Manitoba

Kerri-Lynn Reeves

“When you mention manitoba, I’ll be mindful of her beauty,
In the evening when the sunset fades away,
And the moon of golden glimmer, on the wheat field seems to shimmer,
And the night bird sings the closing of the day.”

“My heart is a jalopy,
Broken down and on the side
Of a road near Arden, Manitoba,
Where I’d ride,
A BMX for miles,
Just to get up off the farm
And pretend that I was a town kid,
even for a little while”

If one were to take to lyrics of Memory of a Lake and exchange “Arden, Manitoba” with “Virden, Manitoba”, than Waddell would be singing directly about my life. When I was ten, my baby blue BMX bike was the vehicle for exploration of my “place”; at age fifteen, it was my buckskin gelding Buck; at sixteen, it was the old rust-coloured and covered Malibu car that had been in my family for three generations. First, my explorations were limited to the one-mile square home section of the family farm, then further, the surrounding miles of farm land and finally the back roads and highways of Southwestern Manitoba and Southeastern Saskatchewan – all of them infinitely interesting and rich with a history, of which I only know a portion of to this day. This was my “place” and the only world I knew until I turned eighteen, graduated high school and moved to the “big city” of Winnipeg – the capital of the province of Manitoba.

Often history is defined as “the past considered as a whole.” While this is a notion to which we can aspire and learn from when looking at the history of a place from the vast myriad of perspectives that inform, shape and relate to it, it is a notion that I will not aspire to here. I have only my own experience to speak from – one voice in an immense chorus.

Born and raised in Two Creeks, the same rural farming community that my family homesteaded in and has lived in since 1882 (twelve years after Manitoba became a province of Canada), my roots have always extended deep into the soil and history of this small part of the world. Moving away, first to Winnipeg, then to other Canadian cities and parts of the world, only fortified my connection to this particular place as my perspective on it grew. Coming from a small and isolated community where everyone knows everyone else – if not by face or name, then at least by reputation or family association – breeds a particular brand of familiarity, one that is inherently dichotomous in nature. It can be repressive in its traditions, insularity and surveillance; and simultaneously liberating in its freedoms, comforts and supports. With the perspective gained away from this place, I view my story of Two Creeks to be a microcosm of the common narrative that is Manitoba history.

On a land once called home by various aboriginal communities, my fore-parents came via boat, train and wagon east across the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern half of Canada from their homes in the British Isles. They came to the new world, like many, in the hope of finding the “Promised Land.” Their particular route was as indentured farm workers on what was called the Rankin Estate, eventually becoming independent farmers upon the same land. What they found when they got here was a rough unsettled flat grassland with few trees but plenty of hardships: harsh climates with temperatures from –40 Celsius to +30 Celsius, summer thunderstorms and winter blizzards, floods and droughts, intense winds across the flat Prairie landscape and stifling still humidity in which the mosquitoes thrived. They also found plenty of opportunities to grow their families and social circles with the neighbouring farmer families. This social life included trips to town on Saturdays to pick up supplies, picnics, baseball games, curling, pond hockey, and of course the popular kitchen parties and community dances that featured the local musical talents. At a time when many people played at least the piano, if not the fiddle, banjo, or mouth harp, and when people socialized inter-generationally, these were the highlight of the long winter months and warm extended summer evenings. These were also times to share sources of cultural pride for the recent immigrants and their descendants, such as Irish reels to dance to and Ukrainian perogies to feast upon.

Feelings of pride of place have always been important to the people living here, from the First Nations people that called this place home for millennia, to the early immigrants and settlers to new Canadians – all groups holding onto unique histories and traditions to help define their distinct cultures, while taking great pride in creating a new “home” and helping to define this new collective culture and place.

I came to this project in order to give voice to my particular pride of place, as well as to explore my ambiguous feelings towards this place, by finding and listening to the voices of others. This is has been my particular experience of Manitoba and my perspective on my family’s history. Through Manitoba Folkways I set out to find answers. How could I grow my perspective of my homeland? How could I learn more about it and in turn learn more about myself? History is full of common narratives – farm girl moves to the big city – but what is to be learned when individual voices are heard and listened to? What might we learn about ourselves and others when simultaneously, we put our own voice out there and listen to the other voices in the chorus…if “even for a little while”?