NARRATIVES OF SASKATOON

1882-1912

Genealogy, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Pioneer,Saskatchewan history, Temperance Colony, Temperance Colonization Society, Pioneers,John N. Lake, John Lake, Saskatoon history, Saskatoon Gen Web, Genealogy, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Pioneer,Saskatchewan history, Temperance Colony, Temperance Colonization Society, Saskatoon history, Saskatoon Gen Web

a week or two old, before being turned out on the range. We did not fig- ure to have a horn on the ranch and it paid The late Ben Prince of Battleford was a large buyer and shipper of cattle. Gordon and Ironsides, of Winnipeg, were also buyers and also W. Sinclair. Three years old steers were bought, always on the feeding ground in the spring for shipment when called for in the Fall. We considered forty-five dollars a good price for three-year-olds. All cattle were loaded on the cars at Saskatoon for shipment to Montreal thence by boat to the Old Country. Many double headers would leave Saskatoon with cattle from Battleford and other parts around the country. One spring Ben Prince, to whom we always sold, arrived at our ranch to buy the beef cattle we had for sale. He also wanted to go to the Reserve some miles further up the river to buy the Indians' cattle. We usually kept a road open to the river so that we could go across and visit our neighbors on the ranches at Dundurn about eighteen miles by the road we had to take, the reserve being about six miles by this road. When the roads were good I would drive, stopping over night with Mr. Tucker on the Reserve; when bad I would make a bee line on snowshoes. On this occasion a recent storm had driven the snow from the river up into the willows so that it was imposs- ible to get a team through to the river and thus to the Reserve. Ben Prince proposed that he should borrow a pair of snow shoes from a half-breed and that I should go with him to show him the way. We made a brave start. Ben Prince had been a snowshoer in his younger days, but had accumulated flesh and before we were half way he was praying for a drink as he had started to eat snow and increased the thirst. However, we struggled bravely along with many stops for a rest. By the time we struck a trail on the Reserve he was almost played out and removed the snowshoes saying that they were lighter on his back than on his feet. We reached the house of the Instructor, Mr. Tucker, in time and Prince said he was never more glad to see a house in his life. He absolutely refused to walk back and hired an Indian next day to drive us with his team as far on the road as the horses could go and we made the remaining short distance on the shoes. In after years whenever I met Mr. Prince he would refer to that awful tramp. When driving back and forth from Saskatoon to the ranch we often wondered if in our life time we should ever see the prairie back of the sand hills at Pike Lake taken up by settlers. The Sand Hills at that time we considered, as for all time, hopeless for a farming proposition. Robt. Wilson, of Beaver Creek, was a great believer in the future of the prairie and would tell us young people that we would see settlers scattered every- where. We laughed at the idea. Fancy the stretch on the Moose Jaw trail between Beaver Creek and the Elbow, forty miles and not a bit of scrub or shelter. We had seen it scorched with fire, not a green speck left from the host of grasshoppers, and the wind driving the snow back and forth in the winter blizzards. Would any man live in such a spot?' we would ask. He almost lived long enough to see his prophecy fulfilled in his own lifetime. I must mention the old friends of inine and many others, the Blackley family living about nine miles N.E. of Saskatoon. From '84 to the nineties they kept open house for one of the sets of young people. The old gentle- man and lady were one of the finest couples that ever left bonnie Scotland. Coming from Ayreshire, summer and winter their house was always filled with some of the young set. This at times must have meant a big strain on their means, but all were made welcome and pressed to delay their de- parture. The old gentleman was a good farmer and in spite o the driest years generally had something in the way of a crop,-no total failures, Ten years were spent in the Pike Lake district. My brother would take his family to Saskatoon in the summer so as to get the little ones to school and would return with them to the ranch in the winter, our nearest neighbor being fourteen miles away. Much difference was found in the length of time we had to feed the stock during winters. Looking back in my. diary I find that. we have fed as short a time as six weeks and have fed as long a time as six months from beginning of November to end of April. In the winter of 93-4 I made a trip to the Old Country. We had two trains Page 38

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