|
|
"Like young people everywhere, young Moose Javians loved to dance.
From Main Street's Masonic Temple to River Street's notorious Academy Room, where
gangsters, drugs and booze were frequently found... there were plenty of places to
dance and bands to dance to.
But in 1921, a very special place was born. Musicians loved the place for its near
perfect acoustics. Dancers loved it for the sprung dance floor, where you could dance
for hours without tiring. The eccentric pseudo Tudor decor provided some cozy dark
corners where couples could be alone despite the hoards of revelers Temple
Gardens soon attained almost legendary status and became the main
place for teenagers to go for more than fifty years."
from 'Moose Jaw:People, Places, History' by John Larsen and Maurice Richard
Libbey |
PLAY Last Best West's Swing Tune:
The Temple
Garden 2Step.mp3
|
|
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
Logging Boom Town
The steamboat the 'City of Prince Albert' was built in 1907
to aid in the massive logging operations that were taking place near the town. Thousands
of lumberjacks worked the nearby forests and every day the City of Prince Albert
maneuvered 4 rafts, each with 1,400 logs upriver from the Little Red River. From
the other side of town, crews on the Shell River floated 2 rafts every other day
loaded with 3,300 logs downstream to the mill. The Winton Mill processed as many
as 100,000 feet of lumber a day during that season. Twice a day, the steamboat stopped
at the millÃs boarding house where busy cooks fed 500 men. On Saturday nights,
the CityÃs whistle announced the end of the work week and the beginning
of festivities in the town. Rivermen, loggers, millers and boarding house workers
clamber on board for a night on the town. For entertainment, there was the Bijou
Theater where Miss Winnie Parker played piano for the silent movies. There were barber
shops open till midnight, there were ballgames, there was roller-skating and there
was dancing.
In 1910, a pivoting railroad bridge was built across the North Saskatchewan to accommodate
both train and steamboat traffic. When the steamboat whistle blew, two men turning
a giant 6 foot key, walked in slow circles and cranked the bridge open to allow the
boat through |
| This historic artifact of the Steamboat era still spans the North
Saskatchewan river and if you look carefully to the west as you cross the river,
you can see the giant cogs under the rails that once swung open to let steamboats
in and out of this bustling riverboat town. |
|
|
Chautaqua at Manitou Lake
|
|
Underwood Brothers: Pioneer
Aviators
|
|
|
The Roaring Twenties
| During the roaring 20's - few places in North America
roared quite as loud as the Canadian West - and this can be attributed to two of
the most successful entrepreneurs of all time - Harry Bronfman and his brother Sam.
The Bronfmans owned a hotel in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. In 1919 - when Canadian prohibition
laws threated to ruin their business - the Bronfmans responded by setting up a liquor
export business. A patchwork of provincial prohibition laws banned local sales of
alchohol - but not mail order shipping to destinations outside of the province. |
| Under the Bronfman's system - customers in Alberta received
their alchohol from 'export houses' in Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan residents received
theirs from Alberta. The Bronfmans established a network of these 'Export Houses'
along provincial borders as well as along the Montana border where they served a
brisk business with American rum runners. The Bronfmans imported train car loads
of raw alchohol - usually from the USA - which was coloured and bottled under an
assortment of labels and sold back to the Americans for a large profit. In a few
short years - between 1928 and 1931 - before the Canadian government plugged the
'export' loopholes in its prohibition laws - the Bronfman family ammased a huge fortune
legally exporting liquor from their base in Saskatchewan. With the purchase of Seagrams
- this fortune eventually became one of the largest financial empires in the world.
Nowdays - few people remember that the Bronfman empire was built running booze on
the dusty roads of Southern Saskatchewan. |
|
Medicine Hat Women's Hockey
Team
 |
|
