A TABLEAU AT FAVELLE BANK

It's March, 1925, and the girl pals have decided to present a tableau. I have no idea at all what literary masterpiece is being represented, but I'm put in mind of Anne Shirley and her good friend, Diana, over on Prince Edward Island. The back of only one of the photos says, "May Strachan and her friend Rose Henderson posed for Tableau in an entertainment given for the Church of England last March." The handwriting is Beulah's, May's mother's.




The second set is posed indoors, which I presume is inside the Church of England. The bench appears to be the same. I suspect the apparatus on the small table to the right is a radio and I recognize the calendar on the wall at the left.

It's possible that what is portrayed is the Longfellow poem known as "Evangeline" which "describes the betrothal of an Acadian girl named Evangeline Bellefontaine to her beloved, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and their separation as the British deport the Acadians from Acadie in the Great Upheaval. The poem then follows Evangeline across the landscapes of America as she spends years in a search for him, at some times being near to Gabriel without realizing he was near. Finally she settles in Philadelphia and, as an old woman, works as a Sister of Mercy among the poor. While tending the dying during an epidemic she finds Gabriel among the sick, and he dies in her arms." (Wikipedia)

At this point, May is 18 and I presume that Rose is about the same age. Now that thoughts have turned to romance, the real thing has arrived. The next photo is undated and the inscription on the back is rather blotted, but it says, "The newly weds. Mr. Fox's camera. Rose is very sober. I think the wind was troubling her." (May's handwriting.) My guess is that she was sobered but resolute in the face of the commitment she was making. The caption under the photo says, "Wedding picture. George Phillips and Rose Henderson."

HARVEST TIME

These two photos have one word captions: "Potatoes" (with the team of horses) and "Onions."

The comment I read somewhere about the difference between a peasant and a farmer being related to the use of farm machinery has stuck with me. The point was in part that farmers with machinery soon became inventors as they repaired and perfected their contraptions. Surely this was true of the Strachans. Notice even something so subtle as the clothes of the man on the potato digger with a 3-horse team (maybe Glenn) who sits up high, compared with the bib overalls of my father with his hands full of onions. Later in life I never saw my father in bib overalls, though my uncles in Oregon wore them. There's even a difference in the sort of hats.

THE SLEEPY HOLLOW PORCH

We tend to think of porches in terms of urban streets, but country folk treasure their porches as well. An extra room, a social location, an interface.

Judging by the clothing, these fall of 1923 photos were taken on three different days.


The sharp edge of the shadow means a bright day but my grandmother's hat which seems to be made of velvet, probably by herself, implies either chilliness or a formal occasion. The effect of her goiter is stronger here. She doesn't look happy and neither does Seth, behind her on the railing in what seems to be either school or church gear. May is wearing her smile and her bow as well as touches of jewelry, which suggests a formal occasion, but black stockings seem to be sort of "second best" as compare with white stockings, esp. when the latter are paired with white shoes. The wire coming down from the roof is grounding for a lightning rod, not a cable television feed.


The boys are in overalls this time, with May all in white and with more of a "hairdo." Florence Henderson is also nicely dressed. Seth on wheels is pretty typical, though when wings were invented he was quick to adapt and his life career was piloting the biggest airplanes. Glenn has a farmer's white forehead from field work wearing a hat. I'm guessing that an event like graduation was at hand. That doesn't explain the beagle-y dog Florence has her arm around and the mop-in-motion that is entertaining everyone.


Now Florence is wearing the same dress as in the previous photo, but May seems to have changed into less formal wear. The shadow has moved down the door a bit and sharpened, as though clouds had cleared. This photo shows the two lightning rods on the roof. (Not TV antennas, though I suppose those might work -- maybe not in a good way.) The dormer window is open, which suggests warm weather is hanging on. This house seems more finished, but not as big as the previous one.

VALLEY RIVER HARDY PLANTS

These photos are from late summer, 1924, in Valley River, Manitoba, which I gather is close to the rather substantial town of Dauphin.


"Boughen's Nursery", which evidently specialized in hardy plants, has a formal entrance that leaves no doubt about where one has arrived.


This may have been where Sam Strachan picked up the idea of grafting hardy fruit trees which he continued to do much later in Portland, Oregon, where fence posts have been known to sprout and grow! Still, these lower trees are much easier to harvest and having two or three kinds of fruit on one plant is a practical conceit.


It looks to me as though George Henderson is on the left, but I don't recognize the man on the right. Perhaps it is Boughen himself.


Here's my father with his trusty camera case. These raspberries are being grown in the protection of windbreak trees.


My father may be too far away to identify for sure, but I think this is right. He calls this a "strawberry patch," but it sure looks like "strawberry fields" to me!


The caption here says "World War Monument" which is the white marble plinth in front of the church. It's hard to see what is at the top. I notice guns at the bottom.


This lake probably helps moderate temperatures for the nursery. In fact, these many-laked places, even though they are farther north, may be more moderate than the South Dakota prairie the Strachans left behind.

A BICYCLE TRIP TO VALLEY RIVER

In fact, the main attraction appears to be the town of Ethelbert, Manitoba, which was pioneered by the hardy immigrants from Galicia, a contested region of middle Europe bordering on Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia and renamed as it was conquered and reconquered, divided and redivided.

From Wikipedia: "The Ruthenian Catholic Church is a sui iuris (i.e., self-governing) Eastern Catholic Church (see particular Church), which uses the Divine Liturgy of the Constantinopolitan Byzantine Eastern Rite. Its roots are among the Rusyns who lived in the region called Carpathian Ruthenia, in and around the Carpathian Mountains. This is the area where the borders of present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine meet. The Ruthenian Catholic Church is in full communion with the Bishop of Rome who is spiritual leader of the 23 sui iuris particular churches which compose the Catholic Church."

"Ruthenian Catholics are descended from those to whom Saints Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity and the Byzantine Rite in their missionary outreach to the Slavic peoples in the ninth century."


The caption says "School at Ethelbert in the Galician Colony."

From Wikipedia: "Ethelbert is a village in the Rural Municipality of Ethelbert in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It is 370 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg and 60 kilometres north of Dauphin, Manitoba. The village is located right next to Duck Mountain Provincial Park on PTH 10. The village itself was officially incorporated in 1950."


The scale is deceiving but it appears after study that this is a tomb rather than a church or even a chapel. The caption says "Cemetery at Ethelbert."


This colorful church, labeled "Ruthenian Church," is not quite so massive as it appears at first. I'm not sure which of the trekkers is up on that balcony, but he reveals a bit of scale. The building technique is sort of halfway between log-cabin and modern stick construction.


The back of this photo says "one of our apples, 1926" and also "R.Heyer, Neville, Saskatchewan."
I think this was back at the Strachan farm. The first writing seems to be my Aunt May's, but I'm not sure who wrote the second. Sam Strachan was always interested in grafting fruit trees.

SUMMERTIME, 1924

Once again the time divides between work and play.



This is a four-family party: Henderson, Renauf, Allen, and Strachan at the Strachan's Sleepy Hollow farm. Judging from the shadows and the attire of the guests, these photos were taken about the same time. If we knew which way the house faced, we could guess the time of day, but my guess is that the photographer got busy after the midday meal and, since the women are present with aprons removed, after the dishes were done. There seems to have been a slight change in the angle of the porch foundation, a tilt that might suggest tipsiness except that I happen to know this was a passel of teetotallers, partly due to the sad fate of one of Beulah's brothers, who went off to the Phillippine war and came back a drunk. Today we'd probably talk post-traumatic stress syndrome. In the more tilted photo, my father is on the right hand end of the stairs with the two dogs. In the less tilted it is Glenn who's on the left side of the stairs. The women have clustered on the right side with May on the left hand end and Beulah, her mother, doing her best to hide because of her goiter. When building a porch railing, special care should be taken to make it sturdy, since there are always people who love to sit on top of it!


The album caption is "Our fields after clearing out the quack grass." Note that the potatoes are blooming. No mention of how it happened, but maybe this is when the Strachans made contact with the Kovar Kwackgrass puller, an ag machinery product from the US. They became the dealers. Kovar sent the components and the Strachans assembled and delivered them. This triggered a few years of prosperity for the family. This may have been a publicity photo.


This photo is an actual post card with writing on the back. The album caption says, "Uncle Thomas has a potato field near Wessington Springs, S. Dak." I suspect it is inserted here to compare with the Swan River photo.

The postcard is addressed to "Mr. S. S. Strachan, Minitonas, Manitoba, Canada." The stamp is 1 cent. Sender is at Wessington Springs, S.D. on October 1, 1923.

The message is: "How are you all. We are all well and have a new boy a little over a week old. Eugene is in the picture. Janet is a big girl now. Am raising spuds again. They are certified Ohios. Note the high pressure sprayer. The yield where the picture was taken was 40 -50 bu. Ivan & Max are helping harvest it most all the time. Write, Thomas."

So this is a birth announcement. Eugene, standing in the path of the team, was here in Valier at the time of 9/11. He was an airplane mechanic on New Guinea during WWII and was immediately ready to put on his uniform and defend America, though he was in his eighties. He was here to look at this very album and others for the compendium of genealogy he made for those of his relatives who were interested, including myself. In his eighties, he complained of backache which turned out to be stomach cancer. Now he's passed on. The new baby was Marvin.

Thomas was my grandfather Sam's youngest brother, the only one of the sibs to be born in the U.S. After decades of not finding his niche, he finally became an expert on prairie forbs and grasses and served as a county ag agent the rest of his life. His herbicide sprayer would replace the mechanical removal of weeds, which might have been the reason Kovar was looking for a market in Canada.

SUMMER TRAVEL, WINTER VISIT

The oldest boys strike out for the territories and this time they try a lake instead of a mountain. But when I googled Madge Lake, it was shown as IN Duck Mountains Provincial Park.


Bruce Strachan and George Henderson take a trip to Madge Lake, SW of Swan River. The back of the photo says proudly, "George Henderson and I made the 120-mile trip on bicycles."


The caption says simply "Harley's Catboat" but doesn't explain who Harley might be. This is summer of 1923.


The album caption says "Winter's Wood," so these logs are destined to be a wood pile rather than lumber.


This house is a classic. With three chimneys it must have devoured fuel in the winter. I don't know what the structure in the front is -- that box with a platform on top. Looks like they have electricity. The photo was taken in spring of 1923.


Christmas 1923 at the Renouf's with the requisite silly hats/crowns. Glenn is in the back at the corner of the house. Bruce is in the middle of the three boys in front and Seth is the next to the right of him. Sam Strachan is standing in the doorway and Beulah is to his left with her arm around Mrs. Renouf -- at least that's who I think it is. May is in the middle of the three girls against the house.