Feeling Home

Hello! I'm Megan (posts to be tagged as MR), based in Saskatoon probably forever, currently working as an engineer-in-training-if-I-ever-submit-my-reports at a construction company. My favourite sport is trivia and I have the hobbies of a 70 year-old woman. I blog about good and bad novels and my thoughts on engineering, relationships, language, gender, and whatever else I can reasonably justify at Two Hectobooks.

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Lesson learned: post early in the month or Cat and Scott will steal the words right out of your mouth (or fingers, I suppose, considering that this is typed and not dictated). I was going to write about how important I think it is for all of us to respect each other's strengths and weaknesses in this province, and I was even going to bring up the zombie apocalypse. So back to square one.

Instead I think I'll go the very Can Lit route of discussing place.

I'm not well-travelled enough to say that Saskatchewan is unique in the entire world, but I do think that the mix of demographics (relatively homogeneous), population density (extremely low), and so on that we have here is at least unusual nowadays. Even though the rural population has shrunk over the last few decades, there are still a huge number of first generation city kids like me, ones who have relatives that are still farming or grandparents living in small towns. I'm not sure that every single kid born in SK can tell the difference between a swather and a combine anymore, but I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of SK kids have at least been to a farm at some point by the end of their elementary school days (St. Denis, anyone?). One of my grade five field trips was a bike ride to my teacher's farm not far from the city. The urban to rural border is extremely easy to cross. Not to mention the crops, cows, sheep, etc. that are literally right in the middle of the province's largest city thanks to the university's agriculture program.

My mom is a small town girl and my dad is a farm boy, and both sets of grandparents are still living in two towns a few kilometres away from each other on the same highway. I have several aunts and uncles who are still farming, and my dad actually still owned land up until about five years ago. All this to say that when I think of rural Saskatchewan, I think of family. I spent a lot of school breaks staying with relatives when I was younger, and I have a lot of amazing memories from those visits.

There was a decaying park across the street from my grandparents' house, where I played with my cousins for hours, always avoiding the shiny steel slide because it was skin-meltingly hot in the sun. Other times we played in my grandparents' yard, dry grass on our bare feet, with the smell of baked dust blowing over from the dirt road. Then in the evenings after supper, we'd go out to check crops and maybe spot wildlife of some kind, standing on the bench seat of the truck because we were small enough and that was the only way to see over the dash, hopefully clutching binoculars. I spent hours eating oreos, or sleeping in the back, or standing beside my grandpa while he combined at harvest time. My cousins always had kittens, and usually they were tame. One summer I watched my oldest cousin hoist an old couch into the two-storey fort he'd built, and another summer got covered in burrs, and another, worst of all, went through a patch of stinging nettles. We dodged cowpies on most of our walks, shelled peas, had water fights, built snow forts, went sledding. I babysat ten kids once while the adults went snowmobiling. Speaking of snowmobiling, I started several poker rallies and always ended up waiting out the end of them at one of the checkpoint houses because I was pretty much the wimpiest kid. During swimming lessons at the lake one year, we circumnavigated the lake in a pedalboat. And it seemed like every day we caught hair snakes, minnows, and frogs. Every Christmas we played the kind of epic hide and seek games that you can only have in basements while the adults are all talking upstairs (boring). And best of all, straw bales in the wintertime.

Luckily I never had to help with any of the chores.

I know my childhood experiences are romanticized now. Sometimes it rained, or it was boring, or we went to church, or my cousins almost certainly thought I was a huge tool and I'm not really very close with any of them now. I have good city-centric memories, too. But I think the difference is that those country memories have a solidity and portability that the others don't. When you leave a city, you feel displaced. But it's not hard to get back to the country. You just find a grid road and stand on the edge of it. And it's the same gravel, and the same weeds and grasses growing in the ditch, the same cloud of tiny flies hovering a few feet away, so that even if you're far away from the place you're thinking of, you still feel connected to it, because somewhere the grid road you're standing on meets up with the one you're thinking of. It's not all sunshine and wild roses, for sure, but it's pretty special, a feeling you can't separate yourself from without leaving the continent.

Saskatchewan, Naturally.

"Saskatchewan, Naturally." This is the sign that greets Americans crossing the border into our fair province from Montana at the Morgan/Monchy border station on highway 4. Many years ago when my family went on vacation in Yellowstone, our car passed this very sign -  in fact, it is one of the things that is most vividly remembered from entire trip. Why would a simple road sign rank with the likes of of geysers, great canyons, hot springs, chromatic pools, and other such natural splendours? It was what the sign presented unabashedly to those entering Saskatchewan, one of the hallmarks of our landscape: a morbidly deteriorated road.

To call what my family traversed over the next hour "a road" would have been exceptionally generous. The ultra-smooth Montana road leading up to the boarder could have embarrassed a bowling lane and abruptly terminated a few hundred meters from the border. The sign appeared to be more an epitaph for the condition of Saskatchewan roads than an uplifting welcome. What followed was the worst unpaved road I have ever encountered (even worse than the logging road I wandered on in Montana last year while looking for a century-old ghost town).

The car bottomed out a handful of times and my father cursed considerably more than usual. The road itself wasn't all that long. It took an hour to surpass it only because driving faster than 30 km/hr would have been suicidal. And yet, through the frustration, profanities, and desperate prayers, I was relieved to be home; perhaps the rough conditions allowed me to better empathize with the hardships of settlers that came to this province before it even was one.

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These memories were reawakened last summer on my return to Saskatchewan from a two-week camping trip across Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota with my younger brother. People we had met on our travels had told us that North Dakota was so flat that you can see a day away. We responded in kind that our homeland was so flat that you could watch your dog run away for a week. We were right.

North Dakota may be flat, but is nowhere near so by Saskatchewan standards. While there were certainly no mountains we encountered, or great valleys, we saw our fair share of hummocky fields and rolling hills. What the Americans did have right was that there was about as much in northern North Dakota to see as there is on the southern Saskatchewan prairie. As we approached the border crossing, the Arrogant Worms album we were listening to switched to the song "I am not American." Perfect timing [though sadly ironic, as I would learn the next year - but that's a different story].

Fortunately my experience was better at North Dakota's Fortuna/Oungre border station on highway 35 than my previous crossing as a grade 6 student on vacation. There was no incongruous sign to mark our arrival and the road was paved. The skyline was even flatter than I remembered, perhaps only because of lumpy North Dakota. I was happy to return to the land of the living skies. I would have been ecstatic, but a full bladder numbed my enthusiasm. My brother was in similar discomfort. "No worries, there should be a gas station nearby."

Note to self: There are NO cities, towns, villages or hamlets that have "services" from the Fortuna, ND until Weyburn, SK. "No Services" was a much different sign that greeted me on this return to Saskatchewan, and in disheartening regularity as we drove on. After half an hour, my brother became desperate. "We could just stop by a tree on the side of the road - that's all I need," he pleaded. "No worries, there should be a tree nearby."

What Saskatchewan had in the number of "No Services" signs, it lacked in roadside trees. As we scrutinized the horizon for what seemed like hours (a full bladder can do that), it became apparent that trees outside of private property were about as common in southern Saskatchewan as snowballs in Tahiti. We drove all the way to Weyburn without encountering a single suitable place to seek relief.

Am I bitter? Of course not! How else could I have gained a better appreciation vastness of our great province? What lessons could have better taught me the value in checking the CAA listings for towns with services on my planned route? The effort of crossing the mighty land we call home is something with which we can all relate as residents of Saskatchewan. It is something we must all appreciate in order to comprehend the tremendous courage of the first Europeans to settle here or continue West; or the first nations people who had survived and thrived here for millennia before colonization. If you haven't traveled far across Saskatchewan, you are missing out, just like my mother's German cousins who visited her in Edmonton when she was a teenager. They innocently asked if it would be too much trouble to go see Niagara Falls for the afternoon.

Getting Back to The Country

Hey everyone!  I am Dave, you can call me Dave.  I am currently a geological engineer.  I would say that I have a good mix of urban and rural Saskatchewan background.  I do live in the city now, but spent most of my life living on an acreage.  In that way I got to live the rural lifestyle, while still interacting with city life as well.  Some adventures I like to take are getting away from the city, to explore rural areas.

My most recent rural adventure took me up north to Larocque Lake.  It is a pristine lake north of Missinipe (which is north of La Ronge).  This lake has only one property, which is owned by the grandparents of some good friends.  And the lake is only accessible by float plane (or portaging, if you have time)!  The property is maintained as a fly-in fishing camp.  Last summer the area was hit by a forest fire.  Luckily the cabin survived, but most everything else at the site was destroyed.  We went up to clean-up and re-build.  This included felling trees, building a new boat house and  outhouse, fixing docks, and general site maintenance.  It was very busy, but at the same time very enjoyable.

We lived at an entirely different pace up there.  Up with the sun with a slow start to the day.  Some of the guys would fish for an hour; I would sit on the dock and have a coffee.  After breakfast we would get to work.  And work would continue pretty much until sundown (with the occasional break for beer and snacks).  We would generally eat supper around 10 pm.  Then we would have a few drinks and relax until bed time after midnight.

The days were long and tiring, but they were stress free too.  To me, that is the feeling that I get, thinking about rural Saskatchewan.  Sure, long hard days can occur anywhere, but in a rural environment there are so few distractions to cause stress.  No traffic to worry about, no schedules to adhere to, no crowds to get caught in, no status to update, and no supercomputer to make your coffee.  You move along at whatever pace works for you, and you make things happen with your own hands.

It can be a fun experience getting away from a "google" society too.  There was one evening after supper when we were trying to figure out the definition of a word (or something like that).  Normally anyone could pull out a smartphone and boom, they have an answer.  But here we actually had to rely on our own knowledge, and the knowledge of the group to figure it out.

It was pretty hard to get on the plane that last morning to come home.  Of course there is stuff from the urban world which I love and wouldn't want to live without, but I will always enjoy getting away from it all.

Checking Myself Before Wrecking Myself

Hi all! I’m Catherine. I’m an ex-engineer, current student of English, and lover of games, music, and stories. If my posts, which I’ll tag as “CAT,” contain bad puns, you are permitted to give me a stern talking-to. You can also expect gratuitous pop culture references, pictures of cute baby animals, and a reliance on lists of three items.

I suppose I’m what you’d call a “city girl,” so my relationship with rural Saskatchewan is almost entirely abstract. I’ve lived my entire life in cities, with only brief forays into smaller towns for work and the occasional road trip. When I think of rural Saskatchewan, I mostly think about how the people living there would think I’m a completely incompetent fool. You know, I try to avoid hitting gophers with vehicles, have no clue how to milk a cow - much less deliver its babies, and am generally kind of useless. As much as I like to think of myself as the Arya type – cool, tough, and full of sass – when it comes to a Saskatchewan-related Game of Thrones, I’m probably more of a Sansa.

I’ve grown to realize that my conception of rural SK is quite stereotyped, though. Just as I picture the ways in which I’m “inadequate” by an imagined rural standard, I also apply a set of values to the whole concept of the place. Scott’s post on calling people out on their behaviour made me think about how I stereotype rural places in this province, and often I attribute prejudice to the rural areas more so than the urban. This isn’t fair, and ultimately leaves the urban areas less accountable for the ways in which they’re just as set in their prejudices as the rural. I picture a rural SK that thinks I’m awful, meaning that I’m not being fair, too. I’ve met plenty of people from the lesser-populated areas of Saskatchewan who I have more in common with than the people from my high school.

Where does that leave me? Well, I’m certainly no practical genius. Come zombie apocalypse, I’m toast. Or, uh, the zombie equivalent of toast. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if I were in a horror movie, I would die first. But my understanding of rural Saskatchewan has evolved over time. 

Dealing with aberrant behaviour

Hi, I'm Scott. This is my first blog post for Socializing Engineers; my posts will be labeled with "SSB" for your searching convenience.

I currently work as a internet nerd building websites for deezine.ca as well as occasionally maintain my hitchhiking-focused blog, I Smell Good. I'm living in Saskatoon for the summer, but I think I'm more migrational than most and I'm not sure where I will find myself in the coming months. Without more talkins, here we go!

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I have very positive associations with rural Saskatchewan, Canada, and other English-speaking countries. Growing up, my family was scattered throughout the prairies and as such our holidays were always filled with excitement as we moved throughout the countryside. As an adult, these positive associations continue: I always feel extremely welcomed in whatever community I find myself in.

I'm always taken aback when my non-white friends relate their experiences in rural SK or elsewhere in which they experienced rudeness or racism. The cold reception seems completely uncharacteristic to me based on my rosy views of the countryside. Lately, I've found myself in rural settings while hitchhiking. Prior to using my now-de facto "I Smell Good" sign, I would often be picked up by grumpy dudes who perceive that they're doing me a favour by picking me up. They would often say that they were picking me up because I was white and that they wouldn't have picked up someone of [insert local minority here]. Unbeknownst to them, no favour to me includes hate speech.

Whenever I could tell the other person respected me to some degree, I would always call them out on their racism. "Actually, my best friend who I live with is Chinese and he's one of the most hard-working people I know -- far more so than myself!" I feel like this was well generally well received -- their own car/truck is often a safe space and they're receptive to my polite, respectful disagreement.

In recounting one such encounter like this to a friend, she brought up the point that perhaps this might not be the most effective way to effect a change in behaviour. By reacting in the moment, I might not be as rational as I could be, and my words might invoke feelings of shame. We agreed that we didn't t believe that using shame is an acceptable pedagogical tool, so I've really had to think about how I approach aberrant behaviour. While I may not be as quick to denounce aberrance when I see it, I feel like the times that I do are more effective.

June Topic!

Happy June 1st, everyone!

The topic for this month is rural Saskatchewan.

Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/whatever identifier you want to go by on this blog, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.

Everyone: There is a poll for the July topic in the sidebar, and you can vote until the last day of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month. Comment on this post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll.

I think that's everything for now. I'm really excited to read what everyone has to say!