminary estimate of at least $1 billion in damages)

HailStorm #FarmLife #PrairieLife #DreamsShattered #MargaretGHanna #HannaFamilyHistory #PrairieWeather

Mitigating the Dirty Thirties – Relief

The rains stopped in 1929.

No one panicked. Dry years were not unknown – there had been the occasional one or two every decade so far. Everyone knew the rains would come again “next year.” Abe certainly believed so, for in the fall of 1929, he purchased a new Rumley combine.

The new Rumley combine, 1929; Abe on the combine, Garnet and Addie standing in front of the tractor

But the rains didn’t come “next year,” or for several years after. Crops struggled. What little grew was quickly devoured by grasshoppers, that is, if it wasn’t blown away first. Abe recorded annual yields between 2 and 9 bushels per acre. In 1937, the year of no rain, it plummeted to 1/3 bushel per acre, a “total crop failure.”

Setting the stage for disaster in the Palliser Triangle

The Dirty Thirties was the result of a “perfect storm” of two factors: a severe, multi-year drought and farming techniques inappropriate for dry-land farming in the Palliser Triangle.

The mixed-grass prairie of the Palliser Triangle appeared, at first glance, to be a fertile and productive land. And it was – for grass. It had adapted over thousands of millennia to the mid-continental regimen of periodic droughts, short but intense over-grazing by bison herds, and fires that raged across the landscape. They survived and flourished because their roots went deep into the ground, soaking up moisture and holding the soil intact in spite of the weather above ground.

The Palliser Triangle: Farmland or Ranchland?

One of the treasures in the “Hanna Archives” is a scrap of paper on which Abe recorded crop yields from 1911 to 1938. Yields vary from the “bumper” crop of 35 bushels per acre in 1928 to the total crop failure of 1937 – 1/3 bushel per acre. It is a vivid illustration of the uncertainty of farming.

Abe had the misfortune of acquiring land in what is known in the Canadian prairies as the Palliser Triangle. It is a semi-arid, formerly mixed-grass area that encompasses southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, with its apex at approximately Lloydminster on the Saskatchewan-Alberta border. It is characterized by low precipitation – 300 mm or about 12 inches per year. About 70% falls as rain during spring to autumn, the remainder as snow in the winter. Spring and autumn rains are usually what are commonly called “general rains” – a two or three-day “soaker” that covers most of the area. Summer rains are localized, sporadic and occasionally violent thunderstorms that bring brief heavy rains, often combined with strong winds that can lodge (beat down) crops and hail that can destroy them. It is with good reason that, on the prairies, hail is called the Great White Combine.

The region gets its name from Capt. John Palliser, an Irishman commissioned in 1857 by the British Government to explore the western regions of Rupert’s Land of British North America. Its purpose was to determine whether or not the western regions were suitable for settlement and how the region could be linked to both the British Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The expedition lasted three years. In 1863, Palliser presented his report to the British House of Commons, which appears to have been so overwhelmed by its size and comprehensiveness that it met the fate of so many such commissioned reports – it was shelved and all but forgotten.

As fate would have it, the Palliser expedition explored the southern prairies during a dry period. He concluded that the region was unfit for agriculture and better suited to livestock. At the same time, another expedition under the leadership of Henry Youle Hind, also explored what is now southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, although Hind traveled primarily through the parkland region bordering the northern edge of the mixed-grass prairies. Hind reached much the same conclusion – the mixed-grass prairie was unsuitable for agriculture.

A decade later, the political situation had changed. The British North American Act of 1867 united four British colonies – Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia – to form the Dominion of Canada. Two years later, the Canadian government purchased Rupert’s Land (all the territory that drains into Hudson Bay) from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1870, the Red River Resistance under Louis Riel brought the Province of Manitoba into Confederation. And in 1871, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald lured the colony of British Columbia into Confederation with the promise of a railroad.

Macdonald was growing increasingly uneasy about American expansionist efforts in the west. He saw the railroad as a means of encouraging British settlement on what he thought of as unoccupied prairie lands – never mind that indigenous people were already living there – thereby ensuring Canadian sovereignty over the territory.

The original route went through the parkland that bordered the north edge of the Palliser Triangle. However, Sir Sanford Fleming, the chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, wanted an alternate opinion. In 1872, he commissioned John Macoun, a botanist, to provide his assessment of the mixed grass region.

The 1870s happened to be a relatively wet period. Unlike Palliser and Hind, Macoun saw a lush, bountiful land perfect for agriculture. Both Fleming and Macdonald were pleased with this assessment for two reasons. First, it was a more direct route to the west coast and, thus, less expensive to build. Second, the railroad would facilitate settlement that would establish Canadian sovereignty.

Abe and two unidentified men inspect the bumper crop of 1928

So, who was right? Palliser and Hind? or Macoun? As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. Given good soil, rains at the proper time, sufficient (but not excessive) sunshine and heat, and a long-enough frost-free growing season, farmers in the Palliser Triangle can, and do, produce bountiful harvests. But, as Abe and other farmers learned, they can not always depend on the weather.

The Dirty Thirties hammered that lesson home, with a vengeance.

Next time: The Human Factor in creating the Dirty Thirties

#PalliserTriangle #PrairieHistory #MeyronneSaskatchewan #MargaretGHanna #OurBullsLooseInTown #PrairieGeography

Stocking the Prairie Pantry, Part 1: What to do with all those vegetables?

Gardening season on the northern plains is short. The rule of thumb is: don’t plant before Victoria Day (May 24) and pray the first frosts don’t come until mid-September, preferably later. Assuming the garden isn’t eaten by various bugs or frozen out or dried out or rained out, then comes the task of preserving all that bounty for the coming winter.

About that horse’s name . . .

The horse with the problematic name, Abe, Addie and Garnet (1936)

In “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” Tales from the Homestead, I call this horse “Blacky.” That was not his real name. He was actually called (brace yourself) “Nigger.” He was the second “Nigger” my grandparents owned (they also owned a black horse called Darkey). So why did I change his name for the story?

“Our Bull’s Loose In Town!” – My grandparents’ story

“Our Bull’s Loose In Town!” Tales from the Homestead

A tiny shack in a vast prairie. Spooked horses and run-away pigs. A town half-destroyed by fire. The year with no crop. An untimely death.

Little did Addie Wright realize what she would face when she came west from Ontario in 1910 to marry her fiancé, Abraham Hanna. Based on entries in Abraham’s diaries, Our Bull’s Loose In Town tells the story of the author’s grandparents as they built their farm and raised a family in the Meyronne district of southwestern Saskatchewan. Through trials and triumphs, sorrows and successes, the horrors of the Great War, the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties and the dark years of the Dirty Thirties, they found strength and courage in their faith, in their indomitable humour, and in their family and neighbours.

This is also the story of the rise and decline of a prairie village, and of the political and social turmoil of a province and country in the first half of the twentieth century, all as Addie lived it.

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“Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” is available in bookstores  and as an e-book from the following sources: Chapters/Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Scribd,  Smashwords and Walmart.com.

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What Readers are saying about “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!”

Margaret was able to present us with a wonderfully rounded, factual account of what it was really like to pioneer near Meyronne in 1911. . . In spite of Margaret Hanna’s outspoken revelations about the darker side [of the 1920s], I still maintain that Our Bull’s Loose in Town is the most realistic look at life in southern Saskatchewan in pioneer days that I have ever seen.  Kay Parley, author, The Grass People

[The author has] a marvellous way of making history come alive. I think the secret to her success is having the book told from Addie’s perspective. Not just dry historical facts, but real life drama. Frank Korvemaker, co-author, Legacy of Worship: Sacred Places in Rural Saskatchewan

Margaret Hanna’s story of her grandparents’ journey as prairie homesteaders is a classic! It is cleverly written in her grandmother Addie’s voice. Addie provides a several decade play-by-play of her resilient family. The story unfolds concurrently with the initial settlement and development of rural southwest Saskatchewan. Improved finances, two world wars, a drought/depression and new technology are all woven in. Accordingly, whether you are a history buff, or just someone who grew up in a rural prairie community and can thus relate, “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” is a must read!     David McCaslin, former Meyronne resident

I really enjoyed the voice of Addie Wright/Hanna and her exploits through historical Saskatchewan. I really loved the first person point of view and thought it lent a personal touch to the story. Vanessa Hawkins, author

This was an interesting semi-historical about a family on the Canadian plains. The story is seen through remembrance. There was laughter and sadness, and seeing the history of the recent past through the writer’s eyes fascinating. A good read. Janet Lane-Walters, author

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#OurBullsLooseInTown #HistoricalFiction #FamilyHistory #SaskatchewanHistory #HomesteadEra #Biography #RedCoatTrail #CanLit #BWLAuthor #MargaretGHanna