Colonsay School
These are the articles about the elevator that the Colonsay School Gr. 9 class wrote
History of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool has its history in grain. The agricultural cooperative sells farm goods such as seed and fertilizer. It markets and distributes farm equipment, processes hogs, markets crop protection products, and provides elevation and shipping services. The co-op is most active in Western Canada, but it also has operations in Mexico and the US. Provincially, the SWP is one of Canada’s largest co-operatives as it handles about 60% of Saskatchewan’s grain. The pool's 70,000 farmer-members own all of its voting shares. Non-voting shares are publicly traded; outside shareholders can own 10% at the most. The co-op sold its interests in cattle production, Premium Brands, XCAN Grain Pool, and its CSP Foods Division. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool co-operative has been operational for 75 years.
Local resident from Colonsay, Saskatchewan Herb Shier, has lived in the community for 72 out the 75 years of his life. He has been on the elevator committee for about 8 years, but has not been a member for 10 years today. Mr. Shier comments about what he thinks of the closing of the SWP elevators around this province. “ It’s terrible that they are closing down the elevator. It was a good structure and a good business.” When asked what he thinks the future will be for the elevators in Saskatchewan he states, “ down to about 45 elevators in about 30 years.”
Mr.
Shier also says that they instantly decided to close the elevator. They didn’t
warn anyone of it in the towns of Viscount, Colonsay, Lanigan, Watrous, Young
and Hanley. It seems it is a revolutionary change in many different communities.
By, Amy
Destroying
A Piece Of History
Colonsay
has recently been hit by an all too common rural Saskatchewan “trend”;
having its elevator removed. All around Saskatchewan the SWP is removing the
grain elevators from small and large
towns alike.
Through
out the days that the elevator was being demolished we had an opportunity to
talk to one of the workers, Laurie, of the Verdon Construction Company out of
Delisle. He had very interesting answers to the questions that we asked him.
We
asked Laurie what some of the safety precautions that are needed to be taken
before a project like this is begun. “We have to make sure that there are no
tress passers at site of demolition, and that there are no trains in the
area”.
In
his profession Laurie said that he has brought down about 900 elevators in the
Saskatchewan area, but one thing is for sure Laurie loves what he does even
after 20 years of doing it. “ Of course I love what I do, who wouldn’t love
a job like this”.
One
piece of equipment that is used in this operation is a loader with a grapple to
pick up and move most debris that some of the other machines cannot do. Another
piece of equipment used in an operation like this is a track hoe, which is also
equipped with a grapple. This piece of machinery does most of the work. The last
main piece of equipment they use is the gravel truck. This is used to take the
pieces that are left from the fallen building to a secure location where it can
be properly disposed of.
Laurie
said that five years ago it would take them about eight days to bring down the
elevator but now it is a five man project, that takes them two days.
There
were many different steps required to demolish an elevator. First the Sask.
Wheat Pool crew salvaged as much equipment and hardware from inside of the
elevator as possible. They salvaged many different things such as scales, grain
cleaners and dust collectors. After the salvaging, the steel grain bins were
sold and dismantled. Verdon then came in and began their demolition process.
Verdon
began with the demolition of the annex on the west side of the elevator. The
track hoe chewed its way through the heavy crib-structure as if it were merely
twigs. When one side was weakened, the machine went around to the other side,
and pushed the building over. This process took approximately 2 hours to
complete. The building hit the ground and created an immense dust cloud, and a
pile of rubble. The same process was repeated the next day, Thursday, April 12th,
2002, when the demolition crews toppled the main elevator at 7:55 AM. Over the
next few days, large timbers were salvaged, and the unsalvageable material was
loaded into trucks, and hauled away to a large pit nearby, where it was burned
and buried.
Now that the elevator is gone the farmers of the Colonsay community have to go “ that extra mile”, to haul their grain.
By Chris and Nicholas
A
Trucker’s Point of View
Bill
Goodsman is 44 years of age and has been trucking for C&C trucking for about 19
years. His family lives on acreage just out of St. Denis. He has been hauling
grain all around the area now for quite some time now. Here is what Mr. Goodsman
thought of the issue. “It is hard on a community to loose people but a small
elevator can’t serve big farms.”
For Mr Goodsman as a trucker he says; the issue is very minimal, and that
“I did very little work into a small elevator, most of my work always was into
large terminals.”
Over the years business for truckers have not been getting better due to
the prices of fuel and the prices of truces have all been going up, and because
the rates have not been going up they have to work longer to make a living.
From when he first started working to now he says things have change a
little. “There is way more rules and regulations to follow some of them are
good and some are not.”
Farmers are still hauling their own grain now but Bill Goodsman says;
“Farmers can still haul their own grain. It just doesn’t make economic sense
because of expenses.”
Mr. Goodsman believes that there are more and more goods being hauled by
truckers now days. If this is the case what can this mean for our roads?
Colonsay Citizens Shocked and Saddened By Elevators Destruction
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool coming down has an effect on us all.
Saskatchewan Wheat Pools are every town’s trademark and when you loose them
it’s like loosing a part of your town.
“
This is just one more clink in trying to shut down our town,” says secretary
of administration Joanne Binsfield. The Wheat Pool coming down will affect
every part of our town, all the businesses, the school, and the community.
“The school will be affected because it will loose revenue from the Wheat
Pool,” says Joanne Binsfield. The school and town will no longer be able to
collect taxes from the Wheat Pool elevator building itself. I asked her what
her thoughts were on the Elevator demolition were she felt it was “Very
poor” and “This is going to mean a lot of planning to recoup the tax
income we receive”. Everyone wonders if there is going to be any change to
Colonsay. Joanne Binsfield says, “ It’s going to change YES but how it’s
too soon to tell”.
Jim Gray the reeve of Colonsay says that everything will be affected.
“Everything will be affected in a large way because the town is loosing
$25000 in taxes and rate payers will have to pay. Every business will be
affected. The Co-op, Wrights Insurance, Credit Union, the Post Office and many
more businesses will lose income”.
“It
will affect me because there will be less traffic and less business,” says
Blair Holland the owner of Cranch’s Garage. Blair said that’s he was
disappointed and sad like many peoples reactions are to the Wheat Pool
elevator coming down.
In the end the demolition of the Wheat Pool coming down has a major affect on everyone and in time will have a major affect on the community and the businesses.
By:
Lauren
A
brief History of
The
Canadian Pacific Rail Line
And
the CROW subsidy.
The Canadian Pacific Rail Line was officially started up in 1881, although they did not start transporting people and goods until 1885. The CPR was founded for the purpose of linking the eastern provinces to the vast unpopulated and untamed western provinces. They did not open to service the public until November 7 1885 when they finished the line going to Craigellachie, B.C.
The
CPR had mainly been used to haul grain and some personnel transportation. This
was only the case until the late eighties when the Canadian federal government
decided to cancel the CROW subsidy. After this program was cancelled, the
CPR was not getting subsidized for hauling grain. So they moved into products
that were more profitable and economical to haul. One of these markets was
potash. If you watched the trains go by on a rail line you would notice a higher
percentage of minerals being shipped on lines that were once dominated by the
grain industry. Another
of the reasons that rail companies did not want to haul grain was that they
would have to stop every few miles and only have to fill up a few cars. The new
cement terminals that are being built today have the capacity to load a whole
train at one time.
By;
Kevin
The
question many people ask is “Why”?
The
answer I received from Barry Coulling (Director Administration) is to reduce
total costs and to get more production done with fewer elevators. As he
explained to me the cost of taxes and the up keeping of these old elevators are
a tremendous cost to the SWP and this plan will help eliminate this cost.
Another enormous cost to the SWP is technology because it has to be updated so
often and to update it in this many elevators would be insane.
The SWP arrived at this situation after a long thorough talk and a
discussion between the directors. Their top priority was to reduce costs and to
build new multi-car loading facilities that would be more effective. The changes
and the work already done to achieve their plan have already gone to far to halt
it and there is no turning back now. Coulling still has faith in the SWP and
thinks they will pull through these rough times and survive.
Change can be good and change can be bad but unfortunately this is
terrible and as for Colonsay a sign of the times is at their doorstep.
Changes in Colonsay By:Pam
Colonsay’s wheat pool manager is Kevin Matechuk. Kevin still has many responsibilities even with the elevator gone. There are going to be many changes with this large part of Colonsay gone. The pool will no longer be handling grain, or cleaning grain, but the wheat pool is still able to give cheques to people for their grains, as well as provide them with fertilizer and custom work. This will be a huge change for this community. People of Colonsay used to be able to haul their grains to town, but now they have to go elsewhere to major inland terminals such as AGPRO.
Kevin believes that these changes going on are going to both benefit and hurt this community. The elevator being torn down is going to put this community at risk because we are losing all the business from all the farmers and their grains. But our upgraded fertilizer plant and chemical buildings that are being put in will benefit the community because we will now have another resource to help us serve farmers. Kevin believes that the Wheat elevator will be greatly missed by many people in the Colonsay, Saskatchewan, however the pool will continue to operate and provide some services for our farmers.
The
annex was built in 1950 and later on the elevator was built in 1951. It took 6
weeks to build a new elevator from the time the first person arrived to when the
last person left.
Tony
and his crew would pound 1600 nails in nine hours. Approximately 210,000 board
feet were used to build the elevator. Beams were made of fur and the walls were
made of spruce and also fur.
Most
of the people who worked on the crews were 18 to 64 years old. Tony was the
youngest at 17. Work was hard. Dynamite was used to make the pillar holes. The
site was leveled and the elevator was built six feet from the tracks.
Tony cried for 2 days when the elevator was demolished because something he built which was still perfectly good was destroyed. He thinks the end of the elevator will mean the end of the post office and the Co-op. Perhaps in 10 years there will be plywood over the windows over all the houses. If there is any fog or snow, people will drive right by because we have lost our landmark.
The Farmers
As you know the elevator had come down and the farmers are not to happy about it. So I asked three different farmers about what they
think about it. One of the questions I asked was “What do you think
about the elevator leaving?”. The farmers all had just about the same remark. The Weir’s said that is was a crying shame and the Pfeifers and Stanford’s said it was sad and it was no help to farmers and the town. They all think that’s a bad idea to take the elevators because the farther they have to drive the more gravel roads are going to be destroyed.
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