Three books offer different takes on the province
Three authors find their own ways to praise province
George Webber's first trip to Saskatchewan was a pass-through in 1974.
A graduate of Ottawa's Carleton University, he was driving home to Calgary with a friend.
The maxim for many Canadians is, there's no reason to stop in Saskatchewan, just drive through.
Webber didn't see it that way. He has made many trips back over the years to photograph the changing scenery in communities across the province.
It's reflected in his newest book, published in 2020. Called Saskatchewan Book, it features 256 photos from Robsart to Dubuc to Mervin, beginning in 1987 — Webber's first photography trip to his east-neighbouring province.
Webber grew up in Drumheller, then Calgary. Aside from his post-secondary years in Ontario, he has lived in Alberta his entire life. But he has always viewed Saskatchewan as his province's “little brother” — “I say that with great affection because I've got two little brothers, but it's the places are so similar.”
East of the Rocky Mountains, the provinces have similar landscapes. But, in Alberta, Webber noticed “all these interesting little towns and communities, they were really disappearing fast, and in Saskatchewan it was happening at a much slower rate. So there were these gems that wouldn't have withstood the test of time (in Alberta), but they were still there in Saskatchewan.”
He chose to photograph those “gems” in the summertime, during long days that “decay” into dusk in a “jaw droppingly extraordinary” way.
Webber's is one of several books published this year that pay homage to the Land of Living Skies. Ron Stansfield's is another.
Stansfield hasn't lived in his home province since 1975, but he was inspired to write a book about it after retiring from a long career in foreign affairs.
Now a resident of Nova Scotia — where the ocean near his home “looks like waving fields of grain” — Stansfield's prairie-lily-covered Twenty- One Ways To Die In Saskatchewan is published by the small Nevermore Press in Lunenberg. It features stories and poetry about his childhood in Regina (he attended Rosemont Elementary and Martin Collegiate) and other aspects of Saskatchewan history.
In “Frankenstein's Child,” Stansfield writes about the historic 1912 Regina Cyclone and a then-obscure character who experienced it.
A young actor was “stranded” in Regina after his theatre company went bankrupt. Post-tornado, “he hung around for a while and helped with the reconstruction, and then he went off down to Hollywood and became Boris Karloff,” said Stansfield.
“There's so many things that I was dredging up that people don't know about, that I didn't know about, and it's been really interesting.”
Like Webber, Stansfield knows Saskatchewan has stories to tell. That was a prime reason he wrote his book.
“I wanted to give people from the outside a sense of the Saskatchewan experience,” said Stansfield. “A lot of people just drive through Saskatchewan, they never stop, `it's just boring, it's flat, the road's straight as an arrow,' and they can't wait to get to the Alberta border. And I thought to myself, 'There's some really interesting historical stories there, and the people are interesting if you really stop and actually talk to them.'”
Webber agreed on that latter point; he has had “lovely conversation” with people here during his photography trips.
“Partly because of, I think, the slower pace and the relatively smaller, less dense population outside of the major cities in Saskatchewan, there is an openness to these chance encounters. That sort of thing that happened often in Saskatchewan would happen very rarely if ever in Calgary,” said Webber.
Joel Jeffrey also made the point that roads are straight here — and why is that a bad thing?
A Saskatoon-based comedian who has lived in Saskatchewan most of his life, Jeffrey honoured the province in his 2020 title, The Great Saskatchewan Joke Book.
“I tried to write on some stuff that was stereotypical,” said Jeffrey, who likes turning jokes on their head: “We're great because it is flat here; we love to watch our dogs run away for three days. We love to be able to fall asleep behind the wheel of a car and not drive off the road.”
Jeffrey's title speaks for itself. Webber's does too, with its tag line Photographs by George Webber. Stansfield's is a bit less clear. “The reference to dying in Saskatchewan, it's kind of tongue in cheek because it's a reflection on how I felt when I left Saskatchewan,” he explained. “In the late '60s, early '70s, there was nothing happening there, the economy was bad, people were leaving the province in droves. That old saying, 'Would the last person to leave Saskatchewan please turn out the lights?'”
That out-migration has resulted in a possible audience across Canada, said Jeffrey. “I know that we're everywhere; how many people have left Saskatchewan? Even in Alberta, you go to a Calgary Stampeders game and there's more green than red in that stadium.”
With humour, Jeffrey wanted to explore “why we do things the way we do, about why we are, here in Saskatchewan.”
Stansfield isn't sure anyone in Saskatchewan would bother reading his book. His readers so far are “really interested in Saskatchewan because they don't know anything about it.”
He did want to remind people here “how great and unique their province is,” though.
“You sometimes don't appreciate the environment you're living in because you just take it for granted,” said Stansfield.
“I see it out here in Nova Scotia. There's a beautiful historic lighthouse just down the road from us and the people in the community don't care about it, it's always been there and always will be — except when it isn't anymore because it's fallen down, nobody's taken care of it …”
Webber has observed deterioration in documenting Saskatchewan through three-plus decades.
He has returned to the same places year after year, decade after decade, finding a “very rich source of creative inspiration” in familiarity and striving for “restraint” to create photos “very close to the way in which the human eye would perceive the scene.”
One on trip to Scotsguard, Webber photographed the façade of a church that had no walls behind it; it was one piece of a shell. On his next visit, “Everything was gone. There was no visual record, I couldn't even see an indication of a foundation or anything. It was like nothing at all,” he said.
Webber is comforted by the knowledge “that there are some beautiful photographs that record the place.” Many of his photos are part of private collections and the national archives.
Stansfield likewise captures places that no longer exist, in a city he knows is much different from when he lived here and when he last visited a decade ago.
“There's a story in the book about a hockey game at the old Exhibition Stadium and I realized that that's not there anymore, it's all Evraz Place now. I really need to get out there before it becomes a totally strange city,” said Stansfield.