Four Pictures of A Prairie Community

FTLComm - Tisdale
June 11, 1999


As I drove around Tisdale Thursday evening I wondered what would tell you the most about this community supposing you had never been here. Many times in Ensign we have pictures of playgrounds, neighbourhoods and gardens but am I missing something. My guess is that like anyone familiar with something, it is the obvious things that are never told.

These four pictures speak of what it is like here not what it

is, you have to dig in a bit and  
see if you can see the details of the way living in such a place seems to us who do.

The first picture is a very long and distant shot from the North of the town looking across a wheat field toward the Alfalfa Dehydration plant a full mile West of the town. The scene I am convinced that the flatlands and open sky have a profound affect on those who live in these surroundings.

This next picture was taken at about 7;00 as a school bus load of happy losers from Kinistino, high school teenagers boys and girls on their way home from a baseball competition in Hudson Bay. They had stopped at the 7 - 11 for a snack and they had just all put their sunburns back on the
bus to head home, the hours  
drive up to Melfort and beyond. They were in good spirits and one could easily tell that this outing was positive and they enjoyed each other's company.

The picture on the right is Tisdale's main street. Well not exactly but highway #35 runs North and South through the town and is the main street for the community. Two and half blocks before the Northern edge of town it bends gently toward the East exiting the town one block East of due North on Main street. In Saskatchewan there is a road allowance every mile East and West and every two miles North and South (with the exception of the area between Porcupine Plain and Hudson Bay which is one by three). The road allowance in this picture must once have
been a road for on both sides it is protected with a grove of planted trees. This obscure trail is a winter secret to the snow mobilers and in summer a neat place to wander down on foot or on a bicycle or for the mechanically adventuresome an excellent place to go and get your car stuck. This picture is taken looking due South toward town one half mile North of the community.

The picture below is that of contrast, the lady in her Toyota pickup truck dashing off to the shopping mall has caught up to a slow moving photographer who snapped a picture of her in the rear view mirror while through the windshield is the prairie sky as the town and countryside meet one another. The windshield plastered with the remains of now deceased bugs on a piece of highway that is posted at 60 kilometres and in twenty seconds from this images goes to 100 kilometres.