Vanishing Sentinels

Once numbering over 3300, today only about 400 remain in our Province. There is a fellow in Alberta by the name of Jim Pearson who has a wonderful project to document these remaining elevators in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba before they topple just to satisfy the corporate bottom line. I have spent hours browsing his Vanishing Sentinels website and looking through his books, and I'd bet you could too. He has an especially good series of graphics describing the inner workings of an elevator here and here.

But this destruction is not an inevitability as the so-called conventional "wisdom" would lull us into believing. This is not progress and I firmly believe that while we need to document these remaining elevators before it is too late, we can preserve some elevators into perpetuity (1) and not just for nostalgia's sake. We simply have to keep some elevators around forever. And we have no excuse not to - Norwegians for over 800 years have maintained such wonderful wooden structures as the Borgund stave church. What would Norway be without at least a few of these amazing and historic cathedrals?

I've always thought we should have at least a rough thousand-year plan and why not? (do we even have a five-year plan?) Previous governments wanted us to believe that doing away with the Crow Rate was a change that simply had to happen. They told us there was no choice. The effects are still rippling. Current governments would like us to believe that doing away with the Canadian Wheat Board also has to happen. This is progress. Sadly this is just another step in the Americanization of our grain-trading system, one piece in the much larger process of the continentalization of North America. It will not benefit the individual farmer but is simply designed to help the large grain trading corporations garner higher profits.

Well that's enough of my diatribe. Back to Jim Pearson's project. Jim was on CBC Radio Saskatchewan's Blue Sky program today. (he even mentioned the altar project!) Many people called in to recount their precious memories of elevators from days gone by. You can listen to today's program here. Something else Jim does is make card stock elevators as mementos. He has done many for people and will custom make an elevator from most any town. I couldn't resist ordering a few cardboard elevators from him for my office bookshelf. Jim has made me one of the Herschel sentinels as well as the Pool and old Elephant Brand elevators from my hometown of Nipawin.















1 - Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation has a great webpage with some fantastic resources, including an inventory of all remaining Saskatchewan elevators.