Wednesday 15 February 2023

50 Shades of Wool – the Rest of the Story (there’s always a story)



 

Hand spun and hand dyed yarn has always had a place in my heart.  Learning how to weave a few years ago gave me a reason to purchase a skein or a handful of small samples.  Not only at local markets, but also when I am traveling, this gives me the excuse to stop, look and talk with local makers. It was with delight that I read about Crux Fibres “Low Mileage Make Along” which was the perfect excuse to bring out all my treasures and decide how to put them together in one story.  The structure of this book is all the reasons for wanting to spend time by the sea, but it’s the wools that are the stars in this tale.

Confession here, I’m a townie who lives in Alberta with no practical experience with sheep (or the ocean). But I keep bumping into them on my travels and they fascinate me.  I’ve learned about the prima donnas, chiefly Merino (from Spain to Australia and South America) and Corriedale (a bit more hardy, bred in New Zealand by crossing the Merino with other breeds to improve meat quality) who need care and attention from shepherds and their dogs.  But along the way, I also met the more independent heritage breeds – North Ronaldsay and Icelandic as well as a variety of breeds in the UK that trace their origins to the Viking sheep who had to be able to fend for themselves while their people were off doing other things.  These sheep are primarily bred for their meat because the wool is not beautifully soft and silky like the Merino and Corriedale.  But you can find people who are rescuing the wool, spinning and dying it and enjoying the qualities that make the sheep so hardy.  I love the story of bringing in the North Ronaldsay sheep for sheering in the fall – no sense in sending a dog because they know he is danger and will scatter to the farthest edges of the beach (they feed on seaweed on a tidal beach).  Instead, the fit young men have to sneak up on them one at a time, hoist them over their back and carry them to the paddock.  A similar story was told to me of the Icelandic Sheep.  The wool is two layered, one for warmth and the second is waterproof.  A bit scratchy, but perfect for outer layers.  Victoria Findlay’s book, Cloth, has the story of why you won’t find Merino sheep in the UK.  Politics back in the day meant that the Spanish jealously guarded their wool industry. Instead, the beautiful local wool is Corriedale.  Or imported Merino from Australia or New Zealand.  In Iceland as well, “made in Iceland” means the wool is Merino from Australia because tourists want soft not hardy.  “Made of Icelandic wool” will get you the heritage wool. The other interesting thing I learned is that all wools have their special purpose.  So, the sheep living on the outer Hebrides are best suited for making carpets and Harris Tweed is actually made of Corriedale fleece from the mainland that is spun, dyed and woven on Lewis and Harris.  Turkish carpets are actually made from Iranian wool because Turkish sheep are better suited to clothing.

While sheep were being domesticated in Europe and the Middle East, the people of South America were doing the same with Alpaca and his relatives (Llama, Guanaco and Vicuna). When the Spanish brought the Merino sheep to the Americas, they fit right in. Traveling in South America, it’s very difficult to find Low Mileage wool because wool as well as alpaca is sold to the major mills in Peru and Uruguay for international distribution.  Locals are often seen knitting or crocheting with acrylic yarn dyed in bright modern colours.  So, like catching the heritage sheep in Europe, I had to sneak up on sources and be prepared to toss a sample over my shoulder to bring it home. 

I’ve also included some silk embroidery thread in this project because it feels like it meets the criteria of local and traceable, hand processed and dyed.  I was privileged to visit the Khiva Silk Carpet cooperative while traveling in Uzbekistan.  The silkworms are all raised in community houses, harvested and processed at the coop before being spun into carpet strength threads for hand making the carpets. I still smile at the interaction to get some of these thread samples.  Our guide, who I believe had government connections, translated for me and negotiated that I could have some of the “waste threads” – 5 to 10 meter pieces from the end of the spools.  Perfect for what I had in mind and I suspect that they were reassured that the government didn’t need to know about this small unauthorized sale.  When I got back to Canada, I borrowed “A Carpet Ride to Khiva” to read the whole story of this cooperative.


The cover is a “low mileage painting”.  I bought it at a small market on the harbor at Cavtat in Croatia.  It’s the last point in Croatia where you and your boat can check out of the country on the way to Montenegro.  And it reminds me of an incredible experience with our guide/ship’s captain who used his knowledge and experience to read the weather and know just what needed to be done to keep us safe and provide a great experience. The fact that he invited me to sail as the only passenger from Dubrovnik rather than wait for the land transfer for the new guests was an incredible message that he trusted non sailor me to take orders and not be a hindrance.  “There’s a storm coming and I have to get the ship to Cavtat to meet everybody so we can get into the bay at Kotor tonight.  Otherwise we stay in Dubrovnik for the week.  Do you want to sail with me, or wait and take the bus with the others.”  Heck yes, I wanted to sail with him. I bought this painting (and a number of others) from the artist while waiting for the rest of the group to catch us and had a lovely conversation about the fact that all the paintings I chose were hers not her husband’s.  In her life, the ocean is just outside her window.  The Aegean Sea, that is.


I added a wee fingerwoven sash to mimic the winding seashore.  In North America, we call this a diagonal stripe, but in South America, it is called Inka Trail.  The fibres are alpaca from Bolivia (blue and green) that I stumbled upon while walking toward the museum in La Paz.  I started talking to a local lady who directed me to her neighbor who was using her family alpaca fibre, processing it and dying it at home and then weaving beautiful shawls in her shop.  She was delighted to sell me some of her yarn and took it off the huge cones used with the loom and wound it into cakes for me.   The yellow is highland sheep wool, Merino and Corriedale, hand spun and naturally dyed, from the traditional cooperative in Cuzco, Peru. It came with a tag listing the community and the spinner.  What I am finding interesting about this wool is that it is spun for making textiles on the backstrap loom (so very tightly spun)  and the ball of yarn is hard like a rock.  But when I took strands off the ball and left them on the table, they stretch, curl and become the soft wool I am more used to.  The natural wool is the Lake District Hardwick sheep from the Grasmere Weavers www.grasmereweavers.co.uk  that I found unexpectedly at an outdoor market one evening in Keswick while looking for dinner.


Sailboats and the ocean go together perfectly and remind me of some stellar small group cruises in Australia and Croatia.  The embroidery thread comes from two Low Mileage sources.  The black birds are silk carpet thread from Khiva.  The other colours are from The Outside www.theoutside.org.uk who are a couple who focus on heritage materials and processes.  They raise Shetland Sheep near Oxford, but these threads are all from Swaledale sheep, a heritage breed related to the Viking sheep who live on the Yorkshire Dales.  The reason being that if you are creating heritage garments or embroideries from the 1000s then your wool has to be as close to the original as possible. I met them at a medieval market just down the road from Salisbury Cathedral (the new one, started in 1220)


A fishing net goes perfectly with the ocean theme.  It’s crocheted with the Peruvian wool and the found object (a fishing net has to catch something) is a handmade seed earring from Flores, Guatemala (so, it too is Low Mileage).  And there’s a great memory of buying this earring, talking with the shopkeeper, giving a pen and being gifted with a hand carved (by the merchant out of local wood) coatil. The red seed is for good luck and to protect from the evil eye.  These seeds are also found throughout South America.

This is the first of several dry felted backgrounds from Canadian Low Mileage rovings to feel like an ocean scene.  I started with black roving from Northern Roots Family Farm just up the road from me in Peace River (Clover, who is probably an Icelandic/Shetland mix), then added some wine coloured alpaca roving from Twisted Sisters Mill www.twistedsistersmill.com.  The top layer is a mix of Crux Fibre’s www.cruxfibres.com custom roleg (the greys and blues and sparkles) and the Ontario wool from the sample pack (ocean and seashore colours).  I added a selection of items from my seashell collection.  Included are pearl bits and my last paua button from New Zealand.  The embroidery is wool thread from The Outside and coloured with madder and cochineal grown in their garden.


A fisherman’s sweater using Low Mileage fingering wool from Crux Fibres, generously crocheted by my daughter Kati.  Kati gave the bottom some ribbing like the bottom of a sleeve or the waist of the sweater, but I think it looks like a cup of tea or coffee to be shared with friends. The legend I heard in the Shetlands is that these sweaters actually got started by the fishermen themselves knitting a warm sweater to wear on the boats and with time on their hands they would start to get creative with the stitches.

Another dry felted background to represent the seashore.  More black from Northern Roots Family Farm, with the middle layer being whites and greys from Crux Fibres.  The top layer (the teal and the earth tones) is Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun www.handspinnerhavingfun.com, a shop at Broadford on the Isle of Skye.  They use local sheep and process the yarn for sale in their shop.  Along with all the skeins of beautiful wool for sweaters and such, there was a bin with tops dyed in a rainbow of colours and sold by the gram.  The shop is not open in the winter as the family travels to Peru each year (which is why a quilt about my travels in Scotland includes a silver decorative spoon made in Peru).  The feathers are from Northern Roots Family Farm’s chanticleer chickens, gathered by the children from the farmyard.  They may not be seabirds, but the feathers are reminding me of all the beautiful birds I’ve watched on my ocean adventures. The embroidery wool that sews it to the page is coloured with weld and woad.


Low Mileage yarns of the world representing all the lines you see along the harbor.  The background is white cotton hand dyed with saffron from Spain. The orange line is from a visit to a very high end hand weaving shop near Cuenca in Peru.  While our guide was trying to impress us with the lovely intricate shawls being woven on a loom I had first seen in Asia and using specially imported silk linen fibres from Uzbekistan (yes I have an embroidered cloth using those fibres but bought from the artist in Samarkhand) loved by the upper class local ladies, I was more interested in this hunk of bright orange chunky yarn hanging on the wall.  It turns out that one of the weavers had been playing with wool from one of his own sheep, had spun it and then dyed it with carrots.  Just playing around.  No where near fine enough to weave anything up to the standards of Peru.  But I loved its lumpiness and negotiated to bring it home.

The ground is two strands of lopi spun Icelandic yarn.  I was exploring a pop up market (literally a van parked in the parking lot by the entrance to a park) and the young lady explained that she had spun her own sheep’s wool and then knitted all the items for sale.  Yes, ten years later, the touque still gets worn regularly and the two skeins of yarn have found their way into many projects. In Iceland, most fleeces are sold to the cooperative that processes the yarn and either sells it internationally or offers it for sale to locals at the shop in Reykjavik so it was very unusual to find Low Mileage yarn.

On the line from left to right:

-          Sheep from Tierra del Fuego hand spun in Ushuia.  I was delighted to bump into this yarn in a small shop off the tourist beat.  I’d explored a number of yarn shops as we traveled through Chile and Argentina, but none had local wool.  It was mostly acrylic in modern colours.  Any wool would be from the international mills in Peru or from Europe or North America.

-          Alpaca from Bolivia.  I found this at the Museo National de Bolivia in La Paz.  The government supported cooperative works with local indigenous groups (Aymara and Quechua) to continue their traditional weaving.  The tags indicated the community and the spinner.

-          Sheep from Bolivia.  Traditional highland sheep in the Andes are a mixture of Merino (brought by the Spanish in the 1500s) and Corriedale.

-          Sheep from Bolivia.

-          Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun on the Isle of Skye

-          Hardwick sheep wool from Grasmere Weavers in the Lake District of England. 

-          Blackfaced Connemara.  We had been traveling the back roads of western Ireland exploring the hills, the lakes and the sheep and stopped at a village on Lake Connemara for lunch.  In the shop/restaurant was a large selection of Irish wools.  My eyes were drawn to a small selection of white curly wool and I asked the shopkeeper where it came from.  He smiled and mentioned that the fleece all came from the sheep out there on the hill, and it was spun by the lady who lived next door to the shop.  Can’t get much more Low Mileage than that.  Although most of the sheep in Ireland are Scottish Blackface, the Blackface Connemara is actually its own breed and comes more directly from the Viking ancestors.  It is raised primarily for meat, but locals will also use the wool.

-          Welsh rare breed (Balwen) sheep who live near Hay on Wye. The local market was just closing down for the day as I stopped to explore.

-          Irish sheep (so probably Scottish Blackface) from the same shop in Connemara.  These would have been the more domesticated sheep I saw in the hills.  Hand dyed with local plants.

-          Donegal Tweed yarn from the Blarney Woolen Mills.  Lovely yarn with the iconic spots to indicate Donegal Tweed.  Made in Ireland.  But the wool is merino from Australia or South America.  Sigh (not low mileage at all).

-    


The Low Mileage wools of Canada.  I’m thinking of this as the seashore (the undyed colours on the bottom and right side) with a glorious sunset.

Bottom to Top:

-          Imagine Yarns www.imagineyarn.com Cotswold sheep tops (Oprah) from Saskatchewan

-          Northern Roots Family Farm (Peace River). They raise Shetland and Icelandic sheep

-          Imagine Yarns Gotland sheep tops (Mica) from B.C.

-          Lazy Ewe Farms from down the road in Eaglesham (a francophone community).  I bought this yarn at the Dunvegan Family Day market and I like to call it “Inconnu”.  The maker explained that all the wool she was selling was from her sheep or alpacas and that she spun and dyed it herself.  There was a small bin on the table of skeins with the label “make me an offer”.  She explained that these orphans had been misplaced and she didn’t know which sheep or alpaca the yarn had come from.  I loved the green colour and the story made me smile, so “I don’t know” is a perfect name. 

-          Imagine Yarn Cotswold sheep tops (Beth) from Saskatchewan.  Beth is actually white, but I took samples of all the white yarns and painted them to give me more ocean yarn.  It was a no measure combination of assorted blues, greens and metallic fabric paints.

-          Northern Roots Family Farm.  Hand spun natural wool from their flock

-          Custom Woolen Mills www.customwoolenmills.com Field and Forage Yarn coloured with marigolds and honey from their garden. This is one of two Alberta mills and they process woolen fleece from Western Canada.

-          Twisted Sisters Mill www.twistedsistersmill.com Alpaca and Wool mix.  This is the second mill in Alberta and processes primarily alpaca fleeces from Western Canada.  What makes me smile is that both mills use each other’s products.  The alpaca will be from their farm.

-          Custom Woolen Mills Field and Forage Yarn coloured with coreopsis and perambucco (Brazil wood) which is foraged from a local violin maker.

-          CJ Alpacas Alpaca and Merino lopi spun at Twisted Sisters Mill.  The Alpacas are their own.  The beautiful colour is from kool aide.

-          CJ Alpacas Alpaca hand spun on the farm and also dyed with kool aide.

From Left to Right

-          Made Marion wool hand spun by herself and coloured with avocado.  (two lines, chain crochet to give the fingering weight yarn some visibility) This local spinner/dyer’s products can be purchased at Hippy Strings www.hippystrings.ca  in Sexsmith, just outside Grande Prairie. She also has an incredible line of alpaca fibers.  The story is that they used to raise alpacas and she is slowly making her way through what she has left in the barn storage.  Hippy Strings reassures me that Marion will probably never run out of alpaca fleece.

-          Northern Roots Family Farm.  More of their natural fibre – clouds in the sky.

-          CJ Alpacas Alpaca hand spun on the farm.  Another strand for the sunset

-          CJ Alpacas Alpaca and Wool lopi spun repeat

-          Custom Woolen Mills Field and Forage repeat (two rows)

-          Lazy Ewe Farms Inconnu repeat

-          Northern Roots Family Farm hand spun and dyed repeated

-          Fluffalo Fiber Company from Caroline in Southern Alberta.  The family raises buffalo as does their neighbor.  Each spring, the family goes out and harvests the “fluff”.  I asked for a package of small samples of her various products (she was learning to spin and combine various fibers and I was delighted to receive 5 to 10 meters of various weights, colours and compositions.  This one came with the label “pure bison fiber unfinished.  Dip in warm water and hang to dry”  It went from a very straight fiber to a kinky soft one.  Sort of like my hair in a rain storm.  Crochet chain to give it more visibility.

-          Qivuit from a friend of a friend.  My daughter’s neighbor is an elderly nurse (she just recently retired at the age of over 80) who for many years would do relief nursing at the high arctic nursing stations.  She’d go for a couple of weeks at a time so the nurse could have a vacation.  She received a large selection of Qivuit from a local lady who had gathered the fibre and then processed and spun it.  My daughter’s neighbor made hats, scarves and mitts for all her family then gifted the remainder to my daughter who crochets.  And there was enough left over for a small ball for me.  J  It is unbelievable how soft this fiber is

If you look on the next page you can see that this square was sewn to the page with Black silk carpet thread from Khiva


This time I used a dry felted background to emphasize the seashore and use some of the yarns and tops. The ocean has strands of Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun (Broadford Isle of Skye) over top of the Cotswold tops from Imagine Yarns.  The seashore has Lazy Ewe Inconnu twisted with some white merino hand spun by Melanie Hellum who is a local lady who uses her own sheep’s fleece in some amazing art projects.  The land gets some definition from Made Marion’s avocado dyed wool and CJ Alpacas’s alpaca dyed with kool aide.  The puffins flying around the lighthouse make it likely that this seashore is around Cornwall (where I purchased the card) but it also reminds me of the flock of puffins I was blessed to visit in Newfoundland. This was sewn to the page with woolen yarn from The Outside.

Here’s the colours of the ocean in a simple weaving to show off the wool from Island Sweet Fibre Arts of Cornerbrook, Newfoundland.  Although most wool from Newfoundland goes to the two mills in Atlantic Canada (Briggs and Little in New Brunswick or MacAusland in PEI) for processing, this artist used local wool and processed, spun and dyed it at her studio.  She created kits with her wool and simple patterns that were available around Newfoundland.  I bought this and a couple more kits while at Gros Morne National Park and this was the last bit left.  It was too little to make a scarf, too much to throw away and just right for this weaving.  Unfortunately, the artist has been inactive since 2014.  If you look on the next page, you will see that the weaving was sewn to the page with black silk carpet yarn from Khiva.


Dry felted background deep under the sea with no coast to be found.  Black base is Northern Roots Family Farm and then the next layers are all the beautiful bits in the sample pack from Crux Fibres.  The design of the fish is from a takeout bag from somewhere in Europe.  I only saved the design, none of the labeling. The large fish and the outer border is wool from The Outside dyed with madder and cochineal.  The smaller fish are embroidered with Khiva silk carpet thread, also dyed with madder.  Two communities very far apart but both with the knowledge of natural dyes. It’s interesting to note that many of the dyes used in Khiva have to come from Afghanistan.


Rainbow, or perhaps clouds, over the ocean. Here’s a selection of my white Low Mileage yarns. The yarn to sew it to the page is from The Outside and the background is Irish linen.

Top to bottom:

-          Imagine Yarns Cotswold tops from Saskatchewan

-          Connemara Blackface from Ireland.  A repeat of the wool from the sheep on the hill spun by the lady next door.

-          Northern Roots Family Farm

-          Corriedale tops from the Handspinner Having Fun on the Isle of Skye

-          Melanie Hellum flock

-          Made Marion Alpaca and wool lopi hand spun.  Natural colour

-          Made Marion  Alpaca and wool lopi hand spun.  Dyed with onion skins

 

This is actually the first page I completed.  Cockle shell embroidered on linen.  The pattern is from a book about the Bayeux Tapestry. Of course shells go with the ocean, but this has a lot more meaning that I became aware of on my travels.  The shape of the shell as well as the gold and blue colours indicate that this is actually the symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.  I saw this symbol all over Europe – during the middle ages, basically every road was a road to Santiago de Compostela.  If you find a church with the name “St James”, you can be assured that it was a place that pilgrims could seek shelter and food along the road.  And yes, the road from Bayeux and nearby Mont St Michel are both routes that led folks coming from England onto the French route. The blue lines in the shell are the last bits of indigo dyed silk carpet thread (and the indigo from India had to come through Afghanistan) The gold is wool thread from The Outside dyed with weld and madder. The thread sewing the embroidery to the page is wool dyed with indigo.  Indigo that comes either from India or from Central America.

The ocean floor.  This is some lumpy fluffalo fiber that was one of the maker’s early efforts at spinning.  Yes, the white is natural, her neighbor has two white buffalo.  When I laid a handful of the yarn on the table, it just said “ocean floor” so I tried a number of ways to bring it together but keep the lumps and texture.  Finally, I arranged it between two layers of netting and gently dry felted it.  Just enough to hold everything together.  It’s sewn to the page with black Khiva silk carpet thread.  My intent was to add nothing else to the page, but today this yarn marker said it needed to be part of the story.  I remember buying it in Iceland at the local yarn coop (everybody in Iceland knits and comes to the coop to buy wool and accessories and to offer finished garments for consignment) because it was pretty.  It’s been sitting for ten years in a basket of found seashells from that trip to Iceland.


The last fibre page is a tip of the hat to seahorses.  And the memory of seeing a whole group of them at a “seahorse ranch” on Caye Calker, Belize.  One of the docks had plants to encourage the seahorses to visit, with a fence they could get through but the larger carnivore fish could not, and all the locals knew to park their boats elsewhere.


This land locked Albertan first had a chance to visit the ocean and explore the shore on Vancouver Island as an adult.  I can spend hours walking the beaches, playing in the water, watching the beings that call this place home (plants, animals and people).  When I read this card (from a shop in Cornwall), every reason for visiting the ocean made perfect sense.  Mind you, I don’t need a reason to explore the shore or try out the water.  In another life, I lived by the ocean.

 


Contact information about the wools:

Canadian Wool

Crux Fibres www.cruxfibres.com Breed Sample Pack including coloured from Ontario.  And a roleg and the fisherman’s sweater is made of Wesleydale fingering weight yarn.

Fluffalo Fiber Company from Caroline @fluffalofibercompany

Custom Woolen Mills www.customwoolenmills.com Field and Forage Yarns

Twisted Sister www.twistedsistersmill.com Ombre Alpaca and Merino yarn and Alpaca roving

C J Alpacas cjalpacas@gmail.com also Facebook and Instagram lopi yarn alpaca and merino spun at Twisted Sisters.  Alpaca spun at home.  Dyed with kool aide. Available at local Farmer’s Markets and at Hippy Strings (local yarn shop)

Made Marion available at www.hippystrings.ca Fingering weight wool spun at Custom Woolen Mills and hand dyed.  Lopi hand spun Alpaca and Merino and hand dyed

Island Sweet Fibre Arts (Cornerbrook NL)

Northern Roots Family Farm northernrootsfamilyfarm@gmail.com and on Facebook and Instagram Available at local Farmer’s Markets.  Yarn is named after the sheep.  Black (Clover) roving and several thicknesses of  Shetland and Icelandic sheep, hand spun.

Lazy Ewe Farm (Eaglesham) shirleyulland@gmail.com available at local Farmer’s Markets.  Sheep and alpaca raised on the farm.  Fleece is hand spun and hand dyed.

Imagine Yarn www.imagineyarn.com Cotswold and Gotland tops from BC and Saskatchewan.

Melanie Hellum on Facebook.  Hand spun.  Sheep are raised on her farm.

Qivuit from a friend of a friend

Wool of the World

Iceland sheep wool lopi spun and purchased at a pop up stall in Iceland

Uzbekistan Khiva Silk Carpet Workshop

Peru  Centro de textiles tradicionales del cuzco www.textilescusco.org

Bolivia Museo National de Bolivia in La Paz. sheep and alpaca from a government supported cooperative.  Also alpaca yarn from a local merchant

Ecuador highland sheep hand spun and dyed with carrot at a workshop near Cuenca

Ushuia (Tierra del Fuego)

England  The Outside www.theoutside.org.uk embroidery threads hand dyed with traditional dyes on Swaledale fleece. Grasmere Weavers www.grasmereweavers.co.uk Hardwick sheep.  Bought at Keswick.  Lake District (Beatrix Potter Country)

Wales Balwen sheep (rare breed) bought at Hay on Wye

Ireland Connemara Blackface rare breed (white), natural dyes to Scottish Blackface (ombre) Blarney Woolen Mills Donegal Tweed (not LM)

Scotland.  Handspinner Having Fun (Corriedale tops) www.handspinnerhavingfun.com

 

 

Thursday 26 August 2021

A Taste of Fairview

 Here's a taste of my favorite memories of living and working in Fairview for the last forty or so years. Each of the quilt squares has a name to trigger a memory. There's also a very much bigger quilt with 75 different memories of Fairview - stay tuned.  And of course, as you read this, please take the opportunity to enjoy your own memories of Fairview.  Or of your own home town.

One of the best pieces of advice I got as a quilter was to pick a favorite piece of fabric and use those colours because if you like they way they work in the fabric, they will work well together. This quilt is made up of a hundred or so different pieces of fabric, all sharing a colour with my focus fabric and almost all of them coming from my stash.  So when I look at a Taste of Fairview, I also have memories of what other quilts these fabrics are part of.  Enjoy.

12 memories on the front

3 more on the back


The Fairview Airport.  In the spring of 1987, the town of Fairview had a disaster practice which involved the whole town working together.  Who would do what?  Where would the command center be?  When and where would be a good place to have the “disaster”?  Who would be the casualties?  Months of meetings.  The disaster was a school bus of high school students from St Thomas More School in a collision out at the airport (because it was a big enough area to stage the accident but not actually on a road). Everybody worked together and we even had a few frantic parents who tried to break into the hospital to find their children.  J A few months later, when the major tornado happened in Edmonton, I recognized some of “our” disaster management gurus working on a real disaster and could see the many parts that we had practiced. 10 years later, I was helping with a PARTY program in Grimshaw and the volunteer student to come in by accident happened to be the daughter of the local doctor on call who was unaware of this until he walked into the trauma room to simulate resuscitating an accident victim. I still remember the shock on his face before he got back into role.  In a small town the reality is that everybody is connected.

In 2018, my home changed from the house I raised my children in to an apartment in a different town.  It’s a change that was a long time in coming and has turned out to be full of interesting experiences and offers of help and encouragement from many people.  One of the first events I attended was the Fathers’ Day Fly In at the airport.  The community has been abuzz for years with the idea that these “crazy Fairview farmers” had rescued an old plane up north, brought it home and were going to make it fly again.  This was the first anniversary of its maiden flight.  Almost everybody in town was out to get a chance to see the Canso up close and hundreds of pilots flew in for breakfast and a chance to show off their planes and gossip with friends. Everybody was more than willing to stop and chat, to answer questions about how you get hundreds of planes on the ground when there is no air traffic control.  (The answer is that everybody had been planning for weeks what time they’d arrive and started talking to each other on the same radio frequency miles from the airport.) Check out www.savethecanso.com for pictures and the rest of the story.

I found it interesting to talk to one of the pilots for the Canso a few weeks later.  He’d seen me at the fly in but hadn’t had a chance to say hi. As one of the pilots, he mentioned that he had just been approved for his license renewal (he is in his 70s), so knew that he could fly for the next year.  “I know there will come I time when they say I can’t fly anymore, but every year they approve me, it is pretty life affirming”.  This, for me, is the essence of my small town home.  Everybody knows everybody else and you have interesting conversations where and when you least expect.


The arena and its neighbor the curling rink. Coming from La Crete (where the curling rink was natural ice in a quonset building and everybody was just learning to curl) it was a huge surprise to come to a School Division bonspiel and actually have REAL curlers who expected you to have all the gear and know the rules.  Of course, the arena is where you spent your winters watching your hockey players and figure skaters.  One memory of the winter of 1995 stands out.  Our team (Grimshaw) of Tom Thumb players had a core of 8 year olds who had skated together for four or so years and then two tiny three year olds who could barely stand up on skates (snow angels).  That year, the coaches made the rule that any player could score a goal, but couldn’t score a second goal until everybody else on the team had scored as well, which certainly encouraged passing and working together.  This game, everybody was working to get “99” into the right place in front of the goal and to get the puck to him so he could score his first goal.  And when the Fairview team figured out what was going on, they started cheering him on and working to make the goal happen.  The whole arena cheered when he finally got his goal.  Life lessons for both sides.  My other memory is more recent.  I had seen Elvis Stoyko’s first year of skating with Stars on Ice (the young upstart in a leather jacket out performing Kurt Browning). Getting to watch him skate with the Fairview Silver Blades was something I never expected to happen. And watching all the young skaters (many of whom I knew) was just as exciting and brought back memories of skating carnivals of the past.

                 

Coffee shop.  There’s always a coffee shop in town where you go to visit and catch all the news/gossip.  Now, when I think coffee shop, it’s The Old Bistro (what else could it be called) which also connects to The Bistro and the great meals we had there. 

                                                     

The Dunvegan Bridge.  An incredible view of the Peace River as you come into the valley.  I remember being told years ago that for the road crews, the Dunvegan was always a priority, even if you had to creep backwards down the hill in your sanding truck so that you were sanding for yourself as you worked to clear the snow and ice off the steep and winding road.  And wondering about the restriction of only one B train on the bridge at a time, and whether that meant my little car could also be on the bridge with those big long grain trucks heading to the elevator at Rycroft.  Dunvegan is so much a part of my memories of Fairview that I insisted I needed to visit Dunvegan (Isle of Skye) even though the fellow from Edinburgh insisted that it “wasn’t the best castle we have in Scotland, and was poorly restored in the Victorian era”.  800 or so years old and still being lived in by the same family was pretty darned good to me. 

                             

Elevator.  Of course in a small prairie town, it’s the town elevators that grace the skyline.  With the loss of the railway, the elevators have also been coming down.  I think of two things when I think of Fairview and elevators.  There’s the incredible sign on the wall in the hospital made of boards from the old elevator by Earl Verbicky.  The sign recognizes donations to the Hospital Foundation and another one of many examples of people in town seeing a need and making it happen.  But I also think of Len Scarrow, head of maintenance when the “new” hospital was being built.  How to label the elevator buttons when the hospital on the hill actually had three ground floors?  Bottom, middle and top, of course.  Not basement, ground and tower.  Or 0, 1, 2. 

                              

White Railing Fence (the Health Unit).  This is the fourth location of the Health Unit that I can remember and if you are trying to explain how to get to us, the small town directions are “turn left at the corner before you go into the parking lot at the hospital.  Look for the white railing fence and that’s where the sidewalk is to our front door”.  We’ve been here since the summer of 2010, but we still occasionally get people going to the wrong place.  We moved from the main floor, and for years there was a sign on the old door (where administration is now) that said “the health unit isn’t here anymore, go back outside, down the road and turn right at the corner.  Look for the white railing fence”.   The best one was the gentleman phoning from where he thought the health unit was – the two story building across from the arena where the learning store is – and couldn’t believe we had moved from there in 1995! 

My connections to the Health Unit go back to my first days visiting Fairview as the mental health therapist from Peace River, then bringing my children for immunizations and Tiny Teeth, then working casually for Home Care and Public Health, then back to Mental Health but having an office in the Health Unit.  These memories are all wrapped up in the power of connections. 

                             

The library.  I introduced my children to the library when they were preschoolers.  As they were choosing books, I’d browse the shelves for things that looked interesting.  Interlibrary loan before computers meant writing a request and having it come some weeks later.  When tracpac came, a whole new world was opened up.  I could browse every library in Alberta and request books from the comfort of my home, and then have the surprise and delight of wondering where the book was coming from.  I remember a few years ago having a chat with one of the volunteers about the books (on quilting) that I was returning.  He mentioned that he always took the books I returned over to the local seniors center to let the ladies check them out, and hoped I didn’t mind!  Wow, without even knowing it, I was spreading the fun of my books.  In 2014, while traveling in central Asia, I saw a book about the carpet coop I was visiting and made note of its name.  When I got home, I searched tracpac and of course it was available.  The best part was that it was actually in my home library.  Why on earth a book written by a British volunteer about a carpet coop in Kiva, Uzbekistan  was in a small northern Alberta library I will never know.

When I moved to Fairview, I asked to keep my library number because it felt that after 25 or more years it was part of me.  Thank you.  It’s just as much fun to get the message that I have books to pick up. 

                                     

Pool and Fitness Center.  The pool has been part of my life since the 1990s.  My children took their first swimming lessons in the old outdoor pool, and then moved on to swim meets.  The summer swim community is like a big family and you get to spend your summer weekends at the pools of Northern Alberta.  It’s with joy that you watch your children and their friends as they learn and grow and accomplish great things.  Grimshaw even had their meet here at the Fairview pool the year that the “it wasn’t a tornado” damaged the Grimshaw pool days before the meet.  During this time, I became an official to help put on swim meets, then discovered that I loved being on deck watching anybody swim!  Officiating at the World Masters Games in Edmonton in 2005 set me on a slightly different path – to travel to Australia to compete.

I took first tentative steps to become a Masters swimmer in February 2006 with my first morning lane swim at the “new” indoor pool.  Next were group fitness classes at the gym and then my introduction to the fitness center.  Briefly there was actually a masters swim club and practice swim meets in Alberta getting ready for my “trip of a life time” to compete at the Sydney World Masters Games in 2009.

My other memory of the new pool is how it came to be.  A group of Fairview parents had started fundraising to make repairs to the arena where their sons played hockey.  That done, they had some money left and looked around for what should be next.  The pool also needed major repairs and  I watched as there was discussion about fixing the old pool vs building a new one, and then the outrageous idea of building an indoor pool.  Some people said it would never work… but of course everybody pulled together.  I remember a rubber duck race down the Peace River, and you can see plaques of appreciation throughout the building.

                                 

Porch (wee old lady house to Miss Phoenix) In 2019, I fell in love with this wee old two story house with a barn roof that had been badly used by renters for years but had (according to my contractor) “good bones”.  I described her to friends as being like one of those older street ladies with all their possessions in a shopping cart.  Over the last year, she’s risen from the ashes like a Phoenix. For me, there was a lot of cleaning inside and out, and a week or so of doing the painting then the fun of moving in.  But the best part was standing back and watching as Nathan and his crew used their knowledge and creativity to accomplish way more that I thought was possible.

Out of curiosity, I started asking about the history of this house.  The last five years remain a mystery (a succession of renters and an absent owner), but in typical small town fashion, people have given me pieces of the story.  Parties with a local RCMP officer,  A man I knew as the butcher at IGA who had built the garage, the second story and major renovations in 1987 by a college carpentry instructor, an acquaintance who stopped by to say hi one morning and mentioned her aunt had lived here and who she had rented from, a lovely chat with that person who told me about her mum who had bought the house in the 1960s and remembered who had lived here before that (rented or owned, not sure), and talking to the sister in law of the couple who had been those renters, who remembered who had built the original 300 sq foot house, likely with no running water or electricity, in 1956.  The power of small town memory.

                                 

Sequins and Stuff (Nan’s Fabric Shop).  I first visited Nan’s in the early spring of 2002.  I’d started quilting and was looking for fabric for a small wall quilt and she gave lots of suggestions and advice.  Then I decided to make a full sized bed quilt without much of an idea what it was going to look like.  Not long after, there was a quilting class that looked like fun – how to use different threads and stuff – which sent me down the art quilting pathway and I’ve never looked back. Like many great small town shops, you can find a bit of everything, including some unexpected treats that you can’t get in bigger city shops.  Nan has moved three or four times and the store has changed names, but it will always be “Nan’s”.

                                 

Skylight (remembering Marion Cox).  I first met Marion Cox in the fall of 1980, when it was suggested that I introduce myself to the College nurse because she would be helpful to a new to the community Mental  Health Therapist.  Marion was truly that nurse who believed her job was to care for the community.  I would drop by most weeks to say hi, have a tea and listen to her stories.  Coming from La Crete, I thought that I was quite the adventurous one until Marion explained how she got from northern England to Fairview by way of a couple of years working as a nurse in Alice Springs in the late 1940s. The first few times she referred a student to “the new therapist” and sang my praises, I felt like I really needed to work hard to meet her expectations.

I chose this block to remember Marion because of our early meetings.  Shortly after we met, her office/clinic moved into the new Administration Building along the back hall.  I remember her pride in showing me her new space, and explaining how she had had a lot of say over what was necessary – a lovely spacious working space.  The best part was the skylight above her desk which allowed daylight to come in from two stories above.  “I told them that there was no way I could work without natural light and that my clients absolutely would benefit from it as well”.  

                                                             

Supermarket (Boyt’s) I remember growing up in Calgary and watching Green Acres, with Sam Drucker’s general store, and thinking that that was made up for TV.  But one of the things I learned when moving to a small town is that of course there is always that one store that has everything.  I love to go into Boyt’s with a bit of time to spare, do a bit of browsing and discover there is something that I forgot I needed!  An interesting fact I only learned recently is that the Health Unit actually started out in the same building that is now Boyt’s, moving to the new Fairview Hospital when it opened in 1977.

                                 

Take the train.  As was the case for many of the small northern Alberta towns, the railway is what created Fairview.  If not for the train, we’d all be living four miles south at Waterhole where there was a source of water.  My memory of the train was driving with it on my morning trip to work from Grimshaw -  keeping pace with it for a time, counting the cars, checking out the graffiti on the grain cars and noticing what else the train might be carrying. The rails might be gone, but if you look closely you can still see evidence of it along the old right of way.

                                                     

Town Office. When I first traveled to Fairview in the 1980s, I was invited to be part of the interagency group which met in the town’s board room.  In what I came to learn was the typical Fairview way of solving problems, a group of public health nurses and teachers decided that they would get everybody together to develop programs (and figure out funding opportunities) to meet town needs.  Fairview was one of the first small towns to get funding for preventive programs (FCSS), started the Party Program, funded the school counselor positions, advocated for school teams (which spilled over to schools throughout the area, and many other programs.  This attitude of see a need and work to get it met continues to this day in Fairview.

                                                     

The Waterfront (walking the trails) In Alberta, the waterfront is the lake, or the river. Fairview is blessed with Cummings Lake on its northern edge, with a series of reservoirs and walking trails to make the area accessible to all. As I walk the trails, I smile to think of all those forward thinking folks who created this gem.  The sign reminding of the decision to pipe water from the Peace River to have a guaranteed source of water, then hold it in the series of pond like reservoirs that encourage the wild life.  The rock in the middle of one of the fairways with the story of how it got there.  Paving of the paths to make them more accessible.  Volunteers creating the cross country tracks. Memorials to local people. The birdhouses put up by a local volunteer.