The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
You can learn a lot about family reunions. Surprisingly, a lot about Canadian history. Hearne is a hamlet some 50 miles south of Regina, where the scribbler started out in a one-room schoolhouse ? and at recess used to snare gophers and then tether them to the leg of the school desk. (I digress, early.) It was named after Sir Samuel Hearne, a Brit explorer who was the first man to reach the Arctic Ocean overland from our vast land of snow. He was eventually captured by the French and ended up in a Paris prison. Indicating, apparently, that I came by my heritage naturally. People from Hearne are called Hearnias. In fact, the town was so small we couldn't afford a village idiot; everyone had to take turns. However, I eventually moved to British Columbia, and this improved the I.Q. of both provinces. Ka-boom. When the scribbler left, there were some 35 residents in the town that had one street, one church, one blacksmith and a curling/rink where my future as left wing for the Toronto Maple Leafs ended. Hearne was on the storied Soo Line, the rail that ran from Chicago to Moose Jaw, allowing Al Capone to set up his bootleg operation in Prohibition times in the tunnels under Moose Jaw's Main Street, that is now a fabulously-successful tourist attraction in that under-rated city. There are now four (4) residents left in Hearne. And the family reunion contains 225 bodies. There is a reason for this. The joke used to be that the train ? both two elevators and the railway now gone ? used to go through every morning at 5 a.m. and blow its whistle. It was too early to get up and go to work. Too late to go back to sleep. What to do? Hence: 225 relatives. X x x AND ANOTHER THING In Regina, they are all ajiggle over their magnificent Government House, built in 1891 ? designed by Thomas Fuller, architect of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. See 'Larger' P.# Con't from P.# In 1891, the lieutenant-governor of the province governed an area that was two-thirds of Canada: the present area of Saskatchewan, Alberta, a portion of Manitoba, plus the Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory and Nunavut ? some 2.5 million square miles. It was a land mass larger than the entire continent of Europe. Government House was the first house in Regina with indoor plumbing, electricity and a central heating system. First home in Regina to have a telephone. It's the oldest residence in Regina. As such, it is Saskatchewan's Centennial Project for 2005 ? when its educational extension will be finished ? and will be opened by Queen Bess the Two herself in the navel of the nation. We're not sure if she'll drop in on Hearne. X x x AND A SECOND THING A scribbler roaming his old province for some days by rent-a-wreck finds further history. Of how much this province owes to ? remembers ? the French explorers and trappers who settled the land. The road signs: Belle Plaine, just outside Moose Jaw. Lafleche. Ponteix, Macoun and Montmartre. There is Strasbourg and the lovely Qu'Appelle Valley. Cedoux and Demaine and Preeceville. There is Rouleau ? the scribbler was born in Rouleau hospital. Several years ago, at the Rouleau and District Museum Threshing Bee, the early inventors of air seeders were honoured. Who they be? The Bechard brothers from nearby Lajord.7/16/2004
