Haunted Hospital

One of the haunted spots was the old abandoned hospital that was two stories and large, (I think it was large) we went in but we were scared all of the time. Walking and riding bikes past the building was terrifying at best at night or in the evening.


Red Cross Outpost Hospitals
In 1920, the first Red Cross Outpost Hospital in the British Empire was built at Paddockwood, Saskatchewan. This post-World War I Red Cross program served small, remote communities (often soldier-settlement areas) unable to afford municipal hospitals. Built and maintained by the communities, these hospitals were staffed and supplied by the Red Cross. This successful partnership led to a total of twenty-four outposts in Saskatchewan, over 200 across Canada, and more around the world. A “Nurse-in-Charge,” not a resident doctor, managed each hospital and lived in the community full-time. With the nearest doctor typically thirty or more miles away, Charge Nurses delivered babies, stitched wounds, administered medicine, set bones, treated fevers, gave vaccinations, and offered practical medical advice. Often forced by circumstance to make diagnoses and prescribe treatment in a doctor’s stead, these nurses worked admirably outside the bounds of accepted nursing practice. The Red Cross name and flag gave instant recognition, and promoted trust for people of all nationalities. By 1946, over 37,000 inpatients and 27,000 outpatients had been treated in Saskatchewan outposts, with 8,800 births recorded. Over the years, as communities matured and transportation improved, each hospital was turned over to community management or closed. Saskatchewan’s Red Cross Outpost Hospitals included, in order of establishment: Paddockwood, Carragana in 1921, Bengough, Eastend, Cutknife, Meadow Lake, Willow Bunch, Kelvington, Big River, Lucky Lake, Broderick, Wood Mountain, Bracken, Nipawin, Tuberose, Rabbit Lake, Rockglen, Loon Lake, Endeavour, Pierceland, Leoville, Hudson Bay Junction, Arborfield, and Buffalo Narrows.
Merle Massie
©2007 University of Regina and Canadian Plains Research Center

My mother-in-law was the first baby born in the Paddockwood Red Cross Hospital, Gladys Aspvick.

Marie Kilden
Marie Kilden, nurse and matron at Saskatchewan Red Cross Outpost Hospitals during the period from 1919 to 1951, was born on April 14, 1897, at Ostby, Trysil, Norway. She came to Canada in 1907 with her parents who homesteaded in the Domremy district.
She graduated as a registered nurse from the Holy Family Hospital in Prince Albert in 1919. During her training period in 1918 the terrible flu epidemic struck and the hospital soon filled to overflowing. Despite long hours and valiant efforts by the staff, including Marie, the death toll was high.
Following the First World War many veterans were settled on new lands in wilderness areas where health services were non-existent. The Canadian Red Cross established what it called Outpost Nursing Stations to provide medical and first aid services to people in these isolated communities. Marie Kilden worked from 1919 to 1951 at various Red Cross outpost stations providing health care to pioneers.
Pioneer families in the districts around Bjorkdale, Cut Knife, Rabbit Lake, Carragana, Arborfield, Big River and Loverna had reason to be grateful for medical aid provided by this dedicated nurse. Doctors only came to the outpost for periodic clinics and Marie Kilden was expected to provide a full line of support medical services by herself between these infrequent visits.
She delivered hundreds of babies and counselled their mothers. She dealt with disease, injuries and even gunshot wounds. Those needing operations were assisted to the nearest hospital. She aided many a doctor in conducting operations in homes and outpost hospitals and on one occasion with lighting provided by automobile headlights.
When the Red Cross closed its outpost stations in 1951, Marie Kilden moved to the Wakaw Union Hospital where she was a nurse and matron until her retirement in 1962.
Marie Kilden received honors and tributes for her work in bringing much-needed medical services to districts being opened up for agriculture. A citation from the Cut Knife community commended her skill, thoughtfulness and dedicated service. She received a scroll from the Canadian Red Cross for 30 years of service and an honorary life membership in the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association. Recognizing her value to the communities served, a group of seven Homemakersí clubs in Northeast Saskatchewan in 1953 named their new district organization the Marie Kilden Homemakersí District,î later known as the Marie Kilden District Women's Institute.
"Nominated for the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame, 1985by Bethania Lutheran Church, Northern Light BookFund and Marie Kilden District Women’s Institute."

To Those of Us Born In The 50's

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets
and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.


As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one
actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid
made with real white sugar.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were
back when the streetlights came on..
No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were OKAY.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride
them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .
We did not have Play stations, Nintendo's and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no
surround-sound , no CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping pong paddles, or just a bare hand and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in
us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks
and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or
rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who
didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem
solvers and inventors ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to
deal with it all.

If YOU are one of them, CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up
as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave
and lucky their parents were.

WE MADE IT!

I remember the day in 1960 my dad came back from picking up the mail with a telegram; my grandpa Theodore Rundvall died in BC.

Remember the TB trucks would come to the

town hall and us kids would line up for

a x-ray and a blood test.

Early 50's

1951



Cast Iron John Deere tractor, a gift from Grandpa Kjelshus and Uncle Orville Kjelshus

Tom Torrance

In front of my parent's store and postoffice with living quarters behind.

1956

Dad and I where going to Porcupine Plain one late afternoon on Highway 23; a good gravel highway. We went around a curve and saw a car accident, driving too fast for road conditions and he flipped. One of the passenger was hurt pretty bad and he was bleeding all over the place, before cell phones and we put him in the back seat and drove him to the hospital in Porcupine.

Last CN Steam Engine

I saw the last CN Steam Engine to make the trip through Carragana in 1966.















I am not sure of the exact engine number; found a picture in the Carranaga history book, it starts in 2700, but the pictures above are from northern Manitoba and the rail went through the Pas Man which is really close to Carragana.

CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
STEAM LOCOMOTIVE ROSTER
Numbers Qty Class Type Bldr Dates Ø/hp T.E.
2747-2748 2 N-5-c 2-8-0 CNR 1926 63
2749-2768 20 N-5-d 2-8-0 CNR 1931 63

Hunting Rifle

My dad had a left handed bolt action .306 hunting rifle, it was awkward shooting when you wanted to change the shell.

Doing Chores

We didn’t have sewage in Carragana, we had an outhouse but we had a toilet inside of our bathroom in the house, it was nice and warm but stinky. Hauling the toilet can out to the outhouse was my job when I got big enough, boys like to procrastinate, and the can got fuller and fuller. And mom and dad threatened and threatened and I finally did it, it was heavy and stinky. And you would think that I’d learn but no.

Forest Fire

My best friend Bernie was the son of the shoe maker and barber in town, and his mother made the best home made bread besides my mom. We got in all kinds of trouble, going through the ice of a pond, and starting a forest fire across the tracks from the stockyards in the Porcupine Forest Reserve that Dad can to call in the men and Cats to put it out, we in trouble then.

Hot summer days went by and I couldn’t play because I was painting the picket fence white just like Tom Sawyer except I couldn’t persuade Bernie to help me.

What is Lefse?

Norwegian lefse (pronounced 'lef-suh') is a potato tortilla. It’s basically riced potatoes and flour rolled flat, and cooked dry. Since potato lefse is somewhat time-consuming to make, it is usually reserved for special holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, with the right Norwegian lefse recipes and tools, rolling pins, and a heavy-duty potato ricer—traditional Norwegian lefse can be an anytime treat!
I helped Mom make lefse by cooking it right on the top of the wood cook stove (Dad retrofitted the cook stove from wood to oil burning), Mom did the mixing of the dough, rolling with the special rolling pin and I cooked it with the special sword (lefse flipper that Dad carved). I made sure I messed a few sheets of Lefse up and I would get to eat those fresh. I soon learned that I couldn’t mess up very many sheets; it was too much work for Mom.

Exploding Things

Away from the house over the back alley was The Garage where Dad kept his tools and various implements of destruction, it was where I learned my love of fire and explosions. Paint cans explode, .22 cal shells explode etc. My hobby of doing plastic cars, war planes and tanks would be very realistic if they were shot with a .22 and burnt with flame thrower. Don’t let my grandsons read this.

Willow Persuader

When I wouldn’t or forgot to come home for bedtime or meals my mother would come looking for me with a willow switch and use it on me all the way home.

Train Trip

A highlight for me was going to Melfort by myself on the train, Dad knew the train workers and they watched over me, and my uncle Leroy Braaten was the station master at Melfort and Leroy and Joy were there to get me off the train, we stayed at big two story station in Melfort and went to the Melfort Fair

Mirages

The gravel highway to Somme and Weeks heading east was straight as an arrow, many times we saw mirages; it seems as if the highway went up a shimmering mountain.

History of Carragana

Entertainment

We didn’t have a T.V. till 1965 or 66, and then one channel coming off the tower in the hills around Greenwater or Marean Lake, Dad had a Short Wave Radio that I used to listen to the station in the US; skip is radio waves skipping off of clouds or weather patterns especially in the winter. I think that where I got my love of music and the fear of nuclear war in the early 60’s when the Cold War was waging. For those of us who remember the sounds of nuclear alert sirens being tested, or radio programs being interrupted to test emergency broadcasting capabilities, is a chilling reminder of how close our species came to wiping itself out.

The thing to do was to put your head between you knees, and kiss your butt goodbye.

The other type of music I would listen was my parent’s music LP’s; Harry Bellefontaine, Hank Snow etc and when we got TV in the mid ‘60’s; one of my favourite shows on Sunday night was the Ed Sullivan, we got the newest musical groups, acrobats and comedians.

A report from Jerry Crawford Blog greenwaterreport.com/
On foggy Thursday morning, the CKBI television tower was demolished. Alex Dunlop and I walked up there after the fact to view the mess. It was hard for me to figure out directions in the fog but it looks as if the plan was to drop the tower to the southwest, and that is the way the bottom half went. However, the top half had a mind of its own and buckled to the north. The very top of the tower landed on a big receiving dish just a few feet from the building housing the equipment. The dish, of course, was demolished. One of the men there opined that it was better the dish than the building. The grapevine tells me the plan is to rebuild the tower eighty feet taller, and hopefully to have it in operation in November.

That tower was built in the spring of 1962. Merv Miller worked on it, though he said he stayed on the ground. They spent six weeks building the tower without anyone suffering so much as a scratch. Then when they were done, they loaded the winch on a half-ton. One of the high-riggers was in the truck box; he mis-stepped, fell out of the box, and broke his leg!

Knock on Ginger

Have you ever had a shot gun fired in a air in your general direction, that is what we drove the residents of Carragana to do when we played Knock on Ginger at night, we snuck up on the house and knocked on the door and then took off to find a hiding place where we would watch them get angry or upset.

A highlight for me was going to Melfort by myself on the train, Dad knew the train workers and they watched over me, and my uncle Leroy Braaten was the station master at Melfort and Auntie Joy were there to made sure I got off the train, I stayed at big two story CN train station in Melfort and went to the Melfort Fair. The bumper cars were my favorite rides besides the food.

Snowshoeing, Hunting and Safety

My favorite part of winter besides Christmas was my snowshoes. Would have a trail packed over the fields to the forest reserve where I would hunt rabbits and make a nuisance of myself to the wildlife.


Would wear grey lace up Moccasins with multiple pair of wool socks, warm but slippery for my footwear in the winter.




22 Bolt action slide magazine, 22 short were the cheapest to buy I would save up a dollar and go to the Co-op service station and buy at 12 years old.

I used to love hunting grouse in the fall, I would scare them up in a tree and then shoot there heads off, I hope. If they were breast shoot there wasn’t much meat left.

Good friend of mine the Hitchcock’s; the older brother was walking along the railway tracks on day with his younger sister by his side, his .22 went off and struck the rail and went through his sister’s hand that besides her leg and ended in her leg.

Took Hunter Safety in Carragana and qualified to teach the classes, I especially enjoyed that the range where we tried out different rifles.
Wow, .303 army issue tracers are neat going into trees and I realized that shooting at rocks is a dangerous habit; you can’t control the bullets from ricocheting. Les Baker had the ammunition left over from the war and we fired it off at his farm.

Playing Calvary

The boys in town; we called it a town but it was barely a village at that time because business had closed or burnt down; joined together usually at our place because we had a picket fence that looked a lot like a US Calvary Fort. We all had guns either in holsters or Daisy rifles or wood guns that we had made over our shoulders. We’d choose an officer and the rest of us would mount up in columns and go hunt the Indians in the back alley and bush.



Never liked school, we had two schools buildings up to grade 8, a big yard with big patch of willow to the east. We had forts and houses and trails in the willows. I remember getting a strap one time for breaking a school window with a ball; accidentally of course.