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Description
Besides being one of my favourite sunset shots, this is an intensely personal image for me.

The large building silhouetted is one of the few remaining wooden grain elevators in my home province of Saskatchewan. Specifically, this is the last one standing in my hometown of Gainsborough, the oldest incorporated town in the province (founded 1894). My family moved to the town when I was four years old so that my father could run operations there. The company (Saskatchewan Wheat Pool) closed the elevator in 2000, thus retiring my father after 35 years. The building was sold to a private owner, and, to date, is not in immediate danger of deconstruction.

In the last ten years, they are being torn down at an alarming rate as the grain companies consolidate operations into the newer, larger, and more widely-spaced concrete 'inland terminals'. Once a fixture all over the Canadian prairies, and visible on the horizon to mark any town, village, or hamlet located on a railway line, these were the life center of the agricultural trade for decades. As globalization and world economics continue to force companies to abandon small operations in favour of centralized ones, the destruction of the small communities and ways of life is continuing. The (admittedly quite boring) landscape of the province is diminished (even further), and it is possible for someone driving by on the highway to miss the existence of entire towns hidden from the highway behind trees.

Without the elevators, these towns don't have the new families moving out to the rural areas to run them. Slowly, small villiages like mine are dwindling and dying, closing up shops, tearing down buildings, closing schools (as mine did a year or two ago), and slowly falling off the maps. In many, like our previous home in Candiac, all there is left is a scattering of houses for those who have lived there so long that they don't want to move. (see "Toothless Grin" bulloney.deviantart.com/art/To… and "Faded Glories" bulloney.deviantart.com/art/Fa… ) Nothing there for young people like myself, nearly all of whom will move away to other areas or into the cities in order to survive. No new blood, leaving empty husks to mark those who came to the country to find and make new lives for themselves.

Years ago, there were six elevators in the town. For as long as I'd lived there (since 1983), my town had three... And now there is one.

2011-05-05: Technical details: 35mm film, scanned print. Probably 400 ISO. Shot with Pentax camera, likely my MZ-7 (since I only had that and the Z70 at the time).

See also:
"Searing Sunset" - bulloney.deviantart.com/art/Searing-Sunset-277862248
"Land of the Living Skies" - bulloney.deviantart.com/art/La…

Description
Besides being one of my favourite sunset shots, this is an intensely personal image for me.

The large building silhouetted is one of the few remaining wooden grain elevators in my home province of Saskatchewan. Specifically, this is the last one standing in my hometown of Gainsborough, the oldest incorporated town in the province (founded 1894). My family moved to the town when I was four years old so that my father could run operations there. The company (Saskatchewan Wheat Pool) closed the elevator in 2000, thus retiring my father after 35 years. The building was sold to a private owner, and, to date, is not in immediate danger of deconstruction.

In the last ten years, they are being torn down at an alarming rate as the grain companies consolidate operations into the newer, larger, and more widely-spaced concrete 'inland terminals'. Once a fixture all over the Canadian prairies, and visible on the horizon to mark any town, village, or hamlet located on a railway line, these were the life center of the agricultural trade for decades. As globalization and world economics continue to force companies to abandon small operations in favour of centralized ones, the destruction of the small communities and ways of life is continuing. The (admittedly quite boring) landscape of the province is diminished (even further), and it is possible for someone driving by on the highway to miss the existence of entire towns hidden from the highway behind trees.

Without the elevators, these towns don't have the new families moving out to the rural areas to run them. Slowly, small villiages like mine are dwindling and dying, closing up shops, tearing down buildings, closing schools (as mine did a year or two ago), and slowly falling off the maps. In many, like our previous home in Candiac, all there is left is a scattering of houses for those who have lived there so long that they don't want to move. (see "Toothless Grin" bulloney.deviantart.com/art/To… and "Faded Glories" bulloney.deviantart.com/art/Fa… ) Nothing there for young people like myself, nearly all of whom will move away to other areas or into the cities in order to survive. No new blood, leaving empty husks to mark those who came to the country to find and make new lives for themselves.

Years ago, there were six elevators in the town. For as long as I'd lived there (since 1983), my town had three... And now there is one.

2011-05-05: Technical details: 35mm film, scanned print. Probably 400 ISO. Shot with Pentax camera, likely my MZ-7 (since I only had that and the Z70 at the time).

See also:
"Searing Sunset" - bulloney.deviantart.com/art/Searing-Sunset-277862248
"Land of the Living Skies" - bulloney.deviantart.com/art/La…