In Pictures: On the hunt for Manitoba’s ‘prairie sentinels’

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Beulah’s old grain elevator still stands tall on the prairie. Each town and village had its own elevator. Farmers today store their grain in modern structures.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 2 Min. )

Melanie and I were on a quest. While on assignment in Manitoba, the two of us, photographer and reporter, set out to document the old-style wooden grain elevators that tower over this prairie landscape. At one time, farmers say, visitors could drive down the highway and see rows of them in their rearview mirror.

Currently, only about 80 remain, relics of a bygone agricultural era.

Why We Wrote This

A story focused on

Our reporting team found surprise and delight when an assignment in Manitoba turned into a scavenger hunt for treasures from Canada’s agricultural past.

In Inglis, a row of five wooden elevators has been preserved at the end of an abandoned rail line. A plaque at the site describes them poetically as “prairie sentinels” that act as “the silent guardians of Western Canadian agricultural history.”

But for us the real joy came from the elevators we stumbled upon – sighting an abandoned structure, tilting, with its paint chipped and letters missing from the name of the town it once served.

Some people might see the dilapidated elevators – with their shattered windows and rotting wood – as a blight on the landscape. Instead, we marveled at what they represent: the passing of 100 years, testimony to a slower, and some would argue simpler, way of life.

Click the "deep read" button to view the full photo essay.

Melanie and I were on a quest. While on assignment in Manitoba, photographer and reporter set out to document the old-style wooden grain elevators that tower over this prairie landscape. It took Melanie poring over a map to pick them out. But at one time, farmers say, visitors could drive down the highway and see rows of them in their rearview mirror. 

The storage facilities, where grain would be loaded onto the national railway, have a connection with the world wars that ravaged the European grain market in the early 20th century. Production shifted to the Canadian prairies, attracting immigrants – many of them Ukrainians – who settled in towns next to the tracks, each community centered around its grain elevator that would stand as a beacon from afar. 

The number of elevators increased from less than 100 in 1892 to 5,500 at their peak in the 1940s, according to the Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site. 

Why We Wrote This

A story focused on

Our reporting team found surprise and delight when an assignment in Manitoba turned into a scavenger hunt for treasures from Canada’s agricultural past.

Currently, only about 80 remain – with the majority having burned down or fallen into such disrepair they needed to be demolished. They’ve been replaced with modern facilities that point to the more industrial nature of agriculture today. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
An old train car sits on the tracks at the Inglis Grain Elevators National Historic Site in Inglis, Manitoba. This site preserves one of the last rows of standard-plan wooden grain elevators. The earliest examples date to the 1880s.

In Inglis, a row of five wooden elevators has been preserved at the end of an abandoned rail line. A plaque at the site describes them poetically as “prairie sentinels” that act as “the silent guardians of Western Canadian agricultural history.” 

But for us the real joy came from the elevators we stumbled upon – sighting an abandoned structure, tilting, with its paint chipped and letters missing from the name of the town it once served. 

Some people might see the dilapidated elevators – with their shattered windows and rotting wood – as a blight on the landscape. Instead, we marveled at what they represent: the passing of 100 years, testimony to a slower, and some would argue simpler, way of life.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
A corroded nail stands out against the weathered wood of a grain elevator in Oakburn, Manitoba.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Once, thousands of elevators like this one in Oakburn were used across Manitoba to store grain. The grain was then loaded onto rail cars for transport. Now, only about 80 such structures remain, relics of an era of less-industrialized agriculture.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The “L” is missing from the town of Beulah’s old grain elevator.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to In Pictures: On the hunt for Manitoba’s ‘prairie sentinels’
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2022/0906/In-Pictures-On-the-hunt-for-Manitoba-s-prairie-sentinels
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe