How culture, ancestral connection and passion make these 3 western Sask. communities feel like home
CBC's virtual road trip series Land of Living Stories explores hidden gems across Saskatchewan
CBC's virtual road trip series Land of Living Stories explores the hidden gems across Saskatchewan. Reporter Laura Sciarpelletti once again hit the road in search of inspiring stories of community, heritage and good food.
If we've learned anything over the course of this series, it's the power of a small town. Tight-knit communities offer opportunities to develop deep bonds with neighbours, the land and the small businesses that keep the towns running.
This time, CBC is taking you to the intimate communities of Kerrobert, Unity and Poundmaker Cree Nation for stories of finding home and safety, how a building can be the focal point for many generations of residents and how a home-grown museum is sprouting pride in the youngest members of a First Nation.
Kerrobert
Before even entering the town limits, visitors to Kerrobert — 188 kilometres west of Saskatoon — are greeted by a large barn covered with many colours and many names. Community volunteer Bobbi Hebron says they're the names of Kerrobert's most recent high school graduates. The 'grad barn' is a long-standing tradition.
"I believe it was in the '60s or '70s that the tradition was started that the graduates paint their name on the barn. It started out that the farmer must have agreed to allowing it to happen. In fact, it might have even been his kids that started it. So it still continues to this day," Hebron said with a laugh, recalling that her own grad painting job was blue.
Kerrobert's population hovers just above 1,000, and its history is as colourful as the grad barn. That's largely thanks to the town's prized possession, the century-old Kerrobert Courthouse. Hebron calls it the focal point of the community, and for good reason. Although it no longer functions as a courthouse, it houses a museum, gallery, library and numerous businesses, and is also where town council meets.
Hebron has lived in Kerrobert, a farming and oil-field community, for most of her life, and said she's always known the courthouse was a special place.
"There was a sense of pride that I had because my great-grandmother worked there. She was one of the first women to work in the courthouse. So I had a real love for the building from an early age."
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As a child, Hebron and the other kids hung out at the courthouse and on its front steps — something today's generation does as well.
Another draw is the ghost stories. The Kerrobert Courthouse is considered by many to be one of the most haunted buildings in Saskatchewan. The 1920 neo-classical architecture styled-building once had jail cells in the basement, and Hebron said some people believe those rooms may hold some angry spirits to this day.
"As a kid, sometimes you had to be dared to even walk through it, especially at night. And as we got older, we got braver. At about 12 years old you were brave enough to maybe play hide and seek for a little bit," she said.
Visitors can also view the contents of a 102-year-old time capsule that was dug up from under the courthouse steps in 2022. Hebron said seeing pictures, newspapers and documents from when the courthouse was first built was a thrill of a lifetime.
"You have to drive pretty far to find a lot of that type of history and architecture in rural [Saskatchewan]. We've brought a lot of culture, I feel, to the community."
Brandy Osterhold, who has lived in Kerrobert for most of her life, said the beauty of the town is in its people and how close they are.
She remembers Bahm's Auto Service & Supply being the spot to find out what's going on about town. Think of it like the gas station in the television show Corner Gas.
"I can remember my dad saying lots of times that he would go in and visit with the owners. And if you talk to anybody at the rink during a hockey game, you know the first thing they'll say is, 'did you hear this at Bahm's the other day?' It's just that feeling of home," said Osterhold.
Hebron also works as a librarian at the local school, and put a poster up the day CBC was set to visit Kerrobert, asking the children to adorn it with post-it notes sharing what they love about their town.
"A lot of them talk about friends and family and their rink. They love our rink. They love the opportunities that we have here. The kids weren't coached and yet they came up with a very similar feeling that I have about the community."
Unity
The town of Unity, located 195 kilometres west of Saskatoon at the intersection of Highway 14 and Highway 21, has a population of about 2,500 people. The town is peppered with colourful murals and beloved local business like Ma and Me Bakery. It's small, but its heart is big.
No one knows that better than Azure McGonigle, who grew up on a farm about 40 kilometres northwest of town. Her great-grandfather homesteaded there, and her father was the third-generation farmer on the land. Some of her most vivid memories were of visiting her beloved grandparents in Unity as a little girl.
Like many young people who grow up in rural communities, McGonigle took off to live in cities after high school. Eventually, however, she found herself in an abusive marriage.
"We did a lot of moving around. He had drug and alcohol addictions. One day I just said I'm done and phoned my parents and we literally moved me out of my house with three kids in 24 hours," McGonigle said.
What McGonigle found back home was safety, the bonds of family and a powerful drive to raise her community up through volunteerism.
"I just knew I was home. I knew I was safe. It was just a sense of being whole again."
McGonigle threw herself into helping her community, from the local 4H club to the Unity museum.
"Our charm is our people. I know what we have here in our town and I want others to know what we have in our town."
Unity is also the inspiration and setting for playwright Kevin Kerr's Governor General's Award-winning 2002 play Unity (1918), which dramatizes the effects of the influenza pandemic.
Kerr is from British Columbia but his mother is from Foam Lake, Sask., and he visited that community often throughout his life. He associates it with family, joy and beautiful childhood memories.
So when the playwright was researching for a play about the flu pandemic, he had a place like Foam Lake in mind for the setting. The name Foam Lake didn't have the right ring to it, so Kevin took a look at a map of Saskatchewan.
"I saw Unity on the map and it just felt like it was the perfect name for the play. It had so much poetry. Unity also felt like it spoke to the themes of the story and so I just selected it from the map," Kerr said.
"The feel of the place was not dissimilar to the feelings that I was connecting to Foam Lake. It's size and landscape absolutely kind of reinforced the feelings of both the tightness of the community, but the sense of being also in this quite vast landscape."
Kerr said that contrast of closeness and isolation was a powerful theme in the play. He said he will always be grateful for how welcoming Unity was during his research visit in the late 1990s.
"Just so much generosity of spirit and time and interest and pride. That experience was remarkable."
The play is still performed all around the world to this day. In fact, even actors in Malaysia are speaking the name Unity, Saskatchewan.
Poundmaker Cree Nation
When Delainee Antoine Tootoosis, 27, looks at the walls of the Poundmaker Museum and Gallery, she sees a bright future.
Each day the museum volunteer works, she enters the long wooden building on a hill overlooking Poundmaker Cree Nation — 58 kilometres north of Unity, near the town of Cutknife.
University students often visit the museum to do research projects and find out who their families are. The building hosts feasts, hide tanning lessons and visiting artists.
"This literally is the heart of the community. You come here, you feel at home, you feel warm. Nothing else matters when you come up here," said Antoine Tootoosis.
She said having the Poundmaker Museum and Gallery right on the First Nation is a big part of the growing Indigenous pride she is seeing in children today.
"We do worry about the children all the time. But they're so smart and they're so creative and they're always doing stuff. We're here to show them they can literally do anything," said Antoine Tootoosis.
"We're going to see big things from them. They know they come from a place rich in history, and they're going to be part of it. This is their future, this is for them."
Eight-year-old Sam Hepner is the descendant of Sweetgrass First Nation Chief Sam Swimmer, who participated in the Battle of Cut Knife in 1885. Little Sam was actually named after Swimmer, and a black and white photo of the future chief hangs on the walls of Poundmaker Museum and Gallery.
"I'm proud," said Hepner. "It's cool that family is on the walls."
That ancestral closeness is not lost on his mother.
"I think that my children greatly benefit from understanding where they come from in order to strengthen their ability to function in the outside world. They will have a strong foundation, will be able to withstand anything that comes their way," said Erin Simaganis.
Floyd Favel, curator of the Poundmaker Museum and Gallery, says the Cree artifacts and paintings in the building serve as tools for the youth — a legacy they can be proud to add to.
"Our focus is always on the next generation, because our language, our culture is one generation away from disappearing. So that obligates us here and now to pass it down immediately. And so when young people come here, I feel good about that," Favel said.
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