Jottings, Day 7

March 22nd, The Old West

The Old West lives on in small-town Saskatchewan. At least, on the surface.

Taking a walk around Maple Creek’s main street before the church-bell rang on Sunday morning, there was nobody to ask about the history of the downtown, before I went ahead to snag a photo.

I wondered whether the features of the frontier - rectangular wooden structures, low to the ground sidewalks, other intangibles - were a remnant of how it was built originally, or had been added later, for reasons of tourism or nostalgia. Maple Creek was one of the earliest settlements of European origin in modern Saskatchewan, the result of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the newly formed North West (later 'Royal Canadian') Mounted Police taking an interest in the Cyprus Hills region.

{The history of the RCMP in the region, as told on their Maple Creek station wall}

It is plausible, having been built in the 1880’s and 90’s, that this style of architecture was genuinely still in vogue on the frontier. These were the closing years of the isolated outpost, too far in the periphery for the law, where outlaw and cowboy culture reigned supreme. As the genius of the written word, Randolph Bourne, once said in his 1913 book ‘Youth and Life’, “there is no more west”, understanding ‘the West’ to mean rugged opportunity for the average person. The ‘Old West’ type of architecture, built through the emergent and oftentimes divergent motives and interests of several individuals, lacking any central urban planning, perhaps represents the type of individual opportunity that Bourne writes so well about, juxtaposed to urban planning undertaken by major banks, oil/automobile companies, and bureaucracies, which aim to centrally systematize and administer.

I then left Saskatchewan, after an incredible, and eclectic, 3 days. Next stop, Wild Rose County.

It being Sunday, a day of rest, I thought I would put my mind at ease. There were many things I stopped to see on my way to Bassano, the town I have retired to for the evening. Instead of through word, I will show through image.

{The McDonald's logo towers over a parking lot in Medicine Hat, AB, and can be seen from street level in many surrounding neighborhoods}

Next stop, the largest city on the Prairies: Calgary, Alberta.