Ask ten people for a symbol of life and you will get ten different answers. Ask ten people the same question, this time replacing "life" with :death" and the same thing will happen. Ask them yet another question, Whether there is a symbol or two that represents both life and death - and prepare to duck.
Well, you don't have to duck here, because I think there are some symbols that speak of death and life – especially here on the prairies. Each of the following places represent lives that have lived fully, yet, at the same time, death that became inevitable.
Choose your icons, be it an old schoolhouse, a grain elevator, or a country cemetery.
There is no set order in my suggested list, only suffice to say that all three – schoolhouses, elevators, and cemeteries – speak of the full-orbed lifestyle that mark most prairie towns and hamlets. The day the last bell rings at the schoolhouse or the wrecking ball demolishes the elevator, life in that particular community is changed forever.
And then there are the cemeteries. Obviously, the most telling representative of life is death itself, as no village is complete without its graveyard. In a twisted sort of way, life is often represented on a tombstone by a simple 'dash' or 'hyphen' (I do know the difference, but there is some grammatical wiggle-room on a headstone). The said punctuation mark sits quietly between the date of birth and the date of death, suggesting that life itself is a mere dash between these two events.
There are many word pictures in the Good Book that corroborate that viewpoint, but I move along.
While there isn't much one can do creatively with a cemetery, besides giving it an upbeat name (as in "Happy Trails Cemetery"), there have been some great things done with old schoolhouses and abandoned elevators - starting right here in the County of Forty-Mile. The Etzikom Museum is a case in point for the former, and for the latter, look what the Unrau families did to the Skiff elevator. And further to the south (and out of our county), the Masinasin School doubles as an occasional rec centre and home to a small embroidery business. (There may be other businesses in there, but I am not aware of them.)
I think it is a shame that more creative things haven't been done with any of the above cultural icons. Even if the buildings were dismantled and the wood put to good use, that would at least be a start (after their finish). Again, owing to my limited time in the county, I mean no offense if something creative has been done over the years in places such as, say, Maleb, Conquerville, or Conrad.
Meanwhile, back to life, back to death: A recent trip to BC and another one to the Crowsnest Pass prior to that only confirmed the above comments. Just this side of Sicamous, BC, I saw a burner that was converted to a pub. A burner is a multi-story incinerator placed strategically in a sawmill compound. And just before that, my family and I toured a very large graveyard close to Hillcrest, AB; many of those interred were killed by one of many mine explosions in that district.
I suggest to you the burner spoke of the death of a vibrant culture, only to be "resurrected" in the form of a eating and drinking establishment. And a quick perusal of that cemetery in the Pass reminded me that, even in death, these people live on in the minds of their offspring, the historians among us, and even passing visitors – tourists, if you will, like myself.
Life that dies and death that lives is a small reminder of the cyclic nature of the normal cultures that are the foundation of our country. Breaking that cycle means denying that culture.
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