Chapter Five

The Fall of the Prairie Sentinels: The End of the Grain Elevators

Fleming, Saskatchewan: The Last One Standing

There is an episode in the popular sitcom Corner Gas when Hank Yarbo, the town “doofus” (played by Frank Ewanuick), decides to burn down an old shed so that his Lego replica of the fictional town of Dog River would be accurate. As he dances gleefully around the smouldering structure, he does not know that it had been the town’s original and most historic structure. To him, it was just an “old shed.”

It seems that Canada’s prairie provinces may have their share of “Hank Yarbos.” At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, February 7, 2010, a truck driver noticed a fiery glow lighting up the dark Saskatchewan sky. He immediately alerted the volunteer fire department in the town of Fleming, but it was too late to save Canada’s oldest grain elevator. Built in 1895 by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, it was a rare square grain elevator topped by a cupola and could hold thirty-two thousand bushels of wheat. It had been slated for demolition in 2000, but the town of just ninety-five residents managed to raise $140,000 to save it and have it declared a national historic site. After years of volunteer work, the building was converted to an elevator interpretive centre and would have opened in only a few months. In April 2011 two “Hank Yarbos,” men aged twenty and twenty-two, were arrested and charged with arson.

Years before this fiery fiasco, many heritage lovers across the prairies were concerned over the rate at which these country icons, often called the “Prairie Sentinels,” were disappearing. In fact, so concerned was the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation that it undertook an inventory of the province’s surviving elevators, with special emphasis on the most historic of all: the wooden elevators. It discovered that, over a ten-year period alone, 1999–2009, the number of wooden grain elevators had fallen from eight hundred to a mere 420. The report was published in February 2010.[10] More than eighty-five of those still standing date from before 1930, while fourteen or so date from before the First World War. With fire having destroyed the 1895 elevator in Fleming, the oldest elevator in Saskatchewan became that in Sintaluta, having been built in 1904, while the elevator in Creelman was added just two years later.

Grain shipping began in 1876, when wheat was sent from Manitoba by barge along the Red River to Saint Paul, Minnesota, the then-head of rail for travel to and from the territory.

The first prairie grain elevator was built in 1879 in Niverville, Manitoba, and was round in shape. Prior to that, grain was simply stored in flat sheds and shovelled from wagons. But the round shape proved impractical, and these sheds were replaced by square or rectangular elevators, the form that has become such a landscape icon. The first was built in 1881 in Gretna, Manitoba.

Elevators were solidly built using two-by-six planks atop one another so that the walls could withstand the pressure of the grain. Each elevator would contain sixteen to eighteen bins. As the grain arrived, it would be weighed, graded, then poured into buckets, which would elevate the grain and then pour it into the proper bin. At first this was accomplished by horse power, but that was soon replaced with the gasoline engine.

As the three major rail companies extended their branch lines through the prairies, more than three hundred elevator companies were formed, and by 1920 more than two thousand elevators had been built, with capacities ranging from thirty thousand bushels to forty-five thousand. After the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railways went bankrupt and folded into the Canadian National Railways, elevator building continued, their numbers peaking in the late 1930s at more than 5,700.

From the time that the Canadian government granted the CPR a monopoly over grain shipping, prairie farmers resented the railway and the large grain companies. To the farmers, it quickly became clear that the railway was frequently refusing to load a farmer’s grain directly onto its cars, forcing the farmers to go through the monopolistic grain companies. A court case in Manitoba in 1902 finally granted the farmers the right to load their grain directly onto the rail cars, which the railways declined to supply in sufficient quantities. This prompted the grain growers to go even further, and in 1925 they began to form their own cooperatives, which were known as “pools.” By the time of the depression, provincial wheat pools controlled most of the elevators.

As settlement moved west and into Alberta, the first elevator was erected along the Calgary and Edmonton Railway at Strathcona in 1895. By 1906 Alberta could still count only forty-three elevators, although just six years later there were 280. In 1923 the Alberta Wheat Pool (AWP) entered the picture to provide competition for the hated private elevator companies and at its height held 879 elevators, while the province as a whole contained more than 1,780 such structures. But consolidation and branch line abandonment, along with too-frequent local disinterest in heritage preservation, reduced that number to a mere 176 in 2010.

Time has not been kind to the historic symbol of the prairie provinces. Their distinctive shape and structure has made most of them impractical for any form of adaptive re-use other than as grain elevator museums, and during the closing years of the 20th century, more than 80 percent of those “prairie sentinels” came down. Almost too late, westerners came to realize the value of what they were losing, and many communities have begun to save them, often opening them as interpretive centres, some with their own tea room.

Alberta

The Province of Alberta has designated a dozen grain elevators as provincial heritage resources, making them eligible for provincial assistance. These are located in Andrew, Radway, Leduc, Meeting Creek, Paradise Valley, Castor, and Scandia, as well as three in Rowley and a pair in St. Albert. Many local municipalities have also declared them as municipal heritage properties, and local groups have simply proceeded with preservation on their own.

The Prairie Elevator Museum, Acadia Valley,

In 1989 the active little historical society in the town of Acadia Valley, Alberta, bought the old Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator — the last of the three that once stood in the village — for a dollar and set to work to convert it into a grain elevator interpretive centre, one of several appearing across the prairies. Using student guides and videos, visitors learns how grain is sorted, graded, weighed, and then loaded into the hopper cars for their trip to elevators complexes at the Lakehead. There is also information on how to identify various types of grain. A tea room operates during the summer months.

Andrew Grain Elevator

This iconic landmark was built by the Alberta Wheat Pool in 1928 and had a capacity of forty thousand bushels before it became inadequate in 1985. At that time, a pair of annexes were added to each end, more than tripling its capacity. Since that time, it has been further enhanced with the addition of a new drive shed, power train, and modern dust collection system. It has also been added to the Alberta registry of historic places. Although the elevator remains in full operation, the Andrew and District Historical Archives Museum Society will guide visitors through the site. The CPR station has also been preserved in this community.

The Castor Grain Elevator

When Alberta premier Alexander Rutherford convinced the CPR to extend its tracks eastward from Stettler in 1909, a new town named Castor sprang up at the line’s temporary terminus, and here in 1910, the Alberta Pacific Grain Company erected a thirty-five thousand bushel grain elevator. In 1913 the line was extended into Saskatchewan, where it would link with the cross-country grain route to the massive elevators at Fort William. As a result, in 1917 a larger forty-five thousand bushel elevator began operation. Ultimately, Castor would add four more elevators, making for an elevator row of five. While this structure, now listed on the Alberta registry of historic places, is the last of the row to survive, it still contains the drive shed, Gerber wheel, and conveyor.

In the 1990s, the United Grain Growers closed the elevator. At that time, two other elevators still stood, but they were subsequently demolished. The Canada’s Historic Places inventory lists it as being the oldest of its type in Alberta. The Castor and District Museum, which acquired the elevator, has also moved historic rail cars onto the track next to it. These include a double-deck livestock car, a grain boxcar, and a grain tank car. The elevator was declared a provincial heritage resource in 2004.

Dawson Creek’s Elevator Art Gallery

In 1931 the Northern Alberta Railway (NAR) arrived in the fertile regions northwest of Edmonton. Soon, the tracks of Dawson Creek were in the shadow of eight grain elevators. By 1950 those elevators were exporting more grain than any other community on the prairies. But, even as early as the 1980s, centralization was eliminating the grain elevators, and Dawson Creek soon had only two remaining.

In 1982 a group was formed to save at least one of the two surviving sentinels and use it for an art gallery. While the Alberta Wheat Pool agreed to sell the structure for $2, it also required the town to move it. Since the 1948 elevator stood more than thirty metres high, it was no easy feat, nor did it enjoy universal approval within the community. Funds were found from government grants, community fundraising, the Devonian Foundation; in 1983, on its new cement foundation, the Elevator Art Gallery opened. It is situated in NAR Park, home also to the 1931 NAR station.

Kinuso

When the Dunvegan Railway made its way from Edmonton to the Peace Country, it established a townsite it called Swan River. Years later it became the village of Kinuso. The old grain elevator in Kinuso is not just an early structure, but the only one left that still shows the United Grain Growers (UGG) lettering. In 1974, when the UGG closed it, they sold it to a local business for grain storage. The owners continued to maintain it, eventually donating it to the Kinosayo Museum. With a lease from CN and a provincial heritage grant in hand, the museum began the job of re-shingling the looming structure.

Leduc Elevator

Although listed on the Alberta Registry of Historic Places, the Leduc elevator is a newcomer, having been built only in 1978. What renders it historically significant is the fact that it is one of the last single-wood crib grain elevators ever built in the province. Concrete and steel have dominated the prairie skyline in their place. Despite its historic appearance, the Leduc elevator is modern in every other respect, including power train ventilation and distribution systems.

Mayerthorpe Elevator

Although recent by historical standards, the 1966 Alberta Wheat Pool elevator in Mayerthorpe is nonetheless listed on the Alberta Register of Historic Places. Its heritage value lies in its being one of the later wood composite elevators and is the last of a half-dozen elevators built in this community. It is connected to an annex that had been constructed in 1940. In 1928 the AWP erected its first elevator here, on what was to have been the CNo’s line to Grande Prairie, but it took the arrival of the CNR in the 1920s to finally bring tracks into Mayerthorpe. Work was underway as of 2011 to develop an interpretive centre in the elevator.

The Meeting Creek Elevators

Located in a shallow, scenic valley, the railway village of Meeting Creek presents one of Alberta’s more photogenic railway landscapes. With its preserved Canadian Northern Railway station, the village can claim two preserved Alberta Pacific Grain Company elevators. While not the province’s oldest, they were added between 1914 and 1917. When the Central Western Railway abandoned the track in 1997, they donated that which lay in front of the station and the grain elevators to the Canadian Northern Society, which administers the site. Much of the original equipment remains in place in the elevators, which are now listed on the Alberta Registry of Historic Places.

Nanton Elevators: The Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre

Although technically not a “row” (which consists of four or more wooden elevators) Nanton’s three surviving elevators, built between 1927 and 1929, were acquired by a concerned citizens group, the Save One Society, to create the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre. But the group went even further and in 2006 began work on the Nanton Heritage Railway, with railway rolling stock resting on two hundred metres of track. After considerable work by dedicated volunteers, one of the three elevators opened for tours, and the public can see how one of the Prairies’ most beloved symbols functioned in practice.

Paradise Valley’s “Climb Through Time”

The Alberta Wheat Pool elevator in Paradise Valley, close to the Saskatchewan border, is one of the province’s more developed grain elevator interpretation centres. Built in 1929, shortly after the CPR had extended its line, it became one of six elevators in Paradise Valley, even though its population remained modest. The elevator, the last survivor in the village, was acquired by the Paradise Valley and District Museum Society in 1989 and opened to the public in 1995. The concept is a “climb through time” museum with scenes that depict various aspects of prairie life. The displays appear along a sloping stair that makes its way up the grain annex. Today, the attraction hosts more than three thousand visitors a year. A small Canadian Pacific portable-style station rounds out this historic complex.

Pincher Creek

Heritage Acres Farm is a pioneer village run by the Oldman River Antique Equipment and Threshing Club, with old cars, a model railway, a log building, and a variety of historic buildings. Among them is one of the province’s oldest grain elevators, which was built in Brocket in 1906 by the United Grain Growers and relocated to this site. Now fully restored and operational, it gives visitors a rare glimpse into how these vanishing landmarks operated.

The Radway Elevator

Completed in 1928 in traditional prairie elevator style, the lone surviving grain elevator in the community of Radway used to be of a row of five. This one is unusual in that it never formed part of the great elevator chains or wheat pools that dominated the prairie skyline but rather was a family operation from the start. The structure was erected by W.D. Kraus at the urging of the local Board of Trade and it shared the location with a grist mill. Although the grist mill was removed in 1959, the elevator still stands. It is designated as a provincial heritage resource.

Raley: Alberta’s Oldest

While it doesn’t appear on any list of heritage properties, the Alberta Pacific Elevator Company elevator may well be the province’s oldest. This wooden thirty-five thousand bushel structure was built in 1905, shortly after the CPR completed its line between Stirling and Cardston, and it was one of four that once stood in this tiny hamlet. The tracks are gone (as is most of the village), and the structure is now privately owned.

The Rowley Row

The ghost town of Rowley, Alberta, contains of one of the more complete railway heritage townscapes to be found anywhere on the prairies. In addition to its Canadian Northern station and its ghost town main street, it retains its three-elevator row. This rail line was one of several constructed at the urging of Alberta premier Alexander Rutherford, and it led north from Drumheller, finally opening in 1911. The first elevators had ill luck, the first collapsing due to poor construction and the second burning. Finally, in 1927, the little village could count a row of three owned by the United Grain Growers, the National Grain Growers, and the Searle Elevator Company. The operations changed hands several times until 1989, when the CNR abandoned the tracks. The grain elevators have since been acquired by the Rowley Community Hall Association and in 2010 were designated a Province of Alberta provincial heritage resource.

Although Rowley calls itself a “ghost town,” the elevators as well as the station are well-preserved.

St. Albert’s Grain Elevators

Although now utterly overwhelmed by Edmonton’s suburban sprawl, St. Albert’s rail roots remain in good shape. Here on the north side, by the former Canadian Northern tracks, stand two surviving grain elevators. Listed on the Alberta Register of Historic Places, the older of the two prairie giants is the Alberta Grain Company grain elevator. It dates from 1907 and remains one of Alberta’s oldest. In 1937 it was enlarged vertically, storing thirty-thousand bushels of grain at a time until 1989, when grain shipments from St. Albert ceased. Adjacent to it is the Alberta Wheat Pool Grain elevator, and both are now restored and operating as grain elevator interpretation centres. Nearby, the town has recreated its Canadian Northern Railway station, the original having been moved to the Alberta Railway Museum north of Edmonton.

Scandia’s Elevator and Stock Yard

Scandia was one of those communities that arose as a result of the CPR’s vast irrigation project in southeastern Alberta. The town appeared following the 1927 completion of a branch line from Brooks (the site of the Brooks aqueduct national historic site), one of many that followed the completion of the irrigation project. In 1937 the Federal Grain Company added an elevator that was acquired by the AWP after the war, and it closed in 1977, the same year the CPR shut down the line. To help save the heritage building, it was bought by Eastern Irrigation District Historical Park and Museum and now forms part of an elevator interpretation centre. A component of that complex is the rare survival of an early stock yard, the Bow Slope stockyard, reflecting the co-existence of both wheat farming and cattle ranching. The stock yard still contains the fence gate’s ramp scale and shelter used to assemble and ship cattle.

Stettler

In 2003, when Stettler’s last grain elevator was closed and put up for sale, the Parrish and Heimbecker Elevator Preservation Society purchased the structure for a dollar and began the work of restoring it to a working example of a prairie grain elevator. The elevators were built in 1920 with a feed mill added in the 1940s. A rare survivor here as well is a coal shed. The elevator has been accessible to the public since 2005, and the elevator office is now a coffee shop. In the shadow of the elevator, the heritage trains of the Alberta Prairie Railway steam excursions wait to take aboard their passengers.

The Warner Elevator Row

When the CPR reached Warner in southern Alberta in 1911, the first of the elevators were built. By the 1920s, Warner could claim a row of seven elevators. Gradually, the earlier structures were replaced, and today the ages of the four surviving elevators range from 1913 to 1960. The oldest is the rare square-sided Alberta Farmers’ Coop elevator. The next in age is the Alberta Pacific Grain Elevator, built in 1918, while the Alberta Wheat Pool Elevator dates from 1928. The remaining structures appeared during the 1950s. The fact that three of the original seven have been removed in recent years testifies to the regrettable fact that this row is not protected as a heritage feature. Those remaining continue to function as operating grain elevators.

Saskatchewan

At least two Saskatchewan elevators have been relocated to museum grounds. The 1913 SWP elevator from McCabe now rests in the Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village south of Moose Jaw, while 1928 Keatley elevator completes a heritage railway landscape along with a station and steam locomotive in the Western Development Museum at North Battleford. Others have received designation as municipal heritage properties, such as those in Horizon, built 1922; Parkside, 1959; Prongua (Nelson Farms), 1916 or 1922; Truax, 1964; and Val Marie, 1926. Two of the province’s oldest appear to have no designation of heritage recognition of any kind. These are the 1906 Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) elevator in Creelman and the 1904 elevator in Sintaluta, which now serves as a seed cleaning plant. Throughout the province, a number of small hamlets and even ghost towns may display a single sentinel where once a row has stood. Some remain operational, others sit abandoned and withered. Few are preserved.

Early elevators such as these in an early view of Davidson, Saskatchewan, have vanished from the prairie landscape.

Edam Elevator

In this small prairie town north of The Battlefords lies one of the few examples of a preserved Saskatchewan grain elevator. This former SWP structure, built in 1916, opened in 2005 as the Henry Washbrook Museum, where the first three floors offer displays of First Nations and local area history. The CNo station still faces the elevator from the across the rail line.

Elbow

Built in 1913, this historic grain elevator, the last in this lakeside town, is proposed to move to become a museum.

Hepburn’s Museum of Wheat

To date, the 1926 SWP elevator in Hepburn can claim to be that province’s only interpretive grain elevator museum. While most of the original equipment remains in place, the building contains a variety of interesting heritage features. The calendar room displays SWP calendars dating from 1933, while the model room shows a model town and railway layout with a miniature grain elevator and station. The museum is run by a band of dedicated volunteers, determined to prevent their heritage icon from suffering the fate of most of the others. A tour of the facility can be topped off by tea in the Ladies Auxiliary tea and craft room. The long-abandoned railway road bed has now been obliterated by new housing developments, as this dormitory community lies only a half hour’s commute to Saskatoon.

The Hepburn elevator survives as the Museum of Wheat, where visitors can view the original inner workings.

Manitoba

Austin, the Homesteaders Village

The Western Canada Flour Mills Company elevator was built in 1905 in Austin on the CPR line and is one of the province’s oldest elevators. One of ninety-six mills owned by this company, it was sold to the Manitoba Wheat Pool in 1936, at a time when Western Canada Flour Mills was bankrupt. It now rests on the grounds of the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Austin.

The Inglis Row

In 1922 the CPR finally laid its tracks north from Russell to Inglis. The town was surveyed and a row of grain elevators built. This row of elevators, four of them constructed in 1922, is said to be the last such row in Canada, although a four-elevator row still survives in Warner, Alberta. While some were owned by the large elevator companies, others were built by local farm coops. All retain their original workings. The Inglis Elevator Heritage Committee acquired the row in 1995, rescuing the aging structures from almost certain demolition. The following year, the Government of Canada rewarded that initiative by declaring the entire row a National Historic Site.

The northern-most of the row is the Patterson elevator, built in 1922 and the only one in the row with a dust collector. Its office building, added in 1951, is the administrative centre for the site. Although the next two elevators in the row are known as the Reliance elevators, they have in fact changed hands over the years, before ending up with the United Grain Growers in 1971. The next in line is the National elevator, still bearing its original name and paint scheme, although it, too, eventually became a Patterson property. The final elevator in the row was built in 1925 by the United Grain Growers. As one of the more significant railway heritage features on the prairies, the site offers both guided and self-guided tours, as well as a small gift shop. Inglis lies north of the Trans-Canada Highway Yellowhead route, north of Russell, Manitoba. (Russell has a preserved elevator of its own, one which marks the western trail head of the Rossburn Subdivision Rail Trail).

Plum Coulee

Although at 1975, the Manitoba Wheat Pool elevator is not old, it is the last of the wooden grain elevators in the Pembina Valley region of Manitoba. In 2001 the Plum Coulee Community Foundation acquired the thirty-five-metre structure and in 2007 opened it as an interpretive centre called the Prairie View Elevator.

Now a national historic site, the Inglis, Manitoba, elevator row offers tours of what is said to be the last on the Prairies.

Warren

In 2002, when Agricore indicated its intent to demolish its 1948 grain elevator and 1958 annex in Warren, the West Interlake Trading Company leapt into action and acquired the building. In 2005 the group of volunteers set to work preparing the building to become an interpretive centre. The building remains solid, thanks to its sound construction and careful maintenance over the years, and much of the equipment remains in place. Known today as the “Sentinel Grain Elevator,” the building is open for tours, and is the terminus for the Prairie Dog Central Railway tour train excursions.

While prairie “sentinels” yet dot the skyline, they are a dying breed. With the demise of the Canada Wheat Board, their numbers will diminish even further. The few that still stand, especially those being preserved, are a valuable celebration of the railway heritage of the prairie provinces.