MOOSE HUNT IN THE DUCK MOUNTAINS

The agenda for December, 1921, included a moose hunt, presumably enough meat to get the family through the winter.


I can only find evidence that Bruce, the oldest, and Sam, the Papa, were on this trip. I don't know whether they slept in their big box sled or in what seems to be a tent to the left. I'm glad the horses are all cozy in their blankets and evidently had something good to eat. If someone can identify these guns, I'd be grateful.


This says, "Father stands on the frozen headwaters of the Roaring River." Looks like a good place to trap beaver, which I suppose is likely to be a place to shoot a moose.


Sure enough, this is Bruce, my father, with the kill, though it's not clear whether he's the one who shot it. His caption is "We get the moose." It has no horns, so it may be female. Moose don't shed their horns in December, do they?


The caption for this one is "On the homeward trail." On the back it says, "Raod thru Jack Pine grove on Duck Mountain. But these are not what I call jack pine, which I associate with twisty branches. This looks like what I call lodgepole pine because they are thin, tall and straight for tipi poles.

A SUNNY NOVEMBER AFTERNOON

Looks like there is definitely a second room adding on here and this must be the south side. May and Beulah must have come out from inside, for they can't stand the dazzle. Glenn can get by with scowling. Beulah is now showing signs of the goiter that she eventually suffered from severely. It comes from not getting enough iodine in one's diet, a common problem in those days, esp. if one were far from the sea where the fish contain iodine. Now salt is iodized to prevent goiter.



Hockey night in Canada is a gleeful call to action and the players streak across the yard, not even needing a fancy rink. They created this one themselves, entirely without a Zamboni.


Of course, it helps to have a goal, even with no net. Now we can see the players are: (l. to r.) Seth, Bruce, May and Glenn.


Christmas means new hockey sticks and books. Not many tall evergreens around Minitonas, but this is about the right size for a small room where everyone spends the evening together. The boys are Seth on the left and Glenn on the right.

A LITTLE EXCITEMENT !

It's October and just about the time you think a long boring winter is coming, something happens! A train wreck is not just a metaphor. But it's a lot better when no one gets hurt -- just some loads spilled. Maybe you've read the novel, "Praying for Sheetrock," in which a community thrives on accidentally dumped loads but really needs a lot of sheetrock. Browning, Montana, an hour north of here, has some notorious wind traps and rail curves and well acquainted with the phenomenon. Even in Glacier Park, where a trainload of wheat capsized years ago, the bears remember and revisit the site. They were particularly impressed after the grain got wet and began to ferment.


The back of this photo says, "Train wreck showing 3 of 5 cars derailed at Minitonas. Car at left upside down and rail thru it."


Both of these photos say the same thing: "Wrecking crane putting derailed car on track at Minitonas."


They do it just the same way today, except that this crane appears to be a steam engine while today it might be diesel. Big cranes always seem like dinosaurs, but I suppose a steam engine crane is extinct as well.

WORK

This page, called "During Work Hours" is the page across from "leisure." My father had a strong sense of symmetry. It's now fall of 1921 and time to harvest and sell.



I was told by a Saskatchewan farm boy that in those days they liked to blow the chaff and straw into a poplar bluff (grove) and fill it up so all the trees formed a kind of internal skeleton. Then when the animals ate their way into the stack, it didn't collapse but became a kind of cave shelter that protected them from the fierce cold. But here it looks like the straw is just piling up into a fenced place near the little shed where I suspect the cow lived. It would be very bad if the cow ate herself a cave, got in it, and then were smothered when it collapsed.



Two crews on the premises at once: the threshers and the potato diggers. The Strachan boys, of course, went back and forth as needed. The threshers appear to be standing at the left with their hands up as though on steering wheels. The back of the photo identifies them as the "J.F. Smith threshing crew." Combines were the next step, but by now many farms are so big that the "custom cutters" bring in a fleet of the machines, different from J. F. Smith only in terms of equipment. It also seems that they've brought along a lady, no doubt the boss's wife. The potato diggers look a bit more hard-bitten. One man either has a very dirty face or is black. So here was a last outlay of cash before the money begins to run back the other way.


"Potatoes raised on the SSS Farm. From left to right: Mrs. and Mr. E. Martin, Mr. Pridham and Mr. Cameron." I can't explain the rural looking couple, but the bankers are pretty obvious. On one occasion, maybe not this year, the bankers showed up when Sam was gone and seized the potato crop, which had been loaded onto a boxcar. The SSS farm, of course, had a loan with them that was secured with the crop, but the proper procedure would have been for the bank to wait until Sam had gotten the best price possible, then paid off the loan. Sam got legal papers from the sheriff and went in pursuit. I believe he recovered the potatoes. These guys look like people who might do that sort of thing.



These two photos show a gentler sort of customer, the Salvation Army. One photo says, "Mr. and Mrs. S.S. Strachan, Mrs. Gilson, and Salvation Army officers and first of potatoes raised on SSS Farm." Sam is at the far left. Beulah in the light-colored coat.

All those potatoes! And this was before chips and French fries, except home made!

DURING LEISURE HOURS

The title is my father's title for this album page.


It's October, 1921. Seth, the youngest, sets up a camp in the yard. He has a headdress of what are probably turkey feathers and a bow and arrow. His camp includes a framework for hanging pots over a campfire, which has attracted the attention of the camp cat. (A variant on the more traditional camp dog.) My father, who remembered these times as idyllic, made sure to get a small "teepee" for our own backyard later in Portland and took a photo of my brother at about the same age and in the same pose. Raising we kids was for him mostly a matter of recovering the past.


Now the cat seems more like a kitten. May's note on the back says, "This was taken in the fall of 1921 after the leaves are all off. Her constant bow is in place and she wears a shiny stiff skirt. Maybe this is a Sunday afternoon photo.


This is little Doris Innes and my grandmother, "Mrs. Strachan." There appears to be some construction to what I assume is the front of the house, but might be the back. Note the geraniums wintering over in the window, just as I do now.


Glenn seems to have taken the photo, so that's his shadow. Otherwise, from left-to-right, Beulah, May, Seth, Bruce, Sam Strachan. It's possible they were actually looking at something, but I suspect it was a made-you-look joke where you organize people to peer steadfastly at nothing to see who else will come look. In other words, prairie humor.

BIG CROPS AND FALLING PRICES IN 1921

Competition is considered to be one of the important motors of progress, whether it's about who can raise the biggest whatsis or who can go the fastest. The Strachans were up to it, but rather amazed themselves at the tall oats they could raise on newly cleared ground far to the north with long, long days.


Three Strachans are in the center of the photo, but one -- indicated by a light pencil note, shows as only "Seth's hat." The back of the photo says, "Seed oats on S.S.S. Farm 5 1/2 feet high."


The back of the photo says "Wheat raised on S.S.S. Farm." But the album caption says "oat bundles five feet long." It's also unclear whether this is in the Strachan yard, and whether that's "Papa" standing in the middle. But plainly they were all impressed and proud. I had understood that all the horses died of equine encephalitis when the family got to Swan River, but maybe these were later and maybe they were replacements or even borrowed.

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Here's where all those long bicycle trips paid off! Glenn is WAY out in front! The back says, "Glenn Strachan winning bicycle race at Swan River." The album caption is "Glenn wins bicycle race at Swan River (Dominion Day, July 1, 1921.)" Note the flag of the British Empire. Ironically, in later life he had terrible trouble with his lungs and allergies, finally moving to Santa Ana, California, to keep from constant bouts of pneumonia that in those days were life-threatening. We wondered whether his lungs had been frozen, but his son, who grew up in Santa Ana, also has trouble with breathing.

Of course, ironically and destructively, bumper crops mean overabundance and low prices. The railroads and elevators could buffer that a bit by shipping crops to where the weather and other factors were not so favorable.

THE DUCK MOUNTAINS

On the back: "West Favelle gorge in Duck Mountain looking south. The river is just to right of Seth's hand."


On the back: "West Favelle Gorge in Duck Mountain looking east.

"Geologically, the Duck Mountains are part of the Manitoba Escarpment, along with the Turtle Mountains, the Riding Mountains, and the Porcupine Hills. Their underlying rocks are Cretaceous shales and (below that) sandstone, which overlie deeper deposits of Devonian limestone, which in turn overlie Precambrian granite [1]. The vertical relief of the mountains is the result of erosion of the Cretaceous shale by the ancestral (pre Ice Age) Red River to the east, and by the ancestral Assiniboine River to the west, and so the Duck Mountain's apparent height is the result of a lowering of the surrounding prairie, rather than any orogen. Glacial scouring exaggerated the vertical relief of the mountains, and the glaciers deposited thick beds of glacial till that now overlay the bedrock. The post-ice age Duck Mountains then formed the western shore of Lake Agassiz. The flat bottom of Lake Agassiz now forms the Manitoba lowlands, and it is from these lowlands that the vertical relief of the Duck Mountains is most impressive (indeed, really the only place from which it is even readily noticeable), as the mountains provide an obvious contrast to the monotonous flat of Manitoba's prairie.

"The area represents the southern limit of the boreal forest in its transition zone to aspen parkland. The forest soils are stony and the landscape is rolling, with numerous ponds and creek channels. The forest trees include white spruce, black spruce, tamarack larch, balsam fir, jack pine, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, and paper birch."

In the early years the Strachans were here, moose meat was a major part of their diet. More than that, the mountains engaged their imaginary lives, a wild place full of potential and surprises in a nearly religious way. When the boys got to June, just before time to cut hay, they would have had a few slack days to pedal bicycles over to the alluring Duck Mountains. One of my father's favorite songs was "The Bear Went over the Mountain to See What He Could See."