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Railroad Land
The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad - completed in
1885 - marked both a beginning and an end for people in the Canadian West. The beginning
was the development of the West by the Government of Canada - and the end - was of
traditional ways of life for the People who had been living here for a long time.
In all fairness to the Canadians - they had learned the hard way from their American
neighbours that possession is nine tenths of the law - and they knew - by the 1880's
- that they had to act quickly in order to prevent an American occupation of the
region. When the locals objected to being shut out of the political process - the
railroad provided the means for rapidly transporting troops & cannons for reinforcing
that possession
In order to permanently establish possession - the Government
of Canada opened the region up to immigration. The Canadian West - the world that
I grew up in was built around the railroads.
More than anything else - the building and then the dismantling of our rural rail
system - along with the hundreds of towns and communities that went with it - symbolizes
the rise and fall of the Western Dream. Like the people who lived here before us
- our life has - as we say in the West - gone the way of the buffalo.
Until recently, my life was regularly punctuated by the sounds of passing trains.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of lying awake in my bed - listening to
the sounds of the steamers working through the night in the nearby yard. To a prairie
boy, trains took on a magical quality - and the lonesome call of the grain train
moving through the winter night - brought comforting reassurance of connections between
a lonely prairie town and the rest of the world. Dale Budd
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Last Best West Heritage Projects Inc. is a nonprofit membership
corporation created to support heritage projects and to create economic and educational
opportunities in rural communities. In his book 'Wolf Willow', published in 1955,
Wallace Stegner documents the decline of rural communities in Saskatchewan by comparing
the wealth of cultural institutions established in those communities at the turn
of the century when western Canada was attracting the "cream of Europe"
to the decline Stegner found in the 1950's. Of his own childhood hometown, Stegner
notes: "Instead of developing as a land of opportunity, 'it' has become an exporter
of manpower to places where real opportunity exists...if generations of children
are to grow up without architecture, art, theater, dance, music or conversation...then
the only alternatives for the intelligent and talented young will be frustration
or escape."
While rural communities continue to decline, the development of new information and
media technologies does create possibilities for reversing this process. In the 1960's,
Marshall McLuhan developed the idea that electronic processes would decentralize
information, breaking the ties between urban centers and the workplace. Last Best
West Heritage Projects Inc. has been founded on the concept that media technologies
can be the 'Village Technologies' of the 21st Century, providing employment opportunities
for talented people who would choose to live in rural communities. |
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| Dale & Laura Budd grew up in rural communities in southern Saskatchewan,
where they attended the last of the one, two and four room schools in the 1960's.
They have always kept a close connection with their rural roots and now reside in
the forest fringe region of northwest Saskatchewan where they have established Last
Best West Heritage Projects Inc. Dale studied classical piano and violin as a
child, but later shifted his interests towards roots music. In 1979, Dale and Laura
attended a number of music festivals in the Maritimes where they were impressed
with the strong connection between rural communities and musicians. Dale became
interested in the idea of developing a music show that reflected the heritage of
the Canadian West. The experiences of the next two decades - raising a family in
a rural community, performing in countless prairies dance halls and learning the
music traditions of musicians who played in those halls since the 1920's - have been
combined to create Last Best West. |
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