A rural Saskatchewan community has lost a part of its history.
The last Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevator in Meacham, Sask. came down on June 8. At one point in its history the village had five.
Community members are saddened by the grain elevator’s destruction.
“This should be part of the community’s heritage,” Cindy Hanson told Farms.com. “Communities need to think about why things like this matter.”
Hanson grew up on a farm near Meacham and is now a professor in the department of sociology and social studies at the University of Regina.
She, like other Meacham natives, have close ties to the elevator.
“I remember going there with my dad hauling grain,” she said. “One of my mother’s uncles died at that elevator. “Meacham is such a small community (a population of 99 according to the 2016 Census), and that elevator was something we were proud to have and call our own.”
“I remember the office being separate from the elevator and you had to walk down a walkway to get to the office,” Vince Nimchuck, a Meacham, Sask. grain farmer, told Farms.com. “Inside the office was the engine room and inside there was a great big stationary engine that ran the elevator. And when it got fired up in the morning the whole elevator would shake. That was a real treat for me as a kid when I’d go there with my dad.”
Nimchuck captured the elevator’s last moments on video.
This article is a reprint of an article by Diego Flammini that originally appeared on Farms.com.