The Greenwater Report for July 13, 2009

July 5th, 2009: We spent the weekend at Kelliher, enjoying their 100th Birthday celebrations, and what a party it was!

The Crawford family lived in Kelliher from summer of 1945 to the end of 1957, with a three-year break while I was on the railroad. My father had bought the Kelliher Creamery Co. and moved there in April of 1945. The rest of us followed after the school year ended.

Kelliher was a bustling village of about four hundred souls; there were at least four general stores, three or four garages, a big livery stable, a beautiful blacksmith shop, bulk fuel dealers, usually two to four cafes, a hotel, drugstore, hardware store (sometimes two) and lumberyard. There was always a resident doctor. United, Anglican and Lutheran churches, a Bank of Montreal, and a four-room school with three grades per room. It also had the Kelliher Creamery, which was the main employer in town. Movies were shown in the Community Hall on Wednesday evenings, and Saturday afternoons and evenings. We considered Kelliher to be the best town on the mainline CNR between Melville and Watrous.

It still has two cafes, a Co-op grocery store, Co-op garage and hardware, automotive services and an insurance agency. Fires have taken their toll of the business district and there are a lot of open spaces, but they seem to be gradually filling in. I believe the population has dropped to under three hundred.

They have a great sports ground with hockey and curling rinks and facilities for horse events. They also have a large, complete composite school.

Some of the events we took in were a fantastic parade, rodeo, wiener roast, dance (which for us meant an opportunity for visiting), a fireworks display, barbecue beef supper, pancake breakfast, some slow-pitch games and many walks downtown.

We got in early, on Thursday, and found ourselves a very nice campsite right at the sports grounds. Cathy was able to get her motorhome into the same site. We had no services and worried about our batteries but had no problems.

Every time we turned around, we met someone we knew many years back, or who descended from someone we used to know. Many people we went to school with, such as Pat (Briggs) Varley Peg (Briggs) Newcombe, Betty (Gray) Scott, Bob Gray, Albert Alm, Frank Grabarczyk, Stan Wicker, and lots more. Many were friends when Doreen and I moved back after our stint on the railway, such as Barb and Lorna Bolton, who always seemed to be having kids at the same time as Doreen, which was most of the time.

The weather couldn’t have been better, never too hot and always cool in the evening, and that was especially nice because without power we can’t run our air conditioner. There was the odd shower but lots of sunshine, and not too much wind.

Our site was down beside a slough; of course we worried about mosquitoes and ticks but there just weren’t any. We were about 400 feet from the CNR mainline railroad and right beside a crossing; deafening when we were awake but we never heard a thing all night.

We had two great visits with Stan and Laurene Wicker; Stan is recovering from a series of small strokes which had him spending a lot of time in hospital last winter. To me he seemed like the same old Stan I used to chum with, but he lacks mobility so wasn’t able to take in any of the birthday functions.

As you might have guessed, it was a fantastic weekend. Our hats are off to the hard working people of Kelliher who made it happen.