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Buffalo Alberta had a population of 3 in 1991, the teacher, the postmistress and her husband. There was a school, a grain elevator, a tiny church, a post office; everything else was boarded up or torn down.Soon enough these buildings would be gone, even the prairie sentinel – the grain elevator. The average population density […]

To say that tens of millions of buffalo (Bison bison) vanished from the prairies in the late 1800s is to whitewash a slaughter of historical proportions. American hunters sparked a demand for bison hides and bones, which Canadian hunters filled in their turn. The bison carcasses were left to rot; their skeletons littered the plains;

By the time the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed in 1885, only 23 homesteads had been claimed along the 400 miles from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta. Captain John Palliser, a British government surveyor, had surveyed the area in 1859 and deemed much of the area a semi-desert, unfit for agriculture. But at the

Those who know me are familiar with my disdain for greeting card holidays. Even the woman who lobbied for the creation of Mother’s Day regretted the results and tried to undo it. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, should we be thankful that Mother’s Day doesn’t last all year? So, my post today is happenstance, a work

Born without storm into autumnal gold, baby Elsie wore mystery, veiled in her caul, seeing only the love in our fathomless eyes. Dispatched with an angel’s kiss, she arrived in Thanksgiving’s low glowing sun. Yet the lore of the caul conjured mystery drawn from a shadowless night. Untroubled by her tumultuous journey into the light,

on this wave of ten-thousand-year old moraine sheltered by grandmother pines planted by long-ago school children this land loved by the Anishinaabe bow down give wordless greetings silent thanks she who is bigger than boundaries greater than nations remember her honour her bend and weave as basket willow ripple flow with water and air listen

Jo (so young) went west to wild rose country to Heart River country, a ruby red rose between her teeth the thorns keeping her silent   secret, unheralded, even unseen, baby girl Lewis became, and became imaginary, perfect as the Hope Ruby   Jo (so wild) sits in the silver square of the same moon