Growing up in the Turtleford area, I’d heard of Cleeves. I knew it was somewhere around Spruce Lake, but wasn’t sure where. Last summer I had the good fortune of meeting the Rallison family, who have roots in Cleeves. Al Rallison was a driving force behind an event held at the Cleeves site, so I decided to check it out.

Organizers had old photos available showing the layout of the hamlet (I think they were taken from one of the grain elevators, but I’m not sure). They’d also set up signs marking where various buildings had stood so people could get a sense of what Cleeves looked like back in the day.

Cleeves was established when the Canadian National Railway line was extended north from Turtleford, in 1920. The town site was located on a sandy flat, which wasn’t the best farmland, but did have great water. From what I gathered in the Turtleford Treasures history book, it was built on land originally owned by George Cleve, hence the name. The Cleve family came to the area from North Dakota in 1912 and 1913.

The railway’s arrival made a big difference in the daily lives of people living around Cleeves. Before the track was laid, Mabel Carr and her daughter Clara would do the grocery run to Turtleford by riding oxen. On the way home one day, one of the oxen lay in the Turtle River to cool off. Unfortunately that ox was carrying the sugar.

The arrival of the steel also sparked a fair number of businesses in Cleeves, including a general store, blacksmith shop, livery barns, hotel and restaurant, a bakery, butcher shop, lumber yard, pool room, and more. Along with grain, up to 1,000 head of cattle were shipped out of Cleeves each year.

Over the years the community added more activities and infrastructure, such as a school, homemaker’s club, 4-H garden club, skating rink, and curling rink. Church services were held at the hotel and school. The curling rink only had one sheet of ice, so bonspiels ran 24 hours. That is possibly the most Saskatchewan thing I have ever heard about.

Health care in the early days

The railway wasn’t just a means of transporting grain and cattle. When typhoid fever struck Cleeves in the early 1930s, Dr. Ramsay traveled from Turtleford every day in his jigger to check on his patients.

That epidemic “led to a story of romance,” Marilyn Bleakney, of the Turtleford and District Museum, told us. Nurse Peggy Kettles went to Cleeves to care for Della Willy. While there, she met and married Wilfred Willy.

In those days, disease outbreaks would close the school, Turtleford Treasures notes. Cleeves students would have bouts of measles, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps and chicken pox.

It was also interesting to read about how babies were born in those days. Although Turtleford has a fairly new hospital, these days women travel to North Battleford to deliver babies. That was not the case in the early part of the last century. Many of the Cleeves family stories mention the doctors and nurses who attended the births. It’s easy to understand why those people deserved a mention —childbirth was risky.

For many years other women served as midwives for their neighbours as well. Turtleford Treasures mentions the following midwives in the Cleves area alone: Sophia Cleve, Mabel Carr, Mrs. Muirhead, Mrs. Marchant and Vera Ingram.

The slow decline

“Cleeves was the end of the steel until 1929, when the railroad was extended to Paradise Hill. The Cleeves trading area shrunk in size, and this spelled the slow decline of the hamlet of Cleeves,” Bleakney told us that day.

The hamlet did hang on for many years after the rail line extended north. However, once the highway was built and cars and trucks became common, the Wheat Pool elevator closed. The general store and remaining business followed. In 1963, the school was shuttered. In 1966, the post office closed its doors.

Cleeves is not unique in this way. Many other rural communities have slowly gone back to the earth. I suppose that could trigger existential angst in some, but that impermanence reminds me that the land will be here long after any of us are gone.

Many thanks to the Turtleford and District Museum volunteers for organizing the event. If you’re interested in the history of your own rural community, you might be able to find information online at www.ourroots.ca. Many local history books have been digitized and stored on that website.

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On Tuesday night, the last grain elevator in Turtleford caught fire. Local residents watched as the structure collapsed inwards and burning grain poured from the elevator. The elevator was owned by the McDonald family, who used it to store their crop, and was a Sask Wheat Pool elevator before that. It was also the last grain elevator standing in Turtleford.

“I don’t know what I can really say other than this has hit the family and the farm really hard,” says Blair McDonald. “We’ve had a long old harvest this fall and this is just kind of compounding on it.”

McDonald has other storage bins away from the elevator, which he was using to aerate part of his crop. But the elevator housed part of the 2015 crop, plus over half of this year’s crop. A semi-truck and trailer parked in the elevator’s driveway were also destroyed.

At about 9 pm on Nov 29 one of McDonald’s friends let him know “something strange” was coming from the elevator. McDonald, who lives about 12 miles out of town, headed for the elevator.

“By the time I got in, there were actually two phone calls to me saying it was actually smoke coming from the elevator,” he says. McDonald called 911, and found out they’d already dispatched the local fire department.

McDonald spoke to his insurance company this morning. He expects to meet with them within a couple of days. Fire investigators will also have to come out to determine the cause, he says.

“They have to wait until the fire is right out. It’s contained right now but it’s not out,” he says. McDonald spoke to the acting fire chief in Turtleford last night, and was told the department would decide this afternoon when they can start putting water on the fire to extinguish it completely.

“One thing I can say is the Turtleford Fire Department and Turtleford detachment of the RCMP did a great job containing everything and keeping everybody safe,” says McDonald. He was also grateful to the St. Walburg and Glaslyn fire departments for responding.

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Angela Csiki lives across the street from the elevator. Csiki says her partner, Chris Michelon, noticed the fire at about 9:15 pm. By that time, the local fire department was already on the scene, she adds.

“We moved our cars to the (school) division office just down the road. Then hung out there a bit just watching the debris and seeing how much was going over our house and whether we should be concerned or not,” Csiki says.

• PHOTOS: The aftermath of the Turtleford grain elevator fire
• Read more: Grain elevator owners “hit hard” after destructive fire

Turtleford is located 90 kilometres north-west of North Battleford. At one time the elevator belonged to the Sask Wheat Pool, but is now owned by a local farming family. The elevator was located in the middle of town, along a CNR branch line that was shut down in 2000. A neighbouring Richardson Pioneer elevator stopped taking grain four years ago, and was subsequently demolished.

As sections of the structure burned open, blazing mounds of grain would flow out like lava, Csiki says. There was quite a bit of debris from the fire, but it was falling on the nearby Co-op grocery store, rather than her house, she says.

Lawrence Weinrauch is the general manager of the Turtleford Co-op and deputy mayor. Weinrauch was on his way home from Paradise Hill when he saw the flames, a little after 9 pm.

Both Csiki and Weinrauch credit volunteer fire fighters with saving the Co-op. Csiki says the fire fighters sprayed the Co-op for several hours. “I think the only thing that caught on fire was a garbage bin outside of the Co-op,” says Csiki.

Weinrauch says they did heat checks in the grocery store at about 3 am, and they didn’t lose anything, which he credits to the fire departments. At one point there were 32 fire fighters on scene, from volunteer fire departments of Turtleford, Glaslyn, and St. Walburg, a Town of Turtleford news release notes. RCMP officers and Sask Power workers were also on scene. There were no injuries, the news release adds.

Fire fighters also had a bit of luck on their side. As the elevator burned, it slowly collapsed inwards, Csiki says, rather than falling outwards. Residents did report hearing explosions. Fortunately Csiki says most of the debris wasn’t large.

As the night wore on, the flames started to die down, and there was less debris. “We felt safe at about midnight, and then we went home,” says Csiki.

Weinrauch says the fire is “a pretty controlled burn” now, but the fire department was still watching it. The cause of the blaze isn’t yet known, he adds, and investigators wouldn’t be able to look into it until the site was deemed safe. “It could burn the rest of today. It could burn two days, three days.”

Exactly what was in the elevator, besides some type of grain, is also an unknown right now. However, a semi-trailer was visible amongst the wreckage.

Csiki notes the elevator was a loss for the community, and the farming family who owned it. “Hopefully he has some form of insurance because he just lost a lot of hard work.”

Weinrauch says things went as well as they could, given the circumstances. “I hope there’s a happy ending to the story with that kind of damage and the crop loss.

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