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COLUMNS AND COMMENTS July 18, 2010

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Announcement: Speargrass Specialties can now accept credit card payments through Paypal Canada. See "products" and "order form".

A new novel : An Englishman's Daughter, retail $14.95. Single copy shipping $2.10, anywhere in Canada.

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of what can be known of the life and times of W. B. Cameron, remembered but dimly -- and only by a few -- as a survivor of the Frog Lake Massacre who wrote a book about it afterwards. Robert and Shirley's research goes far beyond where other historians gone. Their many hours of work have been for the benefit of Athabasca University which holds all of the original research documents and objects in the Thomas A. Edge Archives and Special Collections.

The book is painstakingly researched and sensitively written. Robert and Shirley Hendriks have brought W. B. Cameron out of the shadows of neglect . Inquiries about the book should be directed to Karen Langley at Athabasca University, telephone 780-675-6268 or karenl@athabascau.ca

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Kay Parley is a talented writer and a friend. Her book, Lady With a Lantern, is grown insightfully out of her own experiences as both a patient and a staff member at the Saskatchewan Hospital at Weyburn. One of the pleasures of this book, as with all her work, is the way she puts words together. If you want a copy, contact her at:

129 -2nd Street East, Saskatoon, SK, S7H 1N3

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A Recommended Magazine

Canadian Stories , cover to cover, is written by Canadians and for Canadians. This independent publication is an honest and earnest purveyor of social history, as welcome as a brave spring crocus among the noxious literary weeds which infect the magazine, television and internet fields. Annual in-Canada subscription is $42. The address is Canadian Stories, P.O. Box 232, Fergus, ON, NIM 2W8.

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Speargrass Specialties sells home-grown books written and printed on a shoe string by a prairie micro-publisher.

Discounts : free shipping on all orders of over $40

Please turn to "Products" for more stock reduction sale bargains.

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ANOTHER WARNING: Updating of this site on September 15 was prevented by a computer malfunction which resulted from a hacker twice attempting to obtain a personal credit card number. This hacker used two different titles and is now probably using another. If you encounter an internet intruder informing you of serious infections in your computer which must be corrected immediately and offering a program to do it which is to be paid for by a credit card, you are probably being attacked by the same hacker. The message appears to be genuine. It isn't. If you don't install the offered program, access to all other programs is blocked. If you do, your credit card number will be stolen. Beware.

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When is Normal?

For better or for worse, we live north of the 49^th parallel on a great continental inland plain. Expect the unexpected. We take whatever the weather-gods provide. We can’t be certain of what and when is normal.

Somewhere among us, there may be an ancient cattleman who heard harrowing tales of the cruel winter of 1906-07,when bitter memories of it were still fresh. That season, winter came early with howling blizzards that laid a deep snow blanket over uncut hayfields and filled every draw where cattle, deer and antelope sheltered. They died in tombs of ice. In the spring, the scent of sage and new grass was overpowered by the miasma of rotting flesh. Over 70% of the cattle in the Prairie Dry Belt of Alberta and Saskatchewan died, and ranchers faced the almost impossible task of rebuilding their herds with cattle trailed north from the USA. In the spring of 2010,cattle were trapped and died in an unexpected snowfall in Alberta. Despite incidents such as this and facing additional man-made difficulties in marketing and exporting, ranchers are still the custodians of the grasslands.

In 1906, land leased by ranchers was being yielded up to homesteaders, lured by the railways and federal government, too often to break up prairie which should have remained as rangeland. The homesteaders had little to show for their labours until 1915, when the land, including semi-desert areas, produced a bounteous yield of 215, 000,000 bushels. It never happened again, although many happy farmers thought 1916 would be even better. That year, however, the rain came in torrents. Much of what the land produced never reached a market.. Whatever grain could be salvaged had to be hauled over a primitive road system that was rarely passable to elevators which were rarely filled. Ferry landings washed out. Hay rotted in the fields. In 1917, the rains stayed away. The situation was “normal” again.

In 2010, farmers face the same risks they did in 1917, but they have the additional cost of travelling further to deliver to a truncated elevator system made to order by the railways. There are still farmers on the land. Our society bestows medals aplenty on

entertainers, sports figures, specialists in this that. There aren’t too many medals hanging off the work-shirts of food producers. In our schools, children learn about important people and events, but they are not made to realize that food producers are the foundation of every important civilization which has blossomed into greatness throughout all of history In 2010, most people see food as processed and semi-processed stuff imprisoned in plastic. Real food comes from the land and the water. Food producers are the beginning of everything.

I remember the people of the Dirty Thirties. They weren’t technocrats. They weren’t

specialists. They were people with the lore of living in their heads. They did ordinary things extraordinarily well. They knew it was just as important to get together as to get ahead. And they did, in church or at sports days, bonspiels, picnics, dances, and school concerts or at hockey games on frozen ponds and dugouts. They participated. They cared about others. For the good of the planet and future generations, I wish we could be as we were.