Traveling through Moose Row

Grain elevator north of Saskatoon. Watercolor sketch from a moving car, by Carol L. Douglas.

Grain elevator north of Saskatoon. Watercolor sketch from a moving car, by Carol L. Douglas.

As every schoolchild knows, the grain elevator was invented by Joseph Dart, Jr. in 1843 in Buffalo, NY. Dart’s elevator was a wood-cribbed design that was replaced with the hulking concrete behemoths that still line Buffalo today. They are both a blessing and a curse. While “elevator alley” along the Buffalo River is an historic site that attracts visitors from around the world, it also cuts off the city from its most valuable resource, its waterfront.

Out here in Western Canada, grain elevators are as common as they are in Buffalo, although they’re a little more spread out. Every town in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan has one. They seem to get thinner on the ground the farther north you go, where the oil and gas industries assume prominence.

Natural gas tanks. The gas and oil industries in Saskatchewan beggar description.

Natural gas tanks. The natural resources in Saskatchewan are vast.

The elevators were farmers’ cooperatives that eventually coalesced into the Saskatchewan Co-operative Wheat Producers Ltd. in 1923. Originally intended to protect farmers from monopolistic grain trading companies, the Cooperative itself became a publicly-traded company in the 1990s. Most of them are sided with a kind of pressed metal siding, still in its raw condition.

We debugged the car every two hours and that was insufficient.

We debugged the car every two hours and that was insufficient. Thank goodness moose don’t fly like those little white butterflies.

North of Saskatoon, we picked up the Trans-Canada Highway. This road is mostly filled with long-haul tractor-trailers and pick-up trucks. It’s a 70 MPH road carrying a fair bit of traffic, and it has at-grade crossings.

If you've only had beef jerky from an American gas station, you have no idea what you've been missing.

If you’ve only had beef jerky from an American gas station, you have no idea what you’ve been missing.

It doesn’t have a finish coat, which means it’s fairly bouncy in a passenger car. That made painting a little more difficult. I didn’t realize how much we were vibrating until I tried to write margin notes on the interleaf, only to realize I couldn’t form a single legible letter.

Cumulus clouds near the Saskatchewan-Alberta border. By this time there were more pines and spruce than deciduous trees.

Cumulus clouds near the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, watercolor sketch from a moving car, by Carol L. Douglas. By this point there were more pines and spruce than deciduous trees.

As we approached the provincial border, the tree cover started to change from deciduous softwoods. We passed the Millar Western Sawmill/Pulp Mill in Whitecourt, which was receiving truckload after truckload of logs from farther north. It reminded me a bit of driving in Maine.

Horses and ducks in a marshy swamp in northern Saskatchewan. These pools are a constant punctuation in the landscape.

Horses and ducks in a marshy swamp in northern Saskatchewan. These pools are a constant punctuation in the landscape.

This was a trend that would continue as we traveled north. The landscape became progressively wilder as we passed provincial parks and First Nation lands. Eventually, we were traveling through “Moose Row,” an area in which we were cautioned to be ever-vigilant about moose. At that point we were driving through a forest of aspen, tamarack, lodgepole pine, jack pine, and black spruce, with swampy wetlands.

Approaching Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Approaching Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Eventually, we climbed a long slope. “If this is Grande Prairie, it’s pretty mountainous,” said my daughter. Actually, we were just climbing to some sort of high plains. Coming over the top, we were greeted with much the same farming terrain that we’d left back near Saskatoon, albeit at an elevation of 2,195 ft.

We should be on the ALCAN highway this morning.

We should be on the ALCAN highway this morning.

But the real significance of Grande Prairie is that we’re a hop, skip and a jump from Dawson’s Creek and the beginning of the ALCAN Highway. We’ll be there this morning.

Carol Douglas

About Carol Douglas

Carol L. Douglas is a painter who lives, works and teaches in Rockport, ME. Her annual workshop will again be held on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park, from August 6-11, 2017. Visit www.watch-me-paint.com/ for more information.